Traffic - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: 1968

Here's the second album of Traffic's BBC performances. Read my write-up for the 1967 album to understand what this is all about. In short, if you like Traffic at all, you need to get this. Even if you have it already, the sound quality is better than ever before.

As luck would have it, there are enough songs to make one album of all the 1967 performances and another of all the 1968 ones, with both albums being in the 30- to 40-minute-long range. Normally, I dislike repeating the same song twice on one album. Traffic did play one song twice at the BBC. But I'm lucky again because for the song "Heaven Is in Your Mind," one of the performances was in 1967 and the other was in 1968.

For the 1967 album, it seems I had the problem of BBC DJs talking over the starts of nearly every song. I'm really getting to hate DJ Brian Matthew, who annoys the heck out of me by talking deep into songs, often until the very second the vocals begin (as well as sounding as smarmy as humanly possible!). But, using the audio editing program X-Minus, I managed to wipe the DJ vocals while keeping the underlying music. Those are the ones with "[Edit]" in their names.

In November 2021, I redid all the songs here, using versions posted by blogger Prof Stoned, which sometimes had superior sound quality, and then making the above-mentioned edits from those. I also communicated with Prof Stoned, who set me straight on a few things. I thought I had some BBC songs that he'd missed, but he convinced me they were single versions and the like mislabeled on some bootlegs as BBC versions. So I've removed versions of "Feelin' Alright," "Dear Mr. Fantasy," and one or two more, that I'd had on an earlier version. This all authentic BBC stuff.

This album is 37 minutes long.

01 No Face, No Name, No Number [Edit] (Traffic)
02 [Roamin' thro' the Gloamin' With] 40,000 Headmen [Edit] (Traffic)
03 Dear Mr. Fantasy [Edit] (Traffic)
04 Blind Man (Traffic)
05 You Can All Join In [Edit] (Traffic)
06 Feelin' Alright [Edit] (Traffic)
07 Who Knows What Tomorrow May Bring (Traffic)
08 Pearly Queen [Edit] (Traffic)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15259247/Trffc_1968a_BBSssionsVolum2_atse.zip.html

Just as with the 1967 album, I couldn't find good color photos of the band in concert, so I've gone with another band publicity photo for the cover art. This one is from 1968.