acts who'd sent their demos into him at Radio One

Music In the late 90s, the late John Peel hosted a late night Channel 4 series, Sound of the Suburbs, in which he visited the homes and venues of acts who'd sent their demos into him at Radio One. The signature tune was a cover version of The Member's The Sound of the Suburbs by Oxford's The Seven Samurai.

I was reminded of the series and the song while sorting through my cd collection during the past week.  I found a sampler for a much longer compilation which Peel curated with tunes from his series. Curious as to what happened to The Samurai, I googled and low and behold Drowned in Sound has an explanation:

"After being picked up by John Peel when Radio 1 Sound City visited Oxford in 1997, the Seven went on to appear in Peel's channel 4 show Sound of the Suburbs before releasing some stunning singles for Shifty Disco, successfully negotiating with them the release of their debut album. In February 1999, shortly before they were due to begin recording, frontman Simon Williams was shot in the eye by a passing car on the way home from the pub, leaving him with an airgun pellet in his eye and a lot of stuff to cancel."

Predictably they never really recovered, which shows that it can take the most random, tragic incidents to ruin a career. At least, although this isn't a substitute, their work has been immortalised on film, and film which has been uploaded to YouTube in the form of the whole Oxford episode of Peel's show which I've embedded after the link.







Zane Lowe's never really going to be a substitute is he?