New Peakecast is Up

For those who were friends or fan of Thomas Peake or just fans of interesting music, the newest Peakecast has been posted. This is a fitting show to be the second episode, as it was itself a memorial for former WREKster and restlessly creative musician Witt Mills. I urge you to go, check it out and if there is any chance you have any Thomas Peake material recorded, please dig through those boxes in the closet and attic. Give those unlabeled tapes a spin, just in case. One never knows, does one.

Above all, please leave us some feedback. We’re doing this show partly as a balm against loss and partly as an act of defiance against an uncaring universe. Let us know if it soothed or enraged you. I’m deliriously happy with either reaction.

And don’t forget the Peake Foundation. Go out and make a difference where you live. The clock is ticking, we need results by October 2010. What better place than here? What better time than now?

Peake Foundation and Peakecast

Yesterday would have been the 40th birthday of my late friend Thomas Peake. His wife Dena launched a project called The Peake Foundation. You can read the mission statement here. The very short version is that it is a call to action for people to make a difference, with a timetable given. On October 8, 2010 there will be a gathering, recounting and celebration of the success people have had in the previous year. It’s a nice way to keep the urgency alive. We all have the best intentions but life gets in the way, so for this there is a clear timetable and deadline to work to. They don’t specify anything about what shape the action should take, just that you do something, in some fashion, somewhere. Start in your own community, start anywhere, just start.

Also, Chris Campbell and I launched yesterday our Peakecast project. It is an ongoing collection of any audio we can scare up from Thomas’ career as a DJ, a music historian, a writer about and compiler of music. We begin with the audio I already published a few weeks ago, and our second episode will be the show Thomas did as a tribute when Witt Mills died in 2000. If you have any recordings of audio from Thomas, please submit it to the show.

Above all, help someone out. Make a difference. VIsualize what a better world looks like to you, and then put your shoulder to the earth and try to move it that way.