THE WASPS......JOHN PEEL SESSION 1977.

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John Robert Parker Ravenscroft OBE (30 August 1939 – 25 October 2004), better known as John Peel, was an English radio presenter and journalist. He was the longest-serving of the original disc jockeys on BBC Radio 1, broadcasting regularly from 1967 until his death in 2004.
Peel was one of the first broadcasters to play psychedelic rock and progressive rock records on British radio. He is widely acknowledged for promoting artists of many genres, including pop, dub reggae, punk rock and post-punk, electronic music and dance music, indie rock, extreme metal and British hip hop. Fellow DJ Paul Gambaccini described Peel as "the most important single person in popular music from approximately 1967 through 1978. He broke more important artists than any individual."[1]
Peel's Radio 1 shows were notable for the regular "Peel Sessions", which usually consisted of four songs recorded by an artist in the BBC's studios, often providing the first major national coverage to bands that later achieved fame. The annual Festive Fifty countdown of his listeners' favourite records of the year was a notable part of his promotion of new music.
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Like many other bands that became punk The Wasps were seasoned players in a number of progressive and underground bands including Trance, Lady June’s Elysium and Blockade which was Del May’s and Johnny Rich’s band immediately prior to being in The Wasps.
Steve Wollaston I teamed up with Johnny again – a fantastic drummer – with Del May at the beginning of ’76. Shortly after, we met Jesse Lynn-Dean, who possesses a huge talent for writing excellent lyrics, and things seemed to click into place.

It wasn’t long before we were gigging as The Wasps. Apart from Jesse (a North Londoner), we were all living on the east side of the capital at the time. Johnny knew Del from his last two bands and was one of the most creative guitarists I’d come across.

Jesse did indeed have a talent and apparently a publishing deal with EMI having walked into their offices in late 1975 and impressed EMI executive Dave Ambrose with a tape of his songs.
Hearing the other members rehearse, Jesse teams up and The Wasps start up. They are based in East London and the earliest photos of them show them playing live mid 1976 at the famous Bridge House venue there. The photos show a remarkably punky looking band. Strangely though they are never mentioned as among the originators and despite having a booking agency and management don’t play centrally. Perception is they were one of the second wave following the Pistols and Clash and Damned. Jesse puts this down to location.

Jesse Lynn-Dean When The Wasps first started playing we were playing local gigs in the East end of London in pubs & clubs that were traditionally Rock and Blues strongholds. We had no management at that time whereas the Pistols and some of the other bands you mentioned had management right from the start and were able to get to play in the West End and central London. It would have been easier for us if we had been playing Punk venues from the start, but it was a good education to do it the hard way anyway.

The band were also unaware of the developing punk scene.

Jesse Lynn-Dean I don’t really remember becoming aware in that sense of the Pistols; everything seemed to be happening at the same time. Steve Wollaston and myself had been listening to The Stooges, MC5 and a few such bands for quite a while, but to be honest I think at many Punk gigs the real stars and the most influential people was probably the audience. I think the atmosphere brushed off on everybody and you can’t really pinpoint where you picked things up from

From the onset The Wasps played power pop which was a melodic more uptempo music.

Jesse Lynn-Dean The Wasps have always had an element of Pop in their sound as have The Ramones & The Buzzcocks for example, but in the early days there were four creative members in the band who had different musical influences and it took a few gigs for The Wasps sound to gel. During these early days we did a few covers in our set, these included “Jean Genie”, Lou Reed’s “Waiting for my man”, which we later did on the “Live at the Vortex” album, a Power Punk version of “Paint it black”, Tommy Tucker’s “Hi heel sneakers” and we did “Search and destroy” once or twice. Our early sound was quite heavy and we were described by Giovanni Dadomo of Sounds magazine as “looking back street chic dressed in black with subtle touches of yellow to flesh out the name’s connotations”.