David Peel is a New York City-based musician who first achieved prominence in the late 1960s. Though his raw, acoustic "street" music with lyrics about marijuana and "pigs" appealed mostly to hippies at first, the sound and DIY aesthetic make him an important, if little-credited, early performer of punk rock. He has performed with artists ranging from B. B. King to GG Allin. Image File history File links David Peel at the Million Marijuana March, NYC 1994 File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... Hippies (singular hippie or sometimes hippy) were members of the 1960s counterculture movement who adopted a communal or nomadic lifestyle, renounced corporate nationalism and the Vietnam War, embraced aspects of Buddhism, Hinduism, and/or Native American religious culture, and were otherwise at odds with traditional middle class Western values. ... DIY stands for do it yourself, as opposed to paying a professional to do it for you. ... B. B. King Riley B. King aka B. B. King (born September 16, 1925) is a well known American blues guitarist and songwriter. ... GG Allin (29 August 1956 – 28 June 1993) was a punk rock singer and bandleader for a plethora of groups (see below). ...

Originally recording with back-up from Harold Black and Billy Jo White, Peel's band performed under the name the Lower East Side/Band. After the 1972 departure of White and Black, the band included Moses, Eddie and Andi Anderson. The band was one of the first to perform regularly on cable TV in Manhattan through the public access channel of the Manhattan Cable TV Co., as well as the first Smoke-in Concerts sponsored by the Yippies in New York City. The Youth International Party (whose adherents were known as Yippies, a variant on Hippies) was a highly theatrical political party established in the United States in 1967. ...

John Lennon mentioned Peel in the song New York City: John Winston Lennon (later John Winston Ono Lennon) (October 9, 1940 – December 8, 1980) was best known as a singer, songwriter, poet and guitarist for the British rock band The Beatles. ...

Standing on the corner

Just me and yoko ono

We was waiting for jerry to land

Up come a man with the guitar

in his hand

Singing "have a marijuana if you can"

His name was David Peel

And we found that he was real

He sang "The pope smokes dope everyday"

Up come a police man shoved us up the street

Singin, "power to the people today!"

Lennon and Yoko Ono subsequently produced Peel's third album, The Pope Smokes Dope. Yoko Ono. ...

Concerned about major label censorship, Peel founded Orange Records to release his recordings, and also those of other artists such as GG Allin and John Draper, "Cap'n Crunch" of phone phreaking fame. As of 2004 he is still actively recording and performing his music and planning to release a 20 CD box set in Summer 2005. Censorship of music, the practice of censoring music from the public, may take the form of partial or total censorship with the latter banning the music entirely. ... John T. Draper, also known as Captain Crunch (after Capn Crunch, the mascot of a breakfast cereal), was a phone phreaker. ... A box set (or boxed set) refers to one or more recordings, movies and television programs that are contained in a box made generally out of cardboard. ...

Peel has appeared in various films as himself, including Rude Awakening (1989) and High Times Potluck (2004)

External links

• The "Official online shrine"
• David's homepage
• VIDEO: John Lennon's 65th Birthday at CBGB'S (10-9-05) NYC"
• Video clip of Peel performing in 1989 (RealPlayer required)