Ukrainian John Peel Sessions
1989 compilation album by The Wedding Present
Ukrainian John Peel Sessions (Ukrainian: Українські Виступи в Івана Піла, romanized: Ukrainski vistupi v Ivana Pila) is a compilation album by The Wedding Present, originally gathering their first three Ukrainian language John Peel radio sessions. It was scheduled to be released in late 1988 by their own record company, Reception Records, but was ultimately released in February 1989 by their new record label RCA.
About the album
Origins
The Wedding Present guitarist Peter Solowka, whose father is Ukrainian, used to play a Ukrainian folk tune called "Hopak" to entertain his friends. When he did so during a radio session the band was recording for the BBC Radio 1 John Peel show, they decided to record the song for the session. The song was received well and, fired by Solowka's enthusiasm, the band decided to dedicate another Peel session to Ukrainian folk songs. Because none of them could sing Ukrainian to any acceptable degree, they decided to invite fellow Leeds musician "The Legendary" Len Liggins of The Sinister Cleaners, who had read Russian at University, to sing and play various instruments.
The resulting Peel session's broadcast provoked a reaction from Roman Remeynes of Hang the Dance!, himself fluent in Ukrainian, who jokingly accused the band of bastardising the music. This led to him being invited to join as well for a second Ukrainian-themed Peel session. By this time, original Wedding Present drummer Shaun Charman had been replaced with Simon Smith, coincidentally an ex-Sinister Cleaner himself.
Aborted Reception Records release
The band intended to release a compilation of the first and second Peel sessions as Українські Виступи в Івана Піла on their independent record label Reception Records, whose distribution was handled by Red Rhino, a York-based division of the independent UK distribution network, The Cartel. Red Rhino issued a radio promo of "Davni Chasy" and pressed a batch of the LP for release in late 1988, but went into receivership before it could actually release the album.
The public source identifies “Ukrainian John Peel Sessions” as 1989 compilation album by The Wedding Present. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Ukrainian, John and Peel.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 9, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7878469. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1988 and 1989.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ukrainian John Peel Sessions” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.