You don’t have to be a gear­head to instant­ly rec­og­nize the sound of the Roland TR-808. Intro­duced in 1980, the leg­endary drum machine is all over the 80s, 90s, and the retro 2000s, from dance prog­en­i­tors like Afri­ka Bambaataa’s “Plan­et Rock” to for­ma­tive Def Jam releas­es like Run DMC’s debut and the Beast­ie Boy’s Licensed to Ill (one of the orig­i­nal machines used on such clas­sics recent­ly went on sale). The 808 pro­vides the back­beat for Mar­vin Gaye’s “Sex­u­al Heal­ing,” New Order’s “Shell­shock,” and LL Cool J’s “Going Back to Cali”… track after era-defin­ing track puls­es with the icon­ic drum machine’s deep, thud­ding kick drum and com­i­cal­ly syn­thet­ic con­gas, claves, mara­cas, hand­claps, and cow­bells.

The 808 inspired a trib­ute cel­e­bra­tion around the world on August 8th (8/08) and stars in its own full-length doc­u­men­tary, “a nerdy love let­ter” to the elec­tric instru­ment, writes Slate. You can buy 808 Adi­das that actu­al­ly play beats, play with a vir­tu­al TR-808 in your brows­er, and enjoy the sounds of Kanye West’s odd­ly influ­en­tial 2008 album 808s and Heart­break. With all this renewed atten­tion, you might think it’s a good time for Japan’s Roland to bring the device back into pro­duc­tion, just as Moog briefly reis­sued its Min­i­moog Mod­el D (since dis­con­tin­ued) amidst a swirl of renewed main­stream inter­est in ana­log syn­the­siz­ers.

Roland has obvi­ous­ly felt the pop cul­tur­al winds blow­ing its way. Yes­ter­day, on 808 Day, the com­pa­ny announced a new iter­a­tion, now called the TR-08, as part of its Bou­tique line. (A pre­vi­ous revival, the TR‑8, saw Roland com­bine the 808 with the clas­sic 909, renowned in rave cir­cles.) The video at the top fea­tures some of the 808’s orig­i­nal adopters—producer Jim­my Jam, rap­per Mar­ley Marl, and DJs Jazzy Jeff and Juan Atkins—marveling over the new prod­uct. Just above, in case you’ve some­how for­got­ten, we have a demon­stra­tion of famous TR-808 beats from tracks like “Plan­et Rock” and Cybotron’s “Clear,” songs that made inno­v­a­tive use of sam­ples and which them­selves became choice mate­r­i­al for dozens of sam­ple-based pro­duc­tions.

The 808 was the choice of drum machine for tin­ker­ers. Its sound was “crowd-sourced,” writes Chris Nor­ris, “with artists build­ing on one another’s mod­i­fi­ca­tions of the device. One of the first major inno­va­tions came about in 1984,” with the “fine tun­ing of the 808’s low fre­quen­cies and fur­ther widen­ing of its bass kick drum to cre­ate the sound of an under­ground nuke test” heard on pro­duc­er Strafe’s club hit “Set it Off.” The new TR-08 has a much small­er foot­print and expands the machine’s capa­bil­i­ties with con­tem­po­rary fea­tures like an LED screen, con­trols over gain and tun­ing, bat­tery or USB pow­er, and audio or MIDI through a USB con­nec­tion.

Arguably “one of the most impact­ful pieces of mod­ern music hard­ware,” writes The Verge, upon its debut the 808 “received mixed reviews and was con­sid­ered a com­mer­cial fail­ure as its ana­log cir­cuit­ry didn’t cre­ate the ‘tra­di­tion­al’ drum sounds” most pro­duc­ers expect­ed. This meant that 808s could be picked up rel­a­tive­ly cheap­ly by bed­room pro­duc­ers and local DJs. As a result, “the trem­bling feel­ing of that sound,” Nor­ris writes, “boom­ing down boule­vards in Oak­land, the Bronx, and Detroit are part of America’s cul­tur­al DNA, the ghost of Rea­gan-era blight” and the renais­sance of cre­ativ­i­ty born in its midst. To get a sense of the breadth of the 808’s musi­cal con­tri­bu­tions, lis­ten to the playlist above, with every­one from Talk­ing Heads to 2 LIVE CREW, Phil Collins, and Whit­ney Hous­ton putting in an appear­ance.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

All Hail the Beat: How the 1980 Roland TR-808 Drum Machine Changed Pop Music

See the First “Drum Machine,” the Rhyth­mi­con from 1931, and the Mod­ern Drum Machines That Fol­lowed Decades Lat­er

The “Amen Break”: The Most Famous 6‑Second Drum Loop & How It Spawned a Sam­pling Rev­o­lu­tion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Image by Zetkin, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

We’ve devot­ed space here before to leg­endary BBC DJ John Peel’s musi­cal lega­cy, from his for­mi­da­ble record col­lec­tion to his many hours of “Peel Ses­sions,” the record­ings he made in BBC stu­dios of artists like David Bowie, Joy Divi­sion, The Smiths, The Spe­cials, Siouxsie and the Ban­shees and so, so many more–usually when they were on the cusp of super­star­dom or endur­ing cult sta­tus. It was Peel’s par­tic­u­lar tal­ent for dis­cov­er­ing and pro­mot­ing such artists that set him apart from his peers. Rather than rid­ing the cul­tur­al wave of the moment, he lis­tened at the mar­gins, cul­ti­vat­ing and curat­ing what he heard. Whether punk, glam, new wave, hard­core, ska, tech­no, or indus­tri­al, it seems John Peel got there first, and the rest of the indus­try fol­lowed after him.

Peel did not approach his role in a crit­i­cal vein—sitting in judg­ment of the music around him. He approached it as an enthu­si­as­tic and obses­sive fan, which explains much of his appeal to the lis­ten­ers who loved his broad­casts. He hon­ored those lis­ten­ers each year by com­pil­ing a list of their favorites in what he called “The John Peel Fes­tive 50.” This end-of-the-year event “became a Christ­mas insti­tu­tion, writes the BBC, “more loved than fairy lights and Christ­mas crack­ers.”

Lis­ten­ers of Peel’s show vot­ed for their three favorite tracks in Novem­ber. The fol­low­ing month, the high­est-ranked “Fes­tive 50” were all played on the air. He described the process as a tru­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic, crowd­sourced endeav­or, as we would say today.

It’s real­ly just me mark­ing every sin­gle vote down in a ledger. There is obvi­ous­ly the temp­ta­tion to slip some­thing in that I like, espe­cial­ly if it’s just out­side the 50, and some­thing crap has gone above it. But I have a very work­man-like brain so it just would­n’t be on to fix it.

Peel “wasn’t always hap­py with what the lis­ten­ers vot­ed for,” often feel­ing “there were too many ‘white boys with gui­tars’ mak­ing an appear­ance.” The pre­dictabil­i­ty of sev­er­al of the lists irked him, and seemed to work against the spir­it of his mis­sion to tire­less­ly pro­mote adven­tur­ous, exper­i­men­tal music. Peel may have been pop­u­lar, but in mat­ters of taste, he was no pop­ulist. For the most part, how­ev­er, he remained faith­ful to the fans’ picks, and not­ed that he nev­er would have been able to choose the top three songs of the year him­self: “I couldn’t get any few­er than a list of 250.”

The tra­di­tion, with a few hic­cups, con­tin­ued from its incep­tion in 1976 till Peel’s death in 2004, and the mas­sive Spo­ti­fy playlist above aggre­gates the hun­dreds of those picks—932 songs, to be exact, over 70 hours of music. From Dylan, Clap­ton, and the Stones to Neko Case—and along the way, no short­age of tracks from the punk and post-punk artists most close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Peel’s show. While the listener’s picks do fall heav­i­ly into the “white boys with gui­tars” cat­e­go­ry, there’s plen­ty more besides, includ­ing ear­ly tracks from Eric B. & Rakim, P.J. Har­vey, Stere­o­lab, 10,000 Mani­acs, Cocteau Twins, and many more. You can explore the tracks in Peel’s “Fes­tive 50” lists here. They’re sort­ed by decade: 1970s — 1980s — 1990s — 2000s.

Note: Here’s a direct link to the Spo­ti­fy playlist, and if you need Spo­ti­fy’s soft­ware, down­load it here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream 15 Hours of the John Peel Ses­sions: 255 Tracks by Syd Bar­rett, David Bowie, Siouxsie and the Ban­shees & Oth­er Artists

Hear a 9‑Hour Trib­ute to John Peel: A Col­lec­tion of His Best “Peel Ses­sions”

Revis­it the Radio Ses­sions and Record Col­lec­tion of Ground­break­ing BBC DJ John Peel

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness