The Moody Blues - BBC Sessions, Volume 6: In Concert, Poplar Creek Music Theater, Hoffman Estates, IL, 7-18-1981

I'm wincing about posting yet another album that requires renumbering, but I'm trying to get all of these renumberings done sooner rather than later. I'd discovered some more information sources that led to more missed album. Hopefully the renumberings will soon cease! Anyway, here's a Moody Blues concert from 1981 that I'd previously missed. So the next two albums in this series got renumbered, of course. One advantage of this concert over the next two in the series, also from the 1980s, is that this is the only one that wasn't edited down by the BBC.

When the 1980s began, it seemed likely that bands like the Moody Blues would be mostly forgotten as "dinosaurs." Musical trends had changed drastically in the past few years. To make matters worse, the band had taken a five-year break. But with their 1981 studio album "Long Distance Voyager," they had two minor hits, "Gemini Dream" and "The Voice," and discovered many new fans. 

This concert promoted that album. Naturally, it featured those two hits and other songs from the new album. But the band didn't shy away from playing lots of their older classics essentially the same as before, although the Mellotron was replaced by the synth.

This album is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent, so I didn't have to do any tinkering.

This album is an hour and 37 minutes long.

01 Gemini Dream (Moody Blues)
02 The Story in Your Eyes (Moody Blues)
03 talk (Moody Blues)
04 Twilight Time (Moody Blues)
05 talk (Moody Blues)
06 Tuesday Afternoon (Moody Blues)
07 talk (Moody Blues)
08 The Voice (Moody Blues)
09 Nervous (Moody Blues)
10 talk (Moody Blues)
11 Steppin' in a Slide Zone (Moody Blues)
12 talk (Moody Blues)
13 Talking Out of Turn (Moody Blues)
14 talk (Moody Blues)
15 The Balance (Moody Blues)
16 talk (Moody Blues)
17 Isn't Life Strange (Moody Blues)
18 talk (Moody Blues)
19 Gypsy (Moody Blues)
20 talk (Moody Blues)
21 Driftwood (Moody Blues)
22 talk (Moody Blues)
23 22,000 Days (Moody Blues)
24 I'm Just a Singer [In a Rock and Roll Band] (Moody Blues)
25 Nights in White Satin (Moody Blues)
26 Legend of the Mind (Moody Blues)
27 talk (Moody Blues)
28 Question (Moody Blues)
29 Ride My See-Saw (Moody Blues)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/RLnzAa3y

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/zWBMfQ2fTLswCdN/file

The cover is from this exact concert. That's Justin Hayward on the left and John Lodge on the right. However, I moved them closer together with the help of Photoshop.

Fleetwood Mac - BBC Sessions, Volume 8: Selland Arena, Fresno, CA, 12-10-1987

Still more renumbering, as I keep finding BBC concerts I'd missed. I'll explain more about the renumbering below. The main thing is, here's another Fleetwood Mac concert for the BBC, this time from 1987.

In 1987, Fleetwood Mac released the studio album "Tango in the Night." It proved to be another huge success for the band, selling over 15 million copies worldwide. All three of the band's major singer-songwriters from the 1970s and early 1980s participated: Lindsey Buckingham, Christine McVie, and Stevie Nicks, plus the always reliable foundation of Mick Fleetwood on drums and John McVie on bass.

However, although the music on the album was strong, with several big hit singles, the band was very dysfunctional behind the scenes. For instance, John McVie hadn't played the bass at all for a couple of years, and had gotten so addicted to alcohol he worried he'd lost the ability to play. Fleetwood had such a big cocaine habit that he spent much of the recording sessions in a nearby mobile home getting high. Nicks also often was so high on cocaine and/or alcohol that most of her backing vocals proved to be useless and had to be faked by other band members. Because of these problems and more, it took a year and half to get the album done.

So when it came time for a band meeting to plan the tour to support the album, Buckingham announced he wasn't going to take part. This made Nicks so angry that she actually got in a physical fight with him that spilled out into the street! Buckingham later said that at the time of the album's release, "everybody was leading their lives in a way that they would not be too proud of today." He also said that, "Compared to making an album, in my experience, going on the road will multiply the craziness by times five. I just wasn't up for that."

Buckingham quit the band, seemingly permanently. He wouldn't rejoin until a decade later. He was replaced by the relatively unknown Rick Vito and Billy Burnette. Note that Buckingham's role in the band was considered so important that it took two people to replace him.

So while it's disappointing that Buckingham isn't on this recording, the band was coming off a big hit album, and most of the hits on it were sung and written by Christine McVie or Stevie Nicks.

The sound quality here is solid, despite this being unreleased. However, I discovered the lead vocals were down in the mix. So I used the UVR5 audio editing program to boost them relative to the instruments. Furthermore, there was something off with the mix even after I did that. It was beyond my ability to fix, so I sent the files to my musical associate MZ and he fixed it. Part of the problem was the bass range was too loud.

According to setlist.fm, one song is missing from the very end of the encore: "Songbird."

As I mentioned at the start of this write-up, some renumbering has taken place. I previously posted a 1990 concert (with the same band members, by the way), which I called "Volume 8." That now is "Volume 9." But I also recently discovered that the band's 1997 concert which became the live album "The Dance" was broadcast by the BBC at the time. So that has been slightly renamed, with "Volume 10" added to the title.

Here are the links to those, if you want to get the correct cover art and mp3 tags and such:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2022/11/fleetwood-mac-bbc-sessions-volume-8-in.html

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2022/12/fleetwood-mac-dance-expanded-version.html

This album is an hour and 18 minutes long.

01 Say You Love Me (Fleetwood Mac)
02 The Chain (Fleetwood Mac)
03 Dreams (Fleetwood Mac)
04 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
05 Isn't It Midnight (Fleetwood Mac)
06 Everywhere (Fleetwood Mac)
07 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
08 Oh Well, Part 1 (Fleetwood Mac)
09 Seven Wonders (Fleetwood Mac)
10 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
11 Rattlesnake Shake (Fleetwood Mac)
12 Over My Head (Fleetwood Mac)
13 Gold Dust Woman (Fleetwood Mac)
14 Has Anyone Ever Written Anything for You (Fleetwood Mac)
15 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
16 I Loved Another Woman (Fleetwood Mac)
17 Brown Eyes (Fleetwood Mac)
18 Little Lies (Fleetwood Mac)
19 Stand Back (Fleetwood Mac)
20 You Make Loving Fun (Fleetwood Mac)
21 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
22 Don't Stop (Fleetwood Mac)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/PA6YRV5B

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/dnYRnS8ck456dCz/file

The cover image is a composite of two photos. I started with an image of just Christine McVie, taken from a concert in East Rutherford, New Jersey, in October 1987. Then I found a photo of Stevie Nicks from a London concert in May 1988 that seemed to roughly match. I put them together in Photoshop.

Dire Straits - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: In Concert, Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire, Britain, 6-20-1992

Here's a very nice complete Dire Straits concert from 1992. It's the third and last BBC album I have for them.

Dire Straits became superstars with their 1985 album "Brothers in Arms." It went on to sell thirty million copies, making it one of the top 30 best selling albums of all time. After a long tour to support that album, band leader Mark Knoplfer was exhausted by all the pressures of stardom and took a few years off. Dire Straits came back with a studio album in late 1991, "On Every Street." It was a relative disappointment, selling "only" five million. But still, most musical acts would kill for those kinds of numbers.

Another big worldwide tour followed, lasting a full year, until October 1992. The BBC recorded them while they stopped by Britain. This album is unreleased, but the sound quality and performance is excellent. After the tour ended, the band broke up for good, except for a handful of reunion shows.

As an aside, the opening act for this concert was Lyle Lovett. That was broadcast on the BBC as well, and I plan on posting that eventually.

The album is two hours and two minutes long.

01 Calling Elvis (Dire Straits)
02 Walk of Life (Dire Straits)
03 Heavy Fuel (Dire Straits)
04 Romeo and Juliet (Dire Straits)
05 The Bug (Dire Straits)
06 Private Investigations (Dire Straits)
07 Sultans of Swing (Dire Straits)
08 Your Latest Trick (Dire Straits)
09 On Every Street (Dire Straits)
10 Two Young Lovers (Dire Straits)
11 Telegraph Road (Dire Straits)
12 Money for Nothing (Dire Straits)
13 Brothers in Arms (Dire Straits)
14 Solid Rock (Dire Straits)
15 Going Home [Theme from 'Local Hero'] [Instrumental] (Dire Straits)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/MqTvgX6s

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/aM50zEJMNfqiwu2/file

The cover photo of band leader Mark Knopfler is from this exact concert.

Nick Lowe - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: In Concert, The Palladium, London, Britain, 10-14-2001

Here's a 2001 concert by Nick Lowe. After finding two BBC concerts from the 1980s featuring him and Paul Carrack, I was only able to find two BBC solo concerts of him, both from the 2000s. This is the first one.

I previously posted a non-BBC concert by Lowe from 1995. That happened just after his 1994 album "The Impossible Bird" which switched to a more mellow and mature sound. His next two albums, "Dig My Mood" in 1998, and "The Convincer" in 2001, very much continued that change in style. So by the time of this album, he had three albums of that style to draw from, all of them strong. He generally left his older music behind, with the exception of a couple classics, especially "Cruel to Be Kind" and "I Knew the Bride (When She Used to Rock and Roll)."

This album is unreleased. But you can expect the usual BBC high sound quality. Given that it's less than an hour long, it's very likely the BBC edited it down to fit into an hour-long radio time slot.

This album is 54 minutes long.

01 talk (Nick Lowe)
02 Lately I've Let Things Slide (Nick Lowe)
03 talk (Nick Lowe)
04 What's Shaking on the Hill (Nick Lowe)
05 Half a Boy and Half a Man (Nick Lowe)
06 Has She Got a Friend (Nick Lowe)
07 Faithless Lover (Nick Lowe)
08 The Man I've Become (Nick Lowe)
09 talk (Nick Lowe)
10 True Love Travels on a Gravel Road (Nick Lowe)
11 talk (Nick Lowe)
12 I Live on a Battlefield (Nick Lowe)
13 You Inspire Me (Nick Lowe)
14 Cruel to be Kind (Nick Lowe)
15 Indian Queens (Nick Lowe)
16 talk (Nick Lowe)
17 Let's Stay in and Make Love (Nick Lowe)
18 talk (Nick Lowe)
19 [You're My] Wildest Dream (Nick Lowe)
20 I Knew the Bride [When She Used to Rock and Roll] (Nick Lowe) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/u3DrfoJG

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Djc8hoxuiqtgAcx/file

The cover is from a concert at the Marktrock Festival, in Leuven, Belgium, on August 15, 1998.

The Eagles - The Forum, Inglewood, CA, 3-4-1980

Here's a live concert from 1980 by the Eagles (or, if you want to be technically correct, just Eagles).

The Eagles broke up in 1980, although they would reunite in 1994 and occasionally thereafter. They marked the end of their eight years as a band with a live double album, simply called "Eagles Live." Although decent, in my opinion it has some problems. I generally prefer full concerts. Not only is "Eagles Live" selected from multiple concerts from 1980, five of the songs actually are from 1976! And given the band had so much material to choose from, why reach back to 1976 and pick songs like "Doolin' Dalton (Reprise II)" and "Wasted Time?"

Furthermore, the band was slowing falling apart, and losing enthusiasm as the tour went on. In fact, things got so bad that on the last night of the tour, there was a confrontation between band members Glenn Frey and Don Felder that some say came to blows. It is known that Felder smashed one of his own guitars to express his feelings. Yet there was even music on the live album from that concert. The break-up after that was very bitter.

I have another issue with the official live album. It's well known that the songs were extensively overdubbed later. In fact, Rolling Stone Magazine later said it was "perhaps the most heavily overdubbed [live album] in history." I prefer listening to live performances as they really were, without all that tinkering.

Luckily for us, there is one soundboard bootleg from the band's final tour, this one. However, there is one major problem with it: the recording stopped before the end of the concert. About one minute into an encore of the song "Carol," it seems the tape ran out. This is particularly frustrating because this was a cover of the Chuck Berry song, and the Eagles never put it on their "Eagles Live" album or any other album. Furthermore, Elton John played piano on it, although to be honest it's hard to tell. 

I got a minor break in that I found an audience bootleg that had the rest of "Carol," plus all of the next song, "Best of My Love." The song "Carol" has "[Edit]" in the title because I spliced the two versions together. Unfortunately, it seems that the tape on that recording ran out too. According to setlist.fm, two more songs were performed, "Walk Away" and "Tequila Sunrise." But at least we got the vast majority of the concert, even though the sound quality on the last two is a little rough. 

Personally, I think this is better than the official album from the tour. The only loss in my opinion is that this doesn't have a version of the song "Seven Bridges Road," which the band released for the first time on "Eagles Live." I checked, and while the band played the song on March 1st and 2nd, it was a changing setlist, and they skipped it on March 3rd and 4th.

This album is an hour and 36 minutes long.

01 Hotel California (Eagles)
02 Already Gone (Eagles)
03 In the City (Eagles)
04 The Disco Strangler (Eagles)
05 The Sad Cafe (Eagles)
06 Lyin' Eyes (Eagles)
07 talk (Eagles)
08 I Can't Tell You Why (Eagles)
09 Those Shoes (Eagles)
10 talk (Eagles)
11 Heartache Tonight (Eagles)
12 One of These Nights (Eagles)
13 talk (Eagles)
14 Turn to Stone (Eagles)
15 The Long Run (Eagles)
16 talk (Eagles)
17 Life's Been Good (Eagles)
18 Life in the Fast Lane (Eagles)
19 talk (Eagles)
20 Carol [Edit] (Eagles with Elton John)
21 talk (Eagles)
22 Best of My Love (Eagles)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/4oeTCBLT

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/3K3wHjVdYzdgENY/file

The cover photo doesn't come from this concert, but it's close. It's from a concert at the same venue, but on March 1st, the first of a four concert run. The fancy lettering of the band name at the top is something I found just by Googling images of the band's name.

The Kinks - Universal Amphitheatre, Los Angeles, CA, 6-25-1978

With the Kinks being my second favorite rock band (after the Beatles), I'm always looking for worthy music to post from them. In this case, I found a decent bootleg and improved the sound quality to make it worthy.

When it comes to Kinks concerts from 1977, there are several with excellent sound quality. And for 1979, there also are a couple, plus the official live album "One for the Road." But there's no concert with soundboard quality for 1978. 

However, I recently discovered this concert. It's only an audience bootleg. But it was recorded by Mike Millard, who had pretty good recording equipment. A big problem with such audience bootlegs is that there's usually too much crowd noise. That was the case here, with people often making noise all through the songs. But nowadays, there are audio editing tools to do something about that. So I used the MVSEP program to get rid of ALL the crowd noise, except for a little bit at the starts of songs, the usual cheering at the ends of songs. Plus, occasionally some in the middle when there was a particularly big roar from the crowd. But that was pretty rare. The result is this audience boot almost turns into a soundboard quality boot, since it recorded what was on stage pretty well.

In 1978, the Kinks released their studio album "Misfits." So this concert differs from those 1977 concert recordings mentioned above mainly by including six songs from that album: "A Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy," "Hay Fever," "Live Life," "Misfits," "Permanent Waves," and "Trust Your Heart." Plus, there were still four songs from the album prior to that one, "Sleepwalker," making the set list pretty different from those of other eras.

This album is an hour and 41 minutes long.

01 You Really Got Me Intro [Instrumental] (Kinks)
02 Life on the Road (Kinks)
03 Sleepwalker (Kinks)
04 Mr. Big Man (Kinks)
05 talk (Kinks)
06 Waterloo Sunset (Kinks)
07 talk (Kinks)
08 Misfits (Kinks)
09 talk (Kinks)
10 Permanent Waves (Kinks)
11 Hay Fever (Kinks)
12 Lola (Kinks)
13 talk (Kinks)
14 Celluloid Heroes (Kinks)
15 A Well Respected Man (Kinks)
16 Death of a Clown (Kinks)
17 Sunny Afternoon (Kinks)
18 talk (Kinks)
19 Trust Your Heart (Kinks)
20 You Really Got Me (Kinks)
21 Slum Kids (Kinks)
22 talk (Kinks)
23 Alcohol (Kinks)
24 talk (Kinks)
25 A Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy (Kinks)
26 talk (Kinks)
27 All Day and All of the Night (Kinks)
28 talk (Kinks)
29 Live Life (Kinks)
30 talk (Kinks)
31 Juke Box Music (Kinks)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/jHmHfNhy

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/jGCABUZtHx1AGvP/file

The cover photo of lead singer Ray Davies is from a concert at the Uptown Theater in Chicago, Illinois, on June 11, 1978.

Three Thousand Albums!

I just want to mention that I think I've recently posted the 3,000th album here. I don't know the exact number, because I might have some duplicate albums, or missed a few, but if it's not there yet, it should be in a few days. 

I started this blog back in 2018. I have fun doing this. I'm constantly discovering new music and improving my music collection. So I plan to keep doing this as long as I can. There's certainly no shortage of music worth posting. I probably have a couple thousand more albums in my collection I could post right now if only I had the time to fine tune them, make the cover art, and write some text.

The popularity of the blog is slowly but steadily growing. Here's a chart of monthly visitors. That's over eight million views by now. I hope more people find this blog - but not too many, or it'll probably put me in hot water with the copyright police. 

Anyway, the last couple of years, I've posted about 500 albums a year. I aim to beat that this year, knock on wood.

Rod Stewart - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: In Concert, Wembley Stadium, London, Britain, 7-6-1986

Here's another BBC concert by Rod Stewart. This one is from 1986.

Personally, I think Stewart was at his creative best in the 1960s and 1970s. But it can't be denied that he kept going strong all through the 1980s, racking up hit after hit. He would eventually sell over 120 million records worldwide. So this is another unreleased BBC concert. In 1986, he released the studio album "Every Beat of My Heart." It wasn't a particularly big seller, but it contained a couple of hits, like just about all his 1980s albums.

I have one very, very big disappointment about this album though: it appears to be the full concert, but the encore wasn't included. Normally, that wouldn't have mattered much, except it so happens this encore was the one time all the members of Faces reunited on stage! The Faces were Stewart's main band in the first half of the 1970s, but they broke up for good in 1975. The encore to this show was really the only time all the members of the Faces reunited. This was mainly due to the increasing health problems of band member Ronnie Lane. Already by this time, his multiple sclerosis condition was so poor that he had to be in a wheelchair for the encore here. Although Lane sang, he could no longer play bass guitar, so Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stones played bass for him.

It is known the Faces performed four songs for the encore: "(I Know) I'm Losing You," "Twistin' the Night Away," "Stay with Me," and "We'll Meet Again." I'm guessing the BBC didn't broadcast this due to some legal issue. Perhaps one or more of the other Faces were signed to a different record company, and wouldn't give permission? Anyway, I can't even find an audience bootleg of the encore. If anyone has something like that, please let me know so I can add it in. 

The Faces, minus Lane, reunited again to play a few songs for the Brit Awards in 1993. After that, there were some partial reunions, including a tour in 2010 and 2011 that didn't include Stewart. Keyboardist Ian McLagan died in 2014, so occasional reunions since then have been that much more incomplete.

The lead vocals were rather low in the mix for this concert, so I fixed that for all the songs using the UVR5 audio editing program.

This album is an hour and 30 minutes long.

01 Hot Legs (Rod Stewart)
02 Tonight's the Night [Gonna Be Alright] (Rod Stewart)
03 talk (Rod Stewart)
04 Passion (Rod Stewart)
05 talk (Rod Stewart)
06 Some Guys Have All the Luck (Rod Stewart)
07 talk (Rod Stewart)
08 Tonight I'm Yours [Don't Hurt Me] (Rod Stewart)
09 talk (Rod Stewart)
10 I Don't Want to Talk about It (Rod Stewart)
11 talk (Rod Stewart)
12 You're in My Heart [The Final Acclaim] (Rod Stewart)
13 Young Turks (Rod Stewart)
14 talk (Rod Stewart)
15 Infatuation (Rod Stewart)
16 [Sittin' On] The Dock of the Bay (Rod Stewart)
17 talk (Rod Stewart)
18 Every Beat of My Heart (Rod Stewart)
19 Da Ya Think I'm Sexy (Rod Stewart)
20 talk (Rod Stewart)
21 You Wear It Well (Rod Stewart)
22 Maggie May (Rod Stewart)
23 talk (Rod Stewart)
24 Baby Jane (Rod Stewart)
25 Sailing (Rod Stewart)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/82V4nDcg

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/HRZie9HbZS2HA9K/file

The cover photo is of Stewart performing at Wembley Stadium in July 1986, but it's from July 15th instead of July 6th.

Covered: Roger Cook & Roger Greenaway, Volume 2: 1971-1998

Here's the second of two "Covered" albums featuring the songwriting talents of Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway.

This album starts in the early 1970s, with Cook and Greenaway continuing their successful songwriting partnership begun around 1965. They did very well in the early 1970s, as more pop groups made the charts with songs written by professional songwriters like them. One particular highlight was "Long Cool Woman (In a Black Dress)" by the Hollies, mainly written by Hollies vocalist Allan Clarke with Cook, although Greenaway got credited too. Although it didn't reach Number One in the U.S. or Britain, it ended up being one of the best selling songs of the year.

Their partnership was shook up in 1975. Apparently, Cook really got into country music, so much so that he decided to move from Britain to Nashville, Tennessee, the capital of the country music business. He has apparently lived there ever since. (Both Cook and Greenaway are still alive as I write this in 2025.) Cook's move really hurt their songwriting partnership, due to sheer communication difficulties, as well as Cook's new focus on country music. I believe they still wrote some songs together, but a lot less than before. Greenaway wrote with some other professional songwriters, like Geoff Stevens and Barry Mason. But he had less success after the 1970s, and switched mostly to business administration in music companies. 

Meanwhile, Greenaway also had less success than before after the 1970s, but he still had some hits through the end of the 1990s, mostly on the country charts. In 1997, he was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, the first person from Britain to do so.

As I mentioned in Volume 1, there are many more hit songs I could have included, but didn't. I wanted to keep this to the best of the best. But here's a list of all the hit songs Cook and/or Greenaway was involved in:

List of songs written by Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway - Wikipedia

This album is 46 minutes long.

01 Something Tells Me [Something's Gonna Happen Tonight] (Cilla Black)
02 Long Cool Woman [In a Black Dress] (Hollies)
03 Softly Whispering I Love You (English Congregation)
04 Like Sister and Brother (Drifters)
05 Blame It on the Pony Express (Peter Noone)
06 Kissin' in the Back Row of the Movies (Drifters)
07 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 [Blow Your Whistle] (Gary Toms Empire)
08 Jeans On (David Dundas)
09 You're More than a Number in My Little Red Book (Drifters)
10 I Believe in You (Don Williams)
11 Talking in Your Sleep (Crystal Gayle)
12 Love Is on a Roll (Don Williams)
13 One Night at a Time (George Strait)
14 I Just Want to Dance with You (George Strait)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/P6caTDW1

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/bj7Lp4sTmivzyoy/file

The cover photo shows Cook and Greenaway in 1972. That's Greenaway on the left and Cook on the right. This originally was a black and white photo. But I colorized it using the Palette program.

Covered: Roger Cook & Roger Greenaway, Volume 1: 1965-1971

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a "Songwriters' Circle" album that included Roger Cook performing some of the hit songs he wrote. I thought that would be a good occasion to post the two Covered series albums I've made of the many hits songs written by Cook and his frequent songwriting partner Roger Greenaway. Here's the first volume.

Both Cook and Greenaway were British. They first met while members of an obscure vocal group. They had a short but successful career of their own from 1965 to 1967 as "David and Jonathan," scoring hits with a cover of "Michelle" by the Beatles and their own "Lovers of the World Unite." In 1968, they decided to focus solely on songwriting. However, Cook was one of the two lead vocalists for the band Blue Mink from 1969 to 1974, and had some big hits with them. Greenaway also was briefly a member of the bands the Pipkins and Brotherhood of Man around that same time period.

However, despite such musical projects, their main attention and greatest success was with songwriting. They generally wrote all their songs together until 1975, when Cook moved to the U.S., and still wrote some together after that. But sometimes a third or fourth writer would get credited too. They had a big success right out the gate, when "You've Got Your Troubles" by the Fortunes reached the Top Ten in both the U.S. and Britain. After that, it was a rare year when they didn't have at least one big hit. I could have included many more hits, but their songs could get quite poppy and even cheesy at times, with the likes of Engelbert Humperdinck and Andy Williams having hits with their songs. So I tried to limit this collection to songs with a wider appeal, though often still very poppy.

Probably the most famous, even notorious, song here is "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing." The song was originally written by Cook and Greenaway as "True Love and Apple Pie." It was released in 1971 by someone called Susan Shirley and went nowhere. Then Bill Backer, an advertising executive, happened to run into Cook and Billy Davis at an airport in Ireland. Davis was another songwriter who had written many soul hits, but by this time was mainly writing jingles for advertisements. Backer came up with the line "I'd like to buy the world a Coke," and suggested the others write a song with that line for a TV commercial. So Cook, Greenaway, and Davis reworked "True Love and Apple Pie" into "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing."

The resulting Coca Cola commercial, featuring a crowd of young people singing the song on a hilltop, went on to become of the most popular and well known commercials of all time. The TV show "Mad Men" even kind of had a finale that promptly featured it, decades later. Coca Cola made variations of the commercial for decades. But in 1971, it proved so popular as a song that people kept calling radio stations, asking just to play the music of the commercial! So the songwriters quickly rewrote the song, adding three verses and removing the Coke references. Two groups had huge hits with it, the Hillside Singers, and the New Seekers. The New Seekers version in particular hit Number One in many countries, and went on to sell 12 million copies, making it one of the most popular songs of all time.    

This album is 45 minutes long.

01 You've Got Your Troubles (Fortunes)
02 Lovers of the World Unite (David & Jonathan)
03 I Was Kaiser Bill's Batman (Whistling Jack Smith)
04 Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart (Gene Pitney)
05 Melting Pot (Blue Mink)
06 Hallelujah (Deep Purple)
07 A Way of Life (Family Dogg)
08 Gasoline Alley Bred (Hollies)
09 My Baby Loves Lovin' (White Plains)
10 Home Lovin' Man (Andy Williams)
11 United We Stand (Brotherhood of Man)
12 Hey Willy (Hollies)
13 Here Comes That Rainy Day Feeling Again (Fortunes)
14 I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (New Seekers)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/pvag5fAy

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Ncm8Mo4MhDGinR8/file

The cover photo is from 1965. That's Greenaway on the left and Cook on the right. In the original image, Cook was holding a telephone receiver in one hand, on the side close to Greenaway. But I thought that didn't fit. So, with the magic of Photoshop, I erased the phone and the hand holding it.

Bob Marley & the Wailers - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: In Concert, Rainbow Theatre, London, Britain, 6-4-1977

Here's another Bob Marley and the Wailers concert, from 1977.

This is kind of a BBC concert. What I mean is, I don't see evidence that the BBC broadcast this back in 1977. But since the 2000s, the BBC has broadcast it repeatedly. Perhaps they got the rights to it much later, after deciding they didn't have enough live music from this key reggae artist. But it counts in my book, especially since I feel I haven't posted enough of Marley's music so far.

This concert has been officially released, but in rather obscure form. In 1977, Marley and the Wailers played the Rainbow Theatre in London four nights in a row. In 2020, all four shows were released, but only in streaming or download form. The fourth night is the one the BBC had been rebroadcasting for years already. 

At the time, the band had just released their classic "Exodus" album. It actually came out one day prior to this show! So naturally there were some songs from that.

This album is an hour and 23 minutes long.

01 Trenchtown Rock (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
02 Rebel Music [3 O'Clock Roadblock] (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
03 Burnin' and Lootin' (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
04 Them Belly Full [But We Hungry] (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
05 The Heathen (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
06 I Shot the Sheriff (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
07 War - No More Trouble (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
08 Crazy Baldhead - Running Away (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
09 No Woman, No Cry (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
10 Lively Up Yourself (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
11 Jammin' (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
12 Get Up, Stand Up (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
13 Exodus (Bob Marley & the Wailers)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/i2GXngmj

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/wZRMPep6BCDWicB/file

The cover photo is from a concert at the Rainbow in 1977, but it's not clear which concert, since he did at least four.

Neil Diamond - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: BBC Radio Theatre, London, Britain, 5-14-2008

Here's a Neil Diamond BBC concert from 2008.

Diamond has a curious history of BBC concerts. He did one in 1971, when he was already established as a songwriter for others but was still just starting to make his mark as a solo artist. Then, apparently, he didn't do another one until this one in 2008. Perhaps for most of those years he felt he was so famous that he didn't need the promotion of a free concert broadcast over the radio.

One might have thought Diamond was past his prime in 2008, but he had a late career resurgence. In 2005, he put out the studio album "12 Songs." It was produced by Rick Rubin, and it got good reviews, just like other careers revived by Rubin, most especially Johnny Cash. Then, in 2008, he released "Home Before Dark," which also was produced by Rubin. While neither were huge sellers, if you look at the crowd-sourced ratings at rateyourmusic.com, those two albums have the best ratings of any Diamond album since the early 1970s.

However, most of the songs performed here are classic hits from earlier in his career. The only three new songs were "Pretty Amazing Grace," "Home Before Dark," and "Man of God." Strangely, it seems he didn't have any banter between songs except for one time, before "Home Before Dark." And for that time, he couldn't stop talking, going for over five minutes. Note though that this album is probably edited down by the BBC to fit an hour-long time slot, so we don't know what songs and/or banter might be missing. 

This album is 55 minutes long.

01 Beautiful Noise (Neil Diamond)
02 Hello Again (Neil Diamond)
03 Love on the Rocks (Neil Diamond)
04 Thank God for the Night Time (Neil Diamond)
05 Pretty Amazing Grace (Neil Diamond)
06 Home Before Dark (Neil Diamond)
07 Forever in Blue Jeans (Neil Diamond)
08 talk (Neil Diamond)
09 Man of God (Neil Diamond)
10 Cracklin' Rosie (Neil Diamond)
11 Sweet Caroline (Neil Diamond)
12 I'm a Believer (Neil Diamond)
13 I Am... I Said (Neil Diamond)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/FZe3c5UB

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/ghMHzKVt7HGUjVq/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

Billy Joel - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: In Concert, Festhalle, Frankfurt, Germany, 6-18-1994

Every now and then, I stumble across another Billy Joel BBC concert, and here we go again. I'd missed this one because it isn't usually labeled as being a BBC concert, just a soundboard. But the BBC's own website says it broadcast this. I can't say I ever heard of a BBC concert from Frankfurt, Germany, but this location was chosen because it was the last concert of the tour.

In late 1993, Joel released the studio album "River of Dreams." Surprisingly, as I write this in 2025, he hasn't released another studio album of conventional songs ever since. (He did later put out an album of classical music.) So this is a good time for a BBC concert, since it deals with pretty much all of his original material.

This album remains unreleased. There were no problems needing fixing.

By the way, I found out that Joel's concert in Leningrad, Russia in 1987 was also broadcast by the BBC. However, I decided not to post that for two reasons. One, it was officially released at the time as "КОНЦЕРТ." And two, Joel didn't like it and didn't want it released, because his voice got hoarse from too many shows and interviews in Russia in a short time period. Apparently, he jokingly called it "Kaput." His record company insisted on releasing it due to the historical nature of a major Western artist performing in Russia during the Cold War. (The Berlin Wall would come down two years later, in 1989.)

This album is two hours and two minutes long.

01 No Man's Land (Billy Joel)
02 Pressure (Billy Joel)
03 talk (Billy Joel)
04 The Ballad of Billy the Kid (Billy Joel)
05 talk (Billy Joel)
06 Leningrad (Billy Joel)
07 Prelude - Angry Old Man (Billy Joel)
08 Allentown (Billy Joel)
09 talk (Billy Joel)
10 Scenes from an Italian Restaurant (Billy Joel)
11 Honesty (Billy Joel)
12 My Life (Billy Joel)
13 talk (Billy Joel)
14 I Go to Extremes (Billy Joel)
15 talk (Billy Joel)
16 An Innocent Man (Billy Joel)
17 talk (Billy Joel)
18 Shades of Grey (Billy Joel)
19 The River of Dreams (Billy Joel)
20 Goodnight Saigon (Billy Joel)
21 We Didn't Start the Fire (Billy Joel)
22 talk (Billy Joel)
23 A Hard Day's Night (Billy Joel)
24 It's Still Rock and Roll to Me (Billy Joel)
25 You May Be Right (Billy Joel)
26 Only the Good Die Young (Billy Joel)
27 Big Shot (Billy Joel)
28 Piano Man (Billy Joel)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/wUBmv5nm

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/dopWZYGqNp112C1/file

The cover photo is from a concert in Gent, Belgium, on May 18, 1994.

John Lee Hooker - BBC In Concert, John Lee Hooker and Friends, The Sweetwater, Mill Valley, CA, 1-6-1992

Here is a rather unusual concert as far as concerts in the long-running "BBC In Concert" series go. This primarily stars blues legend John Lee Hooker, but he's joined by different special guests on almost every song: John Hammond, Bonnie Raitt, Robert Cray, and Charlie Musselwhite. The sound quality is excellent despite this being unreleased. The only bummer is that it's rather short, less than an hour long.

A lot of really interesting musical moments happened at the tiny Sweetwater club in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Just two months ago (writing this in February 2025), I posted a 1989 concert that took place there and featured Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, and many others. For years, this club was a place where musicians hung out and performed with each other with barely anyone noticing, since the club could fit 100 people at best. 

This is the first and only example I could find of the BBC recording anything at this venue. I'm guessing what happened was that John Lee Hooker was suddenly hip again in the early 1990s after the success of his 1989 album "The Healer." He was 73 years old when it came out. It was the best selling album of his career, largely due to the appearance of many big name guest stars like Carlos Santana, Los Lobos, and Bonnie Raitt. In 1991, he released a similar album with more guest stars, "Mr. Lucky." So the BBC wanted a show from him, but he very rarely made it over to Europe. So they arranged to broadcast a concert from the U.S. And by having it at the Sweetwater, they were able to get some more guest stars to show up, since that kind of thing happened there a lot anyway. (For instance, Carlos Santana played many songs with Hooker at a Sweetwater concert in 1989.)

Many of these guest-filled Sweetwater shows from that era have somehow become soundboard quality bootlegs. But this one has not, as far as I know. So we're damn lucky that the BBC was there to record it. It's a shame that we only get six songs, but that's better than nothing. And what we do have sound great. (Given that Albert Collins was included in a group photo from this concert, I'll bet he was involved on stage somehow.)

John Hammond, Ry Cooder, and Charlie Musselwhite only helped out either on guitar or harmonica. But Bonnie Raitt dueted with Hooker on "I'm in the Mood" as well as playing slide guitar on that one and one other, and Robert Cray dueted with him on "Mr. Lucky" as well as playing lead guitar on that one too.

This album is 43 minutes long.

01 Father Was a Jockey (John Lee Hooker with John Hammond)
02 talk (John Lee Hooker)
03 Crawling King Snake (John Lee Hooker with Ry Cooder)
04 talk (John Lee Hooker)
05 I'm in the Mood (John Lee Hooker & Bonnie Raitt)
06 talk (John Lee Hooker)
07 I Want to Hug You (John Lee Hooker)
08 talk (John Lee Hooker)
09 Mr. Lucky (John Lee Hooker & Robert Cray)
10 talk (John Lee Hooker)
11 Boogie Chillun (John Lee Hooker with Charlie Musselwhite & Bonnie Raitt)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/heJTdFet

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/1eZ4xI4Sd9qzl7A/file

The cover photo must have been taken either right before or after this concert, because it's from the same date and location. However, I cropped it, because off to the left it also show Johnnie Johnson and Roy Rogers in the top row and Albert Collins in the bottom row. I especially didn't want to mislead people into thinking this had Albert Collins on it by having his picture on the cover.

Gladys Knight & the Pips - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: In Concert, BBC Studios, London, Britain, 4-14-1981

I'm writing this in February 2025. I was only last month when I discovered a Gladys Knight and the Pips BBC concert, which took place in 1983. I thought that was the only one. But here I am, already renumbering that one to "Volume 2" to make room for this one, which I just discovered. Sorry about all the renumbering, folks! I assume that'll eventually settle down as I find most everything that's available.

This is from a BBC TV show, and is unreleased. It aired in two parts of about half an hour each. Luckily, there was one only song played in both shows: "Bourgie, Bourgie." The version for the first show was cut off right in the middle of the song, probably because the time slot given for the show ran out. So I just didn't use that version, since the version in the second show is complete. I also cut out a little bit of dialogue at the start of the second show that mentioned it was the beginning of the show. I thought it would be confusing to hear that halfway through the album.

In 1981, Gladys Knight and the Pips released the studio album "Touch." It was only a moderate hit, but it contain three minor hit singles: "Bourgie, Bourgie," "Landlord," and "Taste of Bitter Love." All three were performed here. Most of the other songs were classics from other albums or cover versions, like a slowed down version of the smash disco hit "I Will Survive."

This album is an hour and two minutes long.

01 Come Back and Finish What You Started (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
02 I Feel a Song [In My Heart] (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
03 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
04 Baby Don't Change Your Mind (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
05 She Believes in Me (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
06 I Heard It through the Grapevine (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
07 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
08 Try to Remember - The Way We Were (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
09 Midnight Train to Georgia (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
10 I've Got to Use My Imagination [Edit] (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
11 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
12 Part Time Love (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
13 Best Thing that Ever Happened to Me (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
14 Landlord (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
15 Bourgie, Bourgie (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
16 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
17 Help Me Make It through the Night (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
18 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
19 Free Again - I Will Survive (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
20 Taste of Bitter Love (Gladys Knight & the Pips)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/YuTfniZ2

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/S8q38vwAas69bQa/file

The cover photo is from an appearance on the US TV show "American Bandstand" on August 15, 1981 in Los Angeles. I went with that instead of a screenshot from this exact concert due to an image quality difference.

John Denver - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: Sight and Sound, Golders Green Hippodrome, London, Britain, 1-18-1973

Here's another BBC clean-up, with yet more renumbering. I had already posted two BBC concerts by John Denver. Then I discovered this one, from 1973. So those two are getting renamed to make room for this.

Actually, I may have come across this quite a while ago, but I dismissed it due to sound quality issues. But my audio editing skills have improved since then (mainly because the technology keeps getting better), so I decided to give this another shot. It still doesn't sound great, but I think it's a worthy listen.

As I've mentioned many times, the reason I keep focusing on posting BBC material is largely because of the typical high sound quality. I'm guessing this is a partial exception because the name "Sight and Sound" indicates this was an early episode of a BBC TV series, as opposed to a radio show. It's probable someone recorded this off their TV, which inevitably results in a loss of sound quality. However, I did some things to improve it. The most notable effect, I think, was from bringing up the volume of the lead vocals in relation to the instruments, using UVR5.

Note that, also in 1973, Denver hosted a six part TV series. I haven't gotten around to trying to find all the episodes of that, and doing something with it. If anyone has that and wants to send it to me, that would be a big help.

Oh, by the way, here are the links to the two renamed BBC concerts of his that come after this one:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2022/07/john-denver-bbc-concert-john-denver-in.html

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2021/03/john-denver-his-guitar-and-his-music.html

This unreleased album is 46 minutes long.

01 Starwood in Aspen (John Denver)
02 talk (John Denver)
03 Carolina in My Mind (John Denver)
04 Leaving on a Jet Plane (John Denver)
05 talk (John Denver)
06 The Eagle and the Hawk (John Denver)
07 Rocky Mountain High (John Denver)
08 Catch Another Butterfly (John Denver)
09 The Box (John Denver)
10 Jimmy Newman (John Denver)
11 talk (John Denver)
12 Goodbye Again (John Denver)
13 It's a Sin to Tell a Lie (John Denver)
14 talk (John Denver)
15 Poems, Prayers and Promises (John Denver)
16 Take Me Home, Country Roads (John Denver)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/EaNTFxW1

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/pjZ2zvbV5An6ykm/file

The cover photo is from an episode of the 1973 John Denver BBC TV show series I mentioned above.

Paul Weller - BBC Sessions, Volume 12: 2005-2008

Here's yet another in a long line of albums of Paul Weller performing for the BBC. This time, it consists of studio sessions.

As I've mentioned previously, Weller released a box set of his BBC recordings from the start of his solo career in 1990 until 2008, but it certainly didn't include everything he performed for the BBC. This album is a case in point. In fact, two songs here, "All on a Misty Morning" and "111," are unreleased and come from the exact same BBC studio session as the four tracks before it (tracks 8 to 11), which did make the box set. "Love," "I Don't Need No Doctor," "Black River," and "Invisible" are other unreleased songs from BBC sessions. Everything else here is from the box set. Check the mp3 tags for all the exact details.

A definite highlight here are two songs where Weller dueted with Amy Winehouse, "Don't Go to Strangers" and "I Heard It through the Grapevine." These went unreleased for a long time, and were another thing that didn't make it onto the Weller BBC box set, but they finally got released on a Winehouse BBC album.

This album is 52 minutes long.

01 Come On-Let's Go (Paul Weller)
02 Love (Paul Weller)
03 Roll Along Summer (Paul Weller)
04 I Wanna Make It Alright [Edit] (Paul Weller)
05 I Don't Need No Doctor (Paul Weller)
06 Don't Go to Strangers (Amy Winehouse & Paul Weller)
07 I Heard It through the Grapevine (Amy Winehouse & Paul Weller)
08 All I Wanna Do [Is Be with You] (Paul Weller)
09 Cold Moments (Paul Weller)
10 Push It Along (Paul Weller)
11 Pretty Flamingo (Paul Weller)
12 All on a Misty Morning (Paul Weller)
13 111 [Instrumental] (Paul Weller)
14 Black River (Paul Weller & Graham Coxon)
15 Invisible [Orchestral Version] (Paul Weller)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Dv87M7x3

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/FzteuxGnu7sWxtg/file

The cover photo was taken at the Mojo Honours List Awards Ceremony, in London, on June 16, 2005. I used Photoshop to remove some writing on the wall behind him.

Ray Davies - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: Electric Proms, The Roundhouse, London, Britain, 10-28-2007

Here's a great full-length Ray Davies BBC concert from 2007. I hope I don't need to remind anyone that Davies is the main singer and songwriter for the Kinks. (And, by the way, his last name is pronounced like "Davis.")

I'm reorganizing what I have for Davies' solo career and the BBC. I had previously posted two BBC concerts he did, but I didn't mention that in the album titles. So those are getting renamed at the same time I'm posting this. Here are the links to those, with new cover art, mp3 tags, and such:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2019/09/ray-davies-sold-on-song-bbc-studios.html

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2020/12/ray-davies-glastonbury-festival-worthy.html

I also just found a fourth one, from 2017, and I plan on posting that soon.

Getting to this concert, Davies put out a solo studio album earlier in the month, "Working Man's Cafe." He'd just put out another one the year before ("Other People's Lives"), so he was on a creative hot streak after not releasing any solo albums for ages. However, only five of the songs here were from those new albums. 

Faced with this high-profile concert, and its BBC broadcast, he mostly stuck to performing Kinks classics. However, he mixed things up a bit by having Johnny Borrell share the singing of "Sunny Afternoon." Borrell is the lead singer of Razorlight, and they had a really big hit album in Britain in 2006, including a Number One song, "America." He also had the Crouch End Festival Chorus help out for four songs late in the set, giving those songs a different flavor than usual. He seemed to like that a lot, because he went on to do more with chorus groups over the next couple of years, including putting out a studio album in that style ("The Kinks Choral Collection").

This concert is an hour and 45 minutes long.

01 I'm Not like Everybody Else (Ray Davies)
02 Where Have All the Good Times Gone (Ray Davies)
03 talk (Ray Davies)
04 Till the End of the Day (Ray Davies)
05 talk (Ray Davies)
06 A Well Respected Man (Ray Davies)
07 talk (Ray Davies)
08 The Tourist (Ray Davies)
09 talk (Ray Davies)
10 Sunny Afternoon (Ray Davies & Johnny Borrell)
11 talk (Ray Davies)
12 Working Man's Cafe (Ray Davies)
13 talk (Ray Davies)
14 Morphine Song (Ray Davies)
15 talk (Ray Davies)
16 One More Time (Ray Davies)
17 talk (Ray Davies)
18 Come Dancing (Ray Davies)
19 talk (Ray Davies)
20 20th Century Man (Ray Davies)
21 talk (Ray Davies)
22 Celluloid Heroes (Ray Davies)
23 talk (Ray Davies)
24 Tired of Waiting for You (Ray Davies)
25 talk (Ray Davies)
26 All Day and All of the Night (Ray Davies)
27 talk (Ray Davies)
28 Dedicated Follower of Fashion (Ray Davies with the Crouch End Festival Chorus)
29 talk (Ray Davies)
30 Days (Ray Davies with the Crouch End Festival Chorus)
31 talk (Ray Davies)
32 Waterloo Sunset (Ray Davies with the Crouch End Festival Chorus)
33 talk (Ray Davies)
34 Shangri-La (Ray Davies with the Crouch End Festival Chorus)
35 talk (Ray Davies)
36 Lola (Ray Davies)
37 talk (Ray Davies)
38 Imaginary Man (Ray Davies)
39 You Really Got Me [Blues Version] (Ray Davies)
40 You Really Got Me (Ray Davies)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ENmjEfSJ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/Vbe7c1Wtf4EBgb9/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

Van Morrison - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: Glastonbury Festival, Worthy Farm, Pilton, Britain, 6-21-1987

Here's another Van Morrison BBC album. This time, it's a full concert at the annual Glastonbury Festival.

I believe Morrison has performed at Glastonbury more than any other major music act. He's performed there eleven times so far: in 1982, 1987, 1989, 1992, 1993, 1997, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2016, and 2021! But weirdly, out of all of those times, it seems the only time his performance was broadcast on the BBC was this 1987 concert. That's especially strange because at least since 1997, the BBC has been broadcasting virtually the entire festival. He must have had some special exception against broadcasting his sets. I couldn't even find worthy audience bootlegs from his other Glastonbury concerts.

But at least we have this one. Serious Van Morrison fans have put this in the top ten of all of his concert recordings, according to a poll I saw. Personally, I'm not a big fan of his 1980s music, where he moved to more of a mellow New Age style with occasionally overt Christian themes. But at least a concert like this is more lively, mixing his best 80s songs with classics from earlier decades.

The bootleg recording of this concert is excellent. There was only one minor problem in that the applause after a few of the songs obviously got cut off early. So I patched in more applause in those cases, and made sure the transition to the next song sounded good, without any drastic drops in volume.

This album is an hour and 32 minutes long.

01 Moondance [Instrumental] (Van Morrison)
02 Celtic Swing [Instrumental] (Van Morrison)
03 Northern Muse [Solid Ground] (Van Morrison)
04 Vanlose Stairway (Van Morrison)
05 It's All in the Game (Van Morrison)
06 Help Me (Van Morrison)
07 Foreign Window (Van Morrison)
08 Dweller on the Threshold (Van Morrison)
09 Cleaning Windows (Van Morrison)
10 A Sense of Wonder (Van Morrison)
11 And the Healing Has Begun (Van Morrison)
12 Celtic Ray (Van Morrison)
13 One Irish Rover (Van Morrison)
14 In the Garden (Van Morrison)
15 Summertime in England (Van Morrison)
16 Full Force Gale (Van Morrison)
17 Bright Side of the Road (Van Morrison)
18 Rave On, John Donne - Did Ye Get Healed (Van Morrison)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/BRTGZbDC

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/sMFHuIGRbl9CvaH/file

The cover photo comes from a concert at the Auditorium Theater in Chicago, Illinois, on July 16, 1986.

Neil Young - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: In Concert, Phoenix Festival, Long Marston Airfield, Stratford-upon-Avon, Britain, 7-19-199

For a long time, I thought the only BBC concert Neil Young ever performed was a well-known one he did for BBC TV back in 1971. But I recently found this one and a later one. This was performed with his backing band Crazy Horse, so it's very much in rocking mode, except for a couple of acoustic songs, "Heart of Gold" and "Music Arcade."

The concert took place just a couple of weeks after the release of his album "Broken Arrow," the eighth studio album he'd recorded with Crazy Horse. The songs "Big Time" and "Music Arcade" are from that.

Unfortunately, this album is edited down from a concert that was over two hours long. I found an audience bootleg of the full show. I considered adding some songs from it, but I decided the drop in sound quality wasn't worth it. However, I did use it for the little bit of banter before "Cinnamon Girl." According to what I heard on that bootleg, that was pretty much the only banter from the whole concert.

I had some trouble putting this together. While this played on the BBC, apparently different songs were played on different shows. So I had to piece it together from two sources, and then reorder the songs to match the full set list. For most of the songs, there was next to no audience cheering at the ends of songs, because the music was quickly cut off in favor of DJ talking. In fact, "Like a Hurricane" has "[Edit]" in the title because a BBC DJ spoke briefly about a minute or two into the song! (To my surprise, it was none other than famed DJ John Peel, who normally new better than to do that.) So, really all the songs were significantly edited in order for me to add in a decent amount of cheering at the ends. I took what little cheering I could find and repeatedly patched that in.

On the plus side, the sound quality is excellent, despite this remaining officially unreleased.

By the way, that 1971 BBC concert mentioned above has been renamed to "BBC Sessions, Volume 1." If you want the updated version with new cover art and mp3 tags, here's the link:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2022/06/neil-young-bbc-in-concert-london.html

This album is 57 minutes long.

01 Hey Hey, My My [Into the Black] (Neil Young)
02 Big Time (Neil Young)
03 Heart of Gold (Neil Young)
04 talk (Neil Young)
05 Cinnamon Girl (Neil Young)
06 Music Arcade (Neil Young)
07 Like a Hurricane [Edit] (Neil Young)
08 talk (Neil Young)
09 Sedan Delivery (Neil Young)
10 Rockin' in the Free World (Neil Young)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/D7U2wVrQ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/iELuThWh7hO2KG4/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert.