Various Artists - Children of the Americas Radiothon, United Nations Building, New York City, and Palace Theatre, Los Angeles, CA, 11-12-1988

Here's another big benefit concert with a bunch of different famous musical acts. But this one was unusual in a couple of ways. For one, it was held in two locations simultaneously and broadcast live over the radio. And for the other, it's quite an odd selection of acts. I like all of them, but it seems pretty random to me to have, say, Pat Benatar followed by Al Stewart, then followed by Midnight Oil, and so on, which is what happened here. But hey, it's all good music, with excellent sound quality.

This benefit concert certainly had a good cause, which was to fund non-profits helping poor children in Latin America. This was the second annual concert for this cause. I don't know anything about the first concert or subsequent ones. But we know about this one because it was broadcast live on the radio, and a bootleg recording of it survives.

I made many, many edits to make this listenable. The concert took the form of a radiothon, which is just like a telethon, except for the radio instead of TV. And if you're familiar with telethons at all, you know they're notorious for constantly asking for donations. That's what happened here. Between acts, and even during acts, there were emcees giving pleas to donate, with the donation phone number in particular repeated endlessly. Even the musical artists would sometimes mention the phone number between songs. I got rid of all that because it's all moot now, with the number obviously no longer working. I stripped this down to just the music and the banter relevant to the music.

I also did some edits to make this flow better. Oftentimes, as soon as a song wound end, the emcee's voice would come on with more pleas for donations. So I would patch in some more applause to give the songs a decent sounding ending. I didn't bother marking those edits with "[Edit]" in the song titles, 'cos I did it so much.

Some of the acts performed at the Palace Theatre in Los Angeles. Those were Jackson Browne, Midnight Oil, and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (CSNY), plus earlier appearances by Graham Nash and David Crosby. All the other acts performed at the United Nations Building in New York City. Note that the crowd in Los Angeles sounds much larger than the one in New York City. I'm guessing only a few dozen were allowed into the United Nations Building for this, based on the clapping one can hear.  

The star attraction here was CSNY. They put out a new album in 1988, "American Dream," but Neil Young decided not to take part in a tour to support it. However, he did take part in a very limited number of concerts with CSN around this time. There was the Bridge Benefit in 1988 (which I have also posted here), the Bridge Benefit in 1989, and this. (There also were a couple more in 1987 and 1990 and 1991, if you want to go that far.)

It's quite possible that there was more to these two concerts that what was heard here. For instance, there was no introduction to the CSNY set, and I doubt they started with the new song "This Old House." It also seems odd that Midnight Oil would have been recruited but only played less than ten minutes of music. I'm guessing this is just the stuff that made it to the radio broadcast, and while music was broadcast from one location, we were probably missing the music taking place at the other location. If anyone has any more of it, please let me know.  

This album is two hours and 25 minutes long.

01 Teach Your Children (Graham Nash)
02 talk (Emcee)
03 I Love L.A. (Randy Newman)
04 Dixie Flyer (Randy Newman)
05 Sail Away (Randy Newman)
06 talk (Randy Newman)
07 Political Science (Randy Newman)
08 Short People (Randy Newman)
09 talk (Randy Newman)
10 I Want You to Hurt like I Do (Randy Newman)
11 talk (David Crosby)
12 Crow on the Cradle (Jackson Browne & Graham Nash)
13 talk (David Crosby)
14 talk (Jackson Browne)
15 Lives in the Balance (Jackson Browne with David Crosby & Graham Nash)
16 talk (Jackson Browne)
17 My Personal Revenge (Jackson Browne with Sangre Machuwa)
18 talk (Jackson Browne)
19 Fruita Almarga [Bitter Fruit] (Jackson Browne)
20 talk (Jackson Browne)
21 Lene Verde [Instrumental] (Jackson Browne with Sangre Machuwa)
22 talk (Graham Nash)
23 Rock Me on the Water (Jackson Browne with David Crosby & Graham Nash)
24 Powerful Stuff (Fabulous Thunderbirds)
25 talk (Fabulous Thunderbirds)
26 Look at That, Look at That (Fabulous Thunderbirds)
27 talk (Fabulous Thunderbirds)
28 She's Tough (Fabulous Thunderbirds)
29 talk (Fabulous Thunderbirds)
30 Wrap It Up (Fabulous Thunderbirds)
31 talk (Pat Benatar)
32 All Fired Up (Pat Benatar)
33 Run Between the Raindrops (Pat Benatar)
34 talk (Pat Benatar)
35 Let's Stay Together (Pat Benatar)
36 talk (Emcee)
37 Antarctica (Al Stewart)
38 talk (Al Stewart)
39 Princess Olivia (Al Stewart)
40 The Year of the Cat (Al Stewart)
41 talk (Graham Nash)
42 Wealth Is Virtue (Midnight Oil)
43 The Dead Heart (Midnight Oil)
44 This Old House (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
45 Love the One You're With (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
46 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
47 Name of Love (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
48 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
49 Tracks in the Dust (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
50 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
51 Don't Say Goodbye (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
52 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
53 Southern Cross (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
54 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
55 Long Time Gone (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
56 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
57 My Country 'Tis of Thee (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young with J. D. Souther)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/DQZ2b6A2

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/z8t3Ajl7bhZ3NZF/file

I found the cover image from some promotional art related to this concert. It's a drawing of all the major stars that took part. In the top row, from left to right: Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. In the bottom row, from left to right: Jackson Browne, Pat Benatar, Peter Garrett of Midnight Oil, and Randy Newman. The banner at the top was in the original, but I changed the text there, and added more text at the bottom. 

I couldn't find any actual photos from this concert, so I'm lucky to have found this.

Al Stewart - University of Warwick, Coventry, Britain, 11-8-1970

I'm back from my vacation in New Orleans. I had a really good time. I was especially impressed by the food, doubly so since I'm vegetarian. Thanks for all the well wishes while I was gone, and thanks for your patience.

I hadn't planned on posting this Al Stewart concert. Most of it has been officially released on the mega box set "The Admiralty Lights." But while I was on vacation, musical associate Lil Panda posted a bunch of songs from this exact concert that wasn't included in that box set at a bootleg sharing site. He also included a set list of the complete concert. So it was a no-brainer for me to put the entire concert together, mixing the released and unreleased songs.

I wouldn't have posted this had it not been for the fact that the sound quality is really excellent. This has to be the best sounding concert recording from this early in Stewart's career, probably by a good margin. Both the unreleased and released songs sound equally great, so it's just about impossible to tell which is which. (If you're curious, the unreleased tracks are: 14, 15, 16, 17, 25, 26, 27, 28, and 29.) As for why some songs weren't included, my best guess is that they included as many as could fit on a single CD.

This is a solo acoustic performance, and Stewart was in top form. There's a good amount of banter before almost every song. He also played some rare songs, especially the covers "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" by Bob Dylan and the 1950s classic "Summertime Blues."

This album is an hour and 48 minutes long.

01 Swiss Cottage Manoeuvres (Al Stewart)
02 talk (Al Stewart)
03 Zero She Flies (Al Stewart)
04 talk (Al Stewart)
05 Electric Los Angeles Sunset (Al Stewart)
06 talk (Al Stewart)
07 Songs Out of Clay (Al Stewart)
08 talk (Al Stewart)
09 In Brooklyn (Al Stewart)
10 talk (Al Stewart)
11 Samuel, Oh How You've Changed (Al Stewart)
12 talk (Al Stewart)
13 Room of Roots (Al Stewart)
14 talk (Al Stewart)
15 It's Alright Ma [I'm Only Bleeding] (Al Stewart)
16 talk (Al Stewart)
17 News from Spain (Al Stewart)
18 Old Compton Street Blues (Al Stewart)
19 talk (Al Stewart)
20 Elvaston Place (Al Stewart)
21 talk (Al Stewart)
22 Manuscript (Al Stewart)
23 talk (Al Stewart)
24 Love Chronicles (Al Stewart)
25 talk (Al Stewart)
26 Small Fruit Song (Al Stewart)
27 Summertime Blues (Al Stewart)
28 talk (Al Stewart)
29 My Enemies Have Sweet Voices (Al Stewart)

https://www.imagenetz.de/dsp58

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/q7iGbq5k

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/e5Zq8PvFLmP2iAF/file

I couldn't find any good photos of Stewart that clearly came from 1970. In fact, I couldn't really find any color photos of him in concert from before about 1973. So I used a black and white that is from "circa 1970." But I don't know anything else about it. I used the Palette program to convert it into color.

Al Stewart - Greatest Misses (1974-1996) (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Here's another Mike Solof guest post of Al Stewart's music. This one is a companion to the other one I posted a few days ago. That one, "Greatest Alternate Misses," was made up of alternate versions of songs from Stewart's albums. Whereas this one is made up of songs that didn't make any of Stewart's studio albums. 

Like the other album, it mostly is sourced from the massive 50-plus CD box set, "The Admiralty Lights." However, two of the songs ("The Bear Farmers of Birnam" and "Merry Monks") are from a fan club album. I found this a surprisingly strong collection. I was left wondering why so many of these were considered mere outtakes.

If you want to know more, I suggest you read the PDF that is included in the download zip, as is the case with Solof's other posted albums.

This album is an hour long.

01 Willie the King [Outtake] (Al Stewart)
02 Jackdaw [Demo] (Al Stewart)
03 Ringing of Bells [Outtake] (Al Stewart)
04 Candy Come Back [Outtake] (Al Stewart)
05 Here in Angola [Live] (Al Stewart)
06 [The World According To] Garp (Al Stewart)
07 The Bear Farmers of Birnam [Live] (Al Stewart)
08 Night Meeting [Outtake] (Al Stewart)
09 Where Are They Now [Outtake] (Al Stewart)
10 In the Dark [Outtake] (Al Stewart)
11 Ghostly Horses of the Plain [Alternate Version] (Al Stewart)
12 The Coldest Winter in Memory [Demo] (Al Stewart)
13 Don't Forget Me [Outtake] (Al Stewart)
14 Merry Monks [Home Demo] (Al Stewart)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16010587/AlStwt_1974-1996_GreatstMsses_atse.zip.html

The cover art is based on the cover art for "The Admiralty Lights" box set. But I believe this is a zoomed in section of an alternate version.

Al Stewart - Greatest Alternate Versions (1973-1993) (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Here's the first of two Mike Solof guest posts featuring British singer-songwriter Al Stewart. The vast majority of the songs on both albums come from the box set "The Admiralty Lights." This is no normal box set - it's over 50 CDs in size! He plucked the best rarities from that that weren't BBC sessions. He created two albums out of that. This one contains alternate versions of songs that did get released on Stewart's studio albums. The other one consists of non-album tracks.

If you want to know more, check out the PDF that he's included with the download zip.

This album is 58 minutes long.

01 Roads to Moscow [Alternate Version] (Al Stewart)
02 A Sense of Deja Vu [Outtake] (Al Stewart)
03 Midas Shadow [Original Abbey Road Version] (Al Stewart)
04 Sand in Your Shoes [Original Abbey Road Version] (Al Stewart)
05 Flying Sorcery [Original Abbey Road Version] (Al Stewart)
06 Broadway Hotel [Original Abbey Road Version] (Al Stewart)
07 Year of the Cat [Original Abbey Road Version] (Al Stewart)
08 Warmth of a Summer's Day [Demo] (Al Stewart)
09 Song on the Radio [Demo] (Al Stewart)
10 Time Passages [Demo] (Al Stewart)
11 The One that Got Away [Outtake] (Al Stewart)
12 Trespasser [Alternate Version] (Al Stewart)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16003567/AlStwt_1973-1993_GreatstAltrnteVrsions_atse.zip.html

I picked the cover photo. I don't know anything about it except that it was taken in 1977.

Al Stewart - BBC Sessions, Volume 5: In Concert, Reading University, Reading, Britain, 12-4-1976

Guest poster Mike Solof has put together a couple of interesting Al Stewart albums, which I plan on posting very soon. Listening to those reminded me that I've been remiss in posting more of Al Stewart's BBC stuff. So here's another one. This is yet another in the concert format.

It's not too surprising that Stewart was on the BBC in 1976, because that was the year he became a star with his hit "Year of the Cat." Prior to 1976, he'd never had a hit reach the Top 100 charts anywhere, but "Year of the Cat" was a Top Ten hit in the US and a Top Forty hit in Britain.

Not only that, but his sound had evolved quite a lot from his acoustic folkie style of the first few BBC albums in this series. Working with a full band, he'd developed a much more rocking and poppy sound. That resulted in his "Year of the Cat" album being a big hit too.

The concert uses that new style, with all of the songs sounding lively. He managed the difficult trick of keeping sophisticated and lengthy lyrics, but matching them with catchy melodies and full productions.

This album is 59 minutes long. As with so many BBC concerts, this probably was edited down to fit the time slot, which in this case must have been an hour.

01 Apple Cider Re-Constitution (Al Stewart)
02 talk (Al Stewart)
03 The Dark and the Rolling Sea (Al Stewart)
04 talk (Al Stewart)
05 One Stage Before (Al Stewart)
06 talk (Al Stewart)
07 Soho [Needless to Say] (Al Stewart)
08 talk (Al Stewart)
09 On the Border (Al Stewart)
10 talk (Al Stewart)
11 Broadway Hotel (Al Stewart)
12 Roads to Moscow (Al Stewart)
13 talk (Al Stewart)
14 Sirens of Titan (Al Stewart)
15 talk - As Time Goes By (Al Stewart)
16 Year of the Cat (Al Stewart)
17 talk (Al Stewart)
18 If It Doesn't Come Naturally, Leave It (Al Stewart)
19 talk (Al Stewart)
20 Carol (Al Stewart)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15998854/AlStwt_1976_BBSessonsVolum5InConcrtReadngUnivrsityReadngBrtain__12-4-1976_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is from a concert at the New Victoria Theatre in London, Britain, in November 1976.

Al Stewart - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: In Concert, Golders Green Hippodrome, London, Britain, 6-27-1974

As I explained in my comments to Al Stewart's "BBC Sessions, Volume 3," I've completed an overhaul of Stewart's early BBC recordings. I had to redo the two albums I had previously posted in early 2022, thanks to the release of the mega-box set "The Admiralty Lights" in late 2022, which had lots of BBC material I didn't already have. 

I had previously included much of the material here on my album of early full band BBC recordings. But thanks to that box set, I now have the full concert, and with better sound quality. So I've made this separate volume. This is with a full band. I think he generally played solo acoustic up until this year, then generally played with a band from that point on.

Oddly, not everything here is from the box set. The banter before two of the songs (tracks 1 and 7) come from the unreleased version I had before. 

This is a fairly short concert, at 39 minutes. But it seems to be complete. Stewart had yet to make the big time with his 1976 hit "Year of the Cat," so I imagine the BBC didn't want to give him more air time.

01 talk (Al Stewart)
02 Soho [Needless to Say] (Al Stewart)
03 talk (Al Stewart)
04 Old Admirals (Al Stewart)
05 talk (Al Stewart)
06 Terminal Eyes - Post World War Two Blues (Al Stewart)
07 talk (Al Stewart)
08 Roads to Moscow (Al Stewart)
09 talk (Al Stewart)
10 Nostradamus (Al Stewart)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15288311/AlStwt_1974_BBSessionsVolum4InConcertGoldrsGreenHippodrmeLondnBritain__6-27-1974_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from a concert in London in November 1976.

Al Stewart - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: More Solo Versions, 1969-1973

First off, it's important for you to realize this is only one piece of a larger picture. Early in 2022, I posted two albums of Al Stewart's early BBC sessions. One consisted of acoustic performances and the other one consisted of band performances. But then, later in 2022, the mega-box set "The Admiralty Lights" was released. And when I say "mega," I mean "mega" - it contains nearly 50 CDs! A handful of those are BBC performances. 

So I've finally overhauled my Al Stewart early BBC albums. There was so much new stuff that I split the early acoustic album in two. Earlier today, I posted the revised first part. Most of the material on it is new. So if you had the old version I made, please toss that and replace it. Here's a link to the new version, which now deals with the years 1965 to 1969:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2022/02/al-stewart-bbc-sessions-solo-versions.html

Furthermore, the album I made of early band performances for the BBC has also been drastically overhauled. Most of what I had there I'll be putting on a different album instead, so this also is mostly new stuff. Here's the link to that:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2022/02/al-stewart-bbc-sessions-band-versions.html

Now, I'll talk about what's on this album here. A majority of the material comes from the mega-box set. But given how thorough that was, I was surprised that it missed some stuff. Eight of the 18 tracks here are still unreleased. Since he acoustic performances of the same song didn't differ that much, I've only included one version of each song. In some cases, that allowed me to pick the best sounding version. So most of this sounds pretty good, but the sound quality does vary a bit from song to song.

Around 1973 or 1974, it seems Stewart went from mostly doing solo acoustic performances to playing with a band. Plus, the BBC generally moved away from live studio sessions to playing more album versions. Thus, there's no further studio sessions that I know of after 1973. However, he did play some concerts for the BBC, and I'll be posting some of those in the future.

This album is 57 minutes long.

01 talk (Al Stewart)
02 Maybe Some Day (Al Stewart)
03 Bedsitter Images (Al Stewart)
04 talk (Al Stewart)
05 Manuscript (Al Stewart)
06 talk (Al Stewart)
07 In Brooklyn (Al Stewart)
08 Burbling [Instrumental] (Al Stewart)
09 Electric Los Angeles Sunset (Al Stewart)
10 Zero She Flies (Al Stewart)
11 talk (Al Stewart)
12 A Small Fruit Song (Al Stewart)
13 Blessed (Al Stewart)
14 Night of the 4th of May (Al Stewart)
15 Once an Orange, Always an Orange [Instrumental] (Al Stewart)
16 Amsterdam (Al Stewart)
17 Soho [Needless to Say] (Al Stewart)
18 Post World War II Blues (Al Stewart)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15212382/AlStwt_1969-1973_BBSessionsVolum3MreSoloVrsions_atse.zip.html

The only thing I know about the cover photo is that it was taken in April 1973.

Al Stewart - WKDX, Chicago, IL, 10-27-1978

When I posted a couple of Al Stewart BBC sessions albums recently, I noted that those sessions petered out in the mid-1970s, just as he hit a new level of popularity. Most of his best known songs were not included on those sessions. So I mentioned I might post a late 1970s concert to make up for that. I got some requests recently for me to follow through with that, so here it is.

This concert was recorded at a Chicago radio station in front of a small audience, and played live on the radio. As a result, the sound quality is unusually good as concert recordings go. The timing is also excellent, because this came just after the releases of his two most popular albums by far, "Year of the Cat" in 1976 and "Time Passages" in 1978. As a result, it has his best known songs: "On the Border," "Year of the Cat," "Time Passages," and "Song on the Radio."

This music is officially released, but it currently is rather hard to get. An album containing selected songs from it (totaling only 50 minutes) was released in 1978, called "The Live Radio Concert Album." But only 2,500 copies were made, and it quickly went out of print. Then, in 2021, a super deluxe edition of "Time Passages" was released which contained the whole concert.

I'm posting this here mainly because that super deluxe edition version sounds fantastic overall, but contained one significant and annoying flaw: the songs were much, much louder than the talking between songs. Happily, this is easily fixed. I lowered the volume of the songs (they were almost brickwalled), and boosted the volume of the talking. Now you can hear what he was talking about without having the songs blow your ears out.

Speaking of official releases, I recently found out that a mega-massive Al Stewart box set is due to be released later in 2022. Called "The Admiralty Lights," it will contain no less than 50 CD of music! That should include all the BBC stuff I posted in much better sound, plus a bunch of full length concerts. 

This album is an hour and 34 minutes long.

01 talk (Al Stewart)
02 On the Border (Al Stewart)
03 talk (Al Stewart)
04 Soho [Needless to Say] (Al Stewart)
05 talk (Al Stewart)
06 Midas Shadow (Al Stewart)
07 talk (Al Stewart)
08 Broadway Hotel (Al Stewart)
09 talk (Al Stewart)
10 If It Doesn't Come Naturally, Leave It (Al Stewart)
11 talk (Al Stewart)
12 Time Passages (Al Stewart)
13 One Stage Before (Al Stewart)
14 talk (Al Stewart)
15 Life in Dark Water (Al Stewart)
16 Roads to Moscow (Al Stewart)
17 talk (Al Stewart)
18 Sirens of Titan (Al Stewart)
19 talk (Al Stewart)
20 The Palace of Versailles (Al Stewart)
21 talk (Al Stewart)
22 Valentina Way (Al Stewart)
23 talk (Al Stewart)
24 Year of the Cat (Al Stewart)
25 talk (Al Stewart)
26 The Pink Panther Theme [Instrumental] (Al Stewart)
27 Song on the Radio (Al Stewart)
28 talk (Al Stewart)
29 Carol (Al Stewart)

https://www.imagenetz.de/aaPTb

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/AEgxNnUa

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/4EYAEBFB072fWlo/file 

I couldn't find any really good color photos of Al Stewart in concert in 1978. But I found one of him in 1979, at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, California, so I used that.

Al Stewart - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: Early Band Versions, 1968-1976

I've posted two albums of Al Stewart's acoustic BBC sessions from the early part of his music career. This is a companion album of his BBC sessions played with a band during that same time period. Generally speaking, he mostly played acoustic during the earliest years of his career. Then, in the early 1970s, he increasingly used a band. The first five songs here are from 1968, but all the rest are from 1972 to 1976.

All but the last two songs come from typical studio BBC sessions. Those typically have comments by either a BBC DJ or Stewart before the songs. The last song is his biggest hit, "Year of the Cat," in 1976. Around this time, it seems he largely abandoned using BBC studio sessions to promote his material. This one song was done on a BBC TV show, "The Old Grey Whistle Test," instead.

To be honest, I forgot why I edited "Absolutely Sweet Marie." Maybe there was some talking over the music that I erased. But I do want to take a moment to note that no other version of this Bob Dylan cover has never been officially released. He also did a Dylan cover for the solo acoustic BBC album, "I Don't Believe You (She Acts like We Never Have Met)," although he did an album version of that one in 1972.

All but three performances here are from his mega-box set "The Admiralty Lights," released in 2022. Those three are tracks 4, 5, and 12.

It's a shame that his BBC sessions petered out right as he found widespread commercial success. So you won't find most of his best known songs here, with the notable exception of "Year of the Cat." I'll see if I can make up for that by posting a live album from a few years later, at another time.

This album is 53 minutes long.

01 In Brooklyn (Al Stewart)
02 Old Compton Street (Al Stewart)
03 I Don't Believe You [She Acts like We Never Have Met] (Al Stewart)
04 You Should Have Listened to Al (Al Stewart)
05 Life and Life Only (Al Stewart)
06 Zero She Flies (Al Stewart)
07 A Small Fruit Song (Al Stewart)
08 You Don't Even Know Me (Al Stewart)
09 Old Compton Street Blues (Al Stewart)
10 Absolutely Sweet Marie [Edit] (Al Stewart)
11 All Along the Watchtower (Al Stewart)
12 Year of the Cat (Al Stewart)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/K86PUmRJ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/7z7sPuz2RA72I2n/file 

The cover photo was taken in 1973. I don't know anything other than that.

Al Stewart - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: Solo Versions, 1965-1969

Al Stewart was an artist that I had heard good things about, but I'd never given his music a listen beyond his big hits like "Year of the Cat" and "Time Passages." But one reason I'm enjoying the BBC project I'm working on is because it gives me a reason to check out some artists I'd missed. This is a good example.

Stewart played numerous BBC sessions from when he was big enough to get noticed, around 1968, until about 1976, when his success with "Year of the Cat" apparently made him think he didn't need that kind of promotion anymore. In collecting his BBC material, I noticed that it fell into two categories of solo acoustic sessions and full band sessions. So I've split things up into two albums of acoustic sessions and one album of band sessions for this early time period. I don't like having two versions of the same song on the same album, but this way, I was able to include an acoustic version and full band version of the same song when he occasionally did that.

The second song, "Pretty Golden Hair," is notable for a couple of reasons. Stewart's first single came out in 1966, and his first album came out in 1967. This song was on that album. But in 1965, a BBC documentary about cultural outsiders called "Outcasts and Outsiders" happened to include the full performance of this song in a small club. (You can find the footage on YouTube.) So it's a very lucky break that this early recording exists. 

It's even more remarkable that the song's lyrics clearly describes the life of a gay prostitute, including details like having sex in public restrooms. The fact that this was allowed by the BBC is amazing, considering how much they loved to censor. (For instance, one year later, they would censor the line "Making love in the green grass behind the stadium" in Van Morrison's song "Brown Eyed Girl.") But it's also lucky this recording exists, because the album version was slathered with a string arrangement, possibly deliberately overdone in order to obscure the controversial lyrics.

Tracks 11 to 20 all come from three different appearances on the BBC radio show "My Kind of Folk" in 1969. Since it was a folk music oriented show, these recordings don't have the usual problem of overly enthusiastic DJs like Brian Matthew talking over the music. Instead, Stewart got to make his own comments between songs. There's one instance of two such talking tracks in a row. That's because one was a comment about the last song, the other was a comment about the next song. I kept them as separate tracks because there was something else in between that I didn't include, such as the DJ talking.

When I first posted this album in February 2022, nearly all of the material on it was unreleased. But later in 2022, a mega-box set (nearly 50 CDs!) called "The Admiralty Lights" was released. That had lots of BBC material on it, but surprisingly, not everything. Seven of the tracks here are still officially unreleased. Eventually, in 2023, I got around to reconciling what I'd posted with what was on the box set. Stewart played quite a few songs more than once, even just in the acoustic format. Acoustic versions in particular don't usually differ much from each other, so I've only included one version of each.

Overall, the sound quality is very good, but not great. It's very listenable, but it's not always as good as some BBC recordings from this time period. It helped that I often found more than one version of any given song, and then picked the one with better sound quality.

This album is 58 minutes long.

UPDATE: On May 29, 2023, I drastically overhauled the mp3 download file. As mentioned above, I included previously unavailable material from the 2022 mega-box set "The Admiralty Lights." There are too many changes to detail. But there was so much new material that I was able to split this album into two. Previously, this dealt with the years 1965 to 1973. Now, it deals with the years 1965 to 1969, and a second volume deals with the years 1969 to 1973. I call that one "Volume 3," because there's a collection of BBC band versions in between.

01 Do I Love My Neighbour (Al Stewart)
02 Pretty Golden Hair (Al Stewart)
03 Who Killed Tommy McGeechie (Al Stewart)
04 The Carmichaels (Al Stewart)
05 Swiss Cottage Manoeuvres (Al Stewart)
06 Samuel, Oh How You've Changed (Al Stewart)
07 Scandinavian Girl (Al Stewart)
08 talk (Al Stewart)
09 Room of Roots [Instrumental] (Al Stewart)
10 Good as Gone (Al Stewart)
11 talk (Al Stewart)
12 My Enemies Have Sweet Voices (Al Stewart)
13 talk (Al Stewart)
14 Clifton in the Rain (Al Stewart)
15 Denise at 16 [Instrumental] (Al Stewart)
16 talk (Al Stewart)
17 talk (Al Stewart)
18 I Don't Believe You [She Acts like We Never Have Met] [Edit] (Al Stewart)
19 talk (Al Stewart)
20 The Elf (Al Stewart)
21 Memphis, Tennessee (Al Stewart)
22 Sparrow (Al Stewart)
23 Just like Tom Thumb's Blues [Edit] (Al Stewart)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15212385/AlStwt_1965-1969_BBSessionsVolume1SoloVrsions_atse.zip.html

I don't have any information on where or when the cover photo was taken. But it looks to me like it's from around this time period.