The Guess Who - Let's Go, Volume 3: 1968-1970

About a month ago, I posted a couple of albums of the Guess Who performing on the Canadian TV show "Let's Go." Since the band isn't British, they didn't do any BBC sessions in the late 1960s, but this effectively serves the same function, allowing the band to play lots of covers and originals in a studio setting without an audience. I have a lot of things to post at this blog, and I forgot about posting the third and final volume. But a commenter today made a comment about a Guess Who album, and that reminded me. So here we go.

For the first two volumes in this series, the vast majority of the performances actually came from the "Let's Go" TV show. For this one, that's only true for the first four songs. At some point, I figure around early 1969, the band got so popular that they outgrew their role as the house band for that weekly show. However, I found some other things that fill out the rest of the band's era when Randy Bachman (later of Bachman-Turner Overdrive fame) was the lead guitarist. He left in mid-1970, just after the band hit it really big with their "American Woman" single and album.

Songs five through eight, plus twelve, come from other TV show appearances. That means the sound quality is similarly high, even though they're all officially unreleased. 

Unfortunately, I couldn't find many TV show performances where the band wasn't forced to lip-sync. There were some really key songs left out. So I resorted to finding versions of those songs in different ways. Songs nine through eleven are bonus tracks to the "American Woman" album. They're alternate versions, so they're much like versions performed on TV shows without an audience.

Finally, I turned to bootleg concert recordings. Unfortunately, there's almost nothing from the Randy Bachman era that has really excellent sound quality. It turns out there's one great soundboard from that time, but it's only 14 minutes long! So that's what makes up the last three songs.

I would be happy to keep this series going into 1971 and beyond, but there just isn't the proper material for it. Even though the band was very popular for a few years, I could only find one or two brief TV show appearances. However, there are some quality bootlegs of entire shows, so I think that's a better way to go for different versions of songs in those years.

This album is 56 minutes long.

UPDATE: On November 9, 2021, I updated the mp3 download file. I added "These Eyes." I put a different version of that song on Volume 2 in this series. But this version is worthy of inclusion because it uses an unusual arrangement that prominently features the Neil Harris Singers on backing vocals.

01 Minstrel Boy (Guess Who)
02 Ramblin' Gamblin' Man (Guess Who)
03 No Time (Guess Who)
04 Touch Me (Guess Who)
05 Shakin' All Over (Guess Who)
06 All My Loving (Guess Who)
07 With a Little Help from My Friends (Guess Who)
08 These Eyes (Guess Who with the Neil Harris Singers)
09 Laughing (Guess Who)
10 Talisman [Alternate Version] (Guess Who)
11 No Sugar Tonight - New Mother Nature [Alternate Version] (Guess Who)
12 American Woman [Alternate Version] (Guess Who)
13 Share the Land (Guess Who)
14 Hand Me Down World (Guess Who)
15 American Woman Blues (Guess Who)
16 American Woman (Guess Who)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15119171/TGuessW_1968-1970_LtsGoVolume3_atse.zip.html

The cover art is a screenshot I took of the band playing the song "Laughing" on a TV show in 1969.