I've mentioned multiple times that I have a musical friend who has been sending me some music from the BBC radio show "Top of the Pops" that hasn't been easily available to the general public. This is another case of that. Every single song here is from that radio show. Volume 1 in this series was also entirely made up of songs from that show. But while the contents of that one made it into an obscure "grey market" bootleg, most of this I don't think has even been available by bootleg until now.
Generally speaking, the "Top of the Pops" show switched from mostly unique, live performances to just playing the record versions around 1972 or 1973. But sometimes there were still live performances after that. I double checked, and that was the case with a few of Siffre's songs, as tracks 9 and 10 are from 1975, and track 11 is from 1976.
Some of the songs here were not released by Siffre in any form - nice covers of the classic songs "Let It Be," "Simple Man," and "Fire and Rain."
In my opinion, Siffre is really underrated. I have several theories for this. One, he was openly gay back in the 1970s, as well as being Black and politically outspoken, and I'm sure that created difficulties for him. Two, it seems he didn't tour much, especially after the early 1970s. Three, his music career basically came to a stop for a long time, because he didn't release any albums between 1975 and 1988. He did have a surprise late hit in 1987 with "(Something Inside) So Strong," but he went back into a low profile not much after that. But at least we still have musical recordings like this.
His last "Top of the Pops" performance was from 1976. However, I still have one more volume to post, consisting of a 1975 BBC concert.
This album is 43 minutes long.
01 Let It Be (Labi Siffre)
02 Simple Man (Labi Siffre)
03 Watch Me (Labi Siffre)
04 Gimme Some More (Labi Siffre)
05 Love, Oh Love, Oh Love (Labi Siffre)
06 My Song (Labi Siffre)
07 If You Have Your Faith (Labi Siffre)
08 Entertainment Value (Labi Siffre)
09 Another You (Labi Siffre)
10 Fire and Rain (Labi Siffre)
11 Starride to Nowhere (Labi Siffre)
https://pixeldrain.com/u/RHMzAUWh
alternate:
https://bestfile.io/en/VorpVbXBxatTYvH/file
I don't know anything about the cover photo. But it looks to be from the early 1970s.
Top Of The Pops was a weekly chart rundown show on TV, part of the fabric of life as a kid in Britain during the 70s, 80s and into the 90's. It was huge, and hugely important for the music business. Getting on TOTP could make or break a career. Artists rarely, if ever, got to perform more than one song at a time and the performances were almost always mimed to the actual record. I'd be astounded if an artist got to play non hits so many times across that period, especially playing non hits and even songs he didn't ever release.
ReplyDeleteI'd guess these radio sessions are really from a BBC radio show called Pick Of The Pops.
Trust me, there was a BBC radio show called "Top of the Pops" that was totally unrelated to the BBC TV show of the same name. You can find lots of lists of details about the show at the Discogs website, for instance here:
Deletehttps://www.discogs.com/label/388937-Top-Of-The-Pops
Just because you're not familiar with it doesn't mean it wasn't a thing.
By the way, if you're not familiar with this radio show, that's probably because it largely repackaged other radio shows like Saturday Club for overseas markets, so it wasn't really meant for British audiences, as I understand it.
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