The Rolling Stones - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: Live 1964 Sessions

This is the third and last of my albums showcasing the Rolling Stones playing for the BBC. The other two albums contain all the known recordings of the band playing unique versions of their songs in the BBC studios. Those are studio versions that sound as good as the songs on their studio albums. This album contains all the performances the band did for the BBC in front of live audiences. I've given this album a different title than the other two to highlight the fact this was really live, in front of cheering fans.

As I mentioned in a previous post, live recordings of the Stones in the 1960s are generally bad, up until the end of the decade. (The 1969 live album "Get Yet Ya Ya's Out" is great.) Even the 1966 official live album "Got Live If You Want It" sounds bad, and suffers from all sort of problems, including songs that actually were done in the studio and then slathered with canned audience screaming. A couple live bootlegs from the era sound decent, but none of them have outstanding sound quality.

However, by grouping all the live BBC performances together, one essentially has a "lost" live album. The songs here actually come from four different recording sessions. By chance, all the sessions date to 1964. Each session sounds slightly different. The first four songs were recorded in front of a small and polite audience, as one can tell by the smattering of applause at the end of each song. This is very unusual for the band at that time, when they were faced by screaming fans wherever they went. These four songs sound almost as good as studio recordings.

The rest of the album is different from that sessions. All the other songs were played in front of larger and more enthusiastic audiences. However, their cheering is much less intrusive than any other live recordings of the band from this time. Check out any random bootleg or TV appearance of the Stones from the 1960s, and you'll typically hear feverish screaming through the entire song, just as was the case with the Beatles then. Some of these sessions are a bit rougher than others, but all of them sound way better than any other live recordings of the band from around 1964.

In terms of song selection, I got lucky in that only one song is duplicated: Bo Diddley's "Mona (I Need You Baby)." Also luckily, it was played in the first session and the last one. I dislike having more than one version of the same song on an album, but in this case we have nearly an entire album of songs in between, so I figure it's okay.

For some of these sessions, there was a BBC DJ talking between songs, apparently live, in real time. I've cut all of that out, because I want to hear the Rolling Stones, not some random DJ. But I've kept the couple of cases where band members talked between songs.

I do know of one non-BBC instance of the band playing live in the mid-1960s that's sounds decent (Honolulu, in 1966). I plan on posting that at another time. If you know of other cases with good sound quality, please let me know.

UPDATE: On June 12, 2022, I updated the mp3 download file. I didn't actually add or remove any songs, but I made some important changes. First off, I changed the name of the album, because this was the second of a series of BBC albums for the band, and I hadn't put it in that series. That meant changing the cover art and mp3 tags. But I also upgraded the sound quality for the first four songs, using a source that actually is said to be better than the official album versions of them.

01 [Get Your Kicks On] Route 66 (Rolling Stones)
02 Mona [I Need You Baby] (Rolling Stones)
03 Cops and Robbers (Rolling Stones)
04 You Better Move On (Rolling Stones)
05 Roll Over Beethoven (Rolling Stones)
06 Beautiful Delilah (Rolling Stones)
07 Hi-Heeled Sneakers (Rolling Stones)
08 Little by Little (Rolling Stones)
09 I Just Want to Make Love to You (Rolling Stones)
10 I'm Moving On (Rolling Stones)
11 Not Fade Away (Rolling Stones)
12 It's All Over Now (Rolling Stones)
13 talk (Rolling Stones)
14 If You Need Me (Rolling Stones)
15 Confessin' the Blues (Rolling Stones)
16 talk (Rolling Stones)
17 Carol (Rolling Stones)
18 Mona [I Need You Baby] (Rolling Stones)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16701020/TROLLNGSTNES1964_BBSessonsVolum2Live_atse.zip.html

For the album cover art, I found a photo of the band playing at something called the "Mod Ball" in London in 1964. I like how the band is closely surrounded on all sides by fans. In case you can't see, there are more stands of fans off in the distance.