Colin Blunstone - De Lantaren, Rotterdam, Netherlands, 1-16-1974

Yesterday, I posted a Colin Blunstone set as part of the Popgala '73 festival in the Netherlands. I didn't think there were any concert bootlegs of Blunstone from his early 1970s prime, other than the Popgala one. But while I was putting that festival music together, I happened to stumble across this bootleg. It's from some unnamed radio show broadcast, and it's actually better than the Popgala set because it's longer.

This is similar to the Popgala set, even being recorded in the same country, except it's about a year later, so there were some songs from his then-upcoming album "Journey," released later in 1974, such as "Weak for You" and "Brother Lover." And even though it's not a typical full concert of an hour or more, it's long enough to have some deep cuts, such as the acoustic songs that opened the concert.

The sound quality is as good as you'd hope from a radio broadcast of that era, which means it's very good. There were a couple of cases where the applause got cut off, but I did some editing to smooth those spots over by patching in more applause. There also was a cut in the middle of "Time of the Season." But luckily it was during a verse that was repeated elsewhere in the song, so I was able to patch in a fix for that as well. That's why that one song has "[Edit]" in the title.

This album is 46 minutes long.

01 I've Always Had You - Let Me Come Closer to You (Colin Blunstone)
02 Though You Are Far Away (Colin Blunstone)
03 Caroline Goodbye (Colin Blunstone)
04 talk (Colin Blunstone)
05 How Wrong Can One Man Be (Colin Blunstone)
06 I Don't Believe in Miracles (Colin Blunstone)
07 talk (Colin Blunstone)
08 Brother Lover (Colin Blunstone)
09 talk (Colin Blunstone)
10 Weak for You (Colin Blunstone)
11 She's Not There (Colin Blunstone)
12 Time of the Season [Edit] (Colin Blunstone)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15649410/ColinBlun_1974_DeLntarenRottrdmNethrlnds__1-16-1974_atse.zip.html

I couldn't find any good photos of Blunstone in concert in 1974. I did find a few good color ones from 1973. However, I liked this one better, despite it being black and white. I tried colorizing it, but I actually preferred when I tinted it blue.

Popgala '73, Sporthal de Vliegermolen, Voorburg, Netherlands, 3-10-1973, Part 2: Argent & Colin Blunstone

Next up from the Popgala '73 rock festival is an album containing performances by Argent and Colin Blunstone.

As I mentioned in a previous write-up, I generally don't know the correct order of the performers. However, Rod Argent, the leader of the band Argent, and Colin Blunstone used to be band mates in the Zombies in the 1960s, so I figured it was fitting to put their sets together on one album. 

I don't know if Argent and Blunstone performed together on stage at this concert. I have no evidence this happened. But that's surprising to me, because the two of them continued to musically collaborate during this time period. For instance, Blunstone's most recent album at the time of this concert, "Ennismore," was produced by Argent, and the band Argent played on most of the songs. Blunstone's next album, "Journey," released in 1974, would include two songs written by Argent.

I'm pretty confident these sets are incomplete. (If anyone has anything I'm missing, please let me know!) That's especially the case for Argent, with only three songs here. I put this together from different sources. Even the three Argent songs come from two sources. So I don't know the correct song order, and I just made my best guess, based largely on how the song transitions sounded. I had to make some fixes too. For instance, "Andorra" came to a sudden end with only a second or two of applause at the end, so I patched in more applause from the ends of other songs. Despite all that, the songs ultimately come from the TV broadcast, and the sound quality is consistently excellent.

As an aside, I included two songs from this performance on the Colin Blunstone album I posted, "BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1971-1973." Those songs were "She's Not There" and "Looking for Someone to Love."

This album is 49 minutes long.

066 Keep On Rollin' (Argent)
067 God Gave Rock and Roll to You (Argent)
068 Hold Your Head Up (Argent)
069 I Don't Believe in Miracles (Colin Blunstone)
070 She's Not There (Colin Blunstone)
071 talk (Colin Blunstone)
072 Looking for Someone to Love (Colin Blunstone)
073 Andorra (Colin Blunstone)
074 Time of the Season (Colin Blunstone)
075 talk (Colin Blunstone)
076 I Want Some More (Colin Blunstone)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15645546/Popgla73_05_ArgntClinBlunstne.zip.html

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/WE5hRpTw8iuKUzr/file

The cover photo of Colin Blunstone comes from this exact concert. The original was in black and white. I then used the Palette program to colorize it. However, since they're video footage of this performance, I was able to make sure the colors were correct.

Colin Blunstone - BBC Sessions, Volume 2 (1973-1991)

This is the second of two volumes of BBC performances by Colin Blunstone.

Blunstone put out albums through the 1970s. In my opinion, the first two were really good, and similar in sound to what he did with the Zombies in the 1960s. But each album got a little worse after that. You can see this in the scores at rateyourmusic.com, which aggregates lots of reviews. Trying to make popular music, he increasingly resorted to a bland, middle of the road sound, which lost what made his music special and dropped his popularity. 

The BBC generally likes hit makers, so the first six songs are from 1973 and 1974 (with two of them from the BBC TV show ("Old Grey Whistle Test"), but then the BBC sessions stopped. He did have a hit again in 1982 when he was the guest lead vocalist for the Alan Parsons Project song "Old and Wise." I couldn't find a BBC version of that, but I found one from a Belgian TV show. 

The last four songs come from a 1991 BBC session. I assume that had more to do with the growing popularity of his work with the Zombies in the 1960s, because two of the songs were Zombies songs, and the other two were from his early 1970s albums. Note that different versions of three of those are on Volume 1 of this series.

After that, most of his music has been done with Rod Argent of the Zombies in various Zombies reunions. So this BBC series ends there.

Tracks 5, 6, and 8 through 11 have been officially released on the "Live at the BBC" album. The others generally sound as good.

This album is 42 minutes long.

01 I Want Some More (Colin Blunstone)
02 Setting Yourself Up (Colin Blunstone)
03 Wonderful [Edit] (Colin Blunstone)
04 Weak for You (Colin Blunstone)
05 Brother Lover (Colin Blunstone)
06 Something Happens When You Touch Me (Colin Blunstone)
07 Old and Wise (Colin Blunstone)
08 She's Not There (Colin Blunstone)
09 Time of the Season (Colin Blunstone)
10 Andorra (Colin Blunstone)
11 Caroline Goodbye (Colin Blunstone)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15904624/ColinBlun_1973-1991_BBSessionsVolume2_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is from 1973.

Colin Blunstone - BBC Sessions, Volume 1 (1971-1973)

I'll bet you know Colin Blunstone's voice, even if you may not know his name. He has a distinctive strong yet whispery voice on classics by the Zombies, including "She's Not There" and "Time of the Season," plus "Old and Wise" by Alan Parsons Project, and some solo hits of his own. There's enough material for two albums of BBC sessions, so here's Volume 1.

The Zombies already broke up by the time they had a hit song and album in 1968 with "Time of the Season" and "Odessey and Oracle" respectively.  Weirdly, in 1969, Blunstone released three singles under the pseudonym "Neil MacArthur," and had a minor hit with a new version of the Zombies song "She's Not There" (even though he'd been the lead singer on the original!). In 1971, he released his first solo album, "One Year." It's regarded as a sleeper classic today and it did fairly well, with a hit single, "Say You Don't Mind." His second solo album, "Ennismore" in 1972, also was critically acclaimed and sold fairly well.

There's an official BBC album for him, called "Live at the BBC," but it's very incomplete. Only three of the songs here, the first three, are from that. But I found some other unreleased songs elsewhere, and musical associate Marley found more of them. The sound quality is generally very good.

Normally, I don't like having two versions of the same song on the same album, but I made an exception here with "Say You Don't Mind." Worse, the two versions are very close together, due to the way I organized this chronologically, as I usually do for these sorts of albums. But they're done in very different styles. One is more rocking and bluesy, while the other is softer, with lots of strings.

There are two songs, the first one and the fourth one, where they're the only songs from that particular BBC studio session. Those sessions almost always had two to three songs, sometimes even four, so it could be there are more songs out there - or they could be lost. If you have anything else, please let me know so I can add them in.

Most of these are BBC radio sessions. However, the second and third tracks are from the BBC TV show "Old Grey Whistle Test." And the last two songs aren't from the BBC at all, but are from a concert in Belgium that I think was shown on TV. 

This album is 41 minutes long.

01 Say You Don't Mind [Blues Version] (Colin Blunstone)
02 Misty Roses (Colin Blunstone)
03 Say You Don't Mind (Colin Blunstone)
04 I Can't Live without You (Colin Blunstone)
05 Andorra (Colin Blunstone)
06 I Don't Believe in Miracles (Colin Blunstone)
07 How Wrong Can One Man Be (Colin Blunstone)
08 How Could We Dare to Be Wrong (Colin Blunstone)
09 Pay Me Later (Colin Blunstone)
10 She's Not There (Colin Blunstone)
11 Looking for Someone to Love (Colin Blunstone)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15904577/ColinBlun_1971-1973_BBSessionsVolume1_atse.zip.html

I only know the cover photo is from the early 1970s.