Various Artists - Playboy After Dark (CBS Television City, Los Angeles, CA), Volume 3: October to November 1968

Here's the third volume compiling episodes of the "Playboy After Dark" TV show. 

I said most of what I wanted to say about this weird TV show in general in my write-ups for the first and second volumes. So this time I'll concentrate more on the music.

I'm especially psyched that this has Jackie DeShannon performing two songs. I've been looking for a concert recording from her for ages. I found one she did in 1963, and I've posted that at this music blog, but that's about all I've found. (There are a few YouTube videos of her performing, but most of them are from decades later.) So this is a real find, in my opinion.

As I keep posting these volumes, you'll probably notice a mix of famous musical acts and total obscurities. MC Squared is an example of an obscurity. They were a band many compared to Jefferson Airplane. But they only ever managed to release four singles, none of which dented the charts. 

However, I noticed that many of the obscurities "just happened" to be very attractive women. Cathy Carlson and Lynn Kellogg are examples of that on this volume. Both of them only had one single released under their own names at the time of this show, and neither of them went on to release even a single album. (Although Kellogg did have some minor success later in movie and Broadway play roles.) I surmise that Playboy head Hugh Hefner figured many people would watch his show as much for the many beautiful women shown in the crowd scenes as for the music, comedy, and other performances, so he probably preferred musical acts featuring beautiful women as well. Even MC Squared fits this pattern, since that band had an attractive female lead singer.

Also, unfortunately, as I mentioned in more detail in the write-up for Volume 2, Hefner was an expert in sexual manipulation and grooming. It's highly likely that he often tried to tempt women to have sex with him by dangling the prospect of them performing on this show (or even just being an extra in the party crowds), though it's impossible to say if he was successful with that in any specific instance. In some later episodes, there are cases of female singers on the show who posed nude for Playboy Magazine as well. Though I'll mention again that I didn't include all the musical performances in these compilations. There were the occasional few who just weren't very good, in my opinion, or I had other issues with them, so they were left out.

Something else just came to my mind about Hefner. One reason he got away with his sexual exploitation for so long was because people assumed he was an enlightened person due to his progressive social and political views. For instance, he was ahead of the curve promoting minorities and women in his business empire, as well as giving them opportunities in his magazines and T.V. shows and such. We can see examples of that enlightened reputation in this volume. Not only does it include liberal folk singers Pete Seeger and Joan Baez, but he gave them ample time to talk about their progressive causes, in addition to just singing songs. For instance, before singing, Baez led a discussion that lasted several minutes, arguing there was a moral imperative to oppose the Vietnam War. I highly doubt there were other T.V. shows in that era with a national audience that allowed that sort of discussion. But we now know Hefner could have both been progressive in some of his attitudes in public while also sexually exploiting many women in private. 

This album is an hour and one minute long. 

01 I Know You [Your Nature Is like Mine] (MC Squared)
02 Everybody's Talkin' (MC Squared)
03 The Pill (Pete Seeger)
04 I Got It Bad [And That Ain't Good] (Carmen McRae)
05 Come Live with Me (Carmen McRae)
06 I Got the Reason (Jackie DeShannon)
07 Holly Would (Jackie DeShannon)
08 Everybody's Got to Change Sometime (Taj Mahal)
09 E Z Rider (Taj Mahal)
10 You Could End the World (Cathy Carlson)
11 Hurt So Bad (Cathy Carlson)
12 And the Address [Instrumental] [Edit] (Deep Purple)
13 Hush (Deep Purple)
14 Ol' Man River (Lynn Kellogg)
15 It's Just a Game Love (Brenton Wood)
16 Gimme Little Sign (Brenton Wood)
17 California Earthquake (John Hartford)
18 Natural to Be Gone (John Hartford)
19 Hickory Wind (Joan Baez)
20 Tears of Rage (Joan Baez)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/n4say7Ry

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/rOgqrK3kEfKZ9SF/file

The cover image is a screenshot I took from one of the videos of these episodes of Jackie DeShannon. Do you see the mostly bald-headed man standing right behind her? That's Barry White, who would become a big soul music star in the 1970s. At this time, he was a relative unknown, working mostly as a producer and backing vocalist. He was heavily involved in DeShannon's career around 1968. In fact, the first song she sang here, "I Got the Reason," was written by White.

California Jam, Ontario Motor Speedway, Ontario, CA, 4-6-1974, Part 7: Deep Purple

The seventh set from the 1974 California Jam featured Deep Purple. There are some interesting stories regarding this performance.

This is the only set from the festival that has been released in full, on the album "California Jamming." I've included it in order to present the entire festival.

Deep Purple was the biggest name out of all the artists for the festival. As such, they got to pick their time slot. They chose the second to last slot because they wanted to go on around sunset. Almost always, festival schedules ran far behind. But this one was unusual in that it actually ran ahead of schedule! This is due to a unique innovation: the entire stage was built on tracks. It could be moved out of place quickly. Meanwhile, the instruments on a second stage were prepared, and that stage was moved into position, with the two stages swapping back and forth. As a result, there were only a few minutes of down time between sets.

But this caused a problem, because Deep Purple really, really wanted sunset to happen during their set. So they waited at least an hour after the end of the Black Sabbath set, causing the audience to grow restless.

There were more problems too. Lead guitarist Ritchie Blackmore is a great guitarist, but he sounds like a prima donna type. The entire festival was being filmed by ABC-TV. During their set, camera people often got close to where Blackmore was standing, in order to get close-ups of his guitar playing. This annoyed him so much that at the end of the set, he attacked one of the TV cameras with his guitar, repeatedly smashing it.

But wait, there's more. It seems the main reason the band wanted to wait for sunset was because they had pyrotechnics they wanted to set off at the end of their set. They did so, but they used too much. It caused a massive explosion and fire on stage, as you can see from the cover photo. Fearing they were in trouble and could be arrested, the band left the festival as fast as they could.

It should also be noted that this concert was one of the first to feature the band's new line-up, with two new lead singers, David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes.

This album is an hour and 26 minutes long.

60 talk (Deep Purple)
61 Intro [Instrumental] (Deep Purple)
62 Burn (Deep Purple)
63 talk (Deep Purple)
64 Might Just Take Your Life (Deep Purple)
65 talk (Deep Purple)
66 Lay Down, Stay Down (Deep Purple)
67 talk (Deep Purple)
68 Mistreated (Deep Purple)
69 talk (Deep Purple)
70 Intro [Instrumental] (Deep Purple)
71 Smoke on the Water (Deep Purple)
72 talk (Deep Purple)
73 You Fool No One - Lazy - The Mule (Deep Purple)
74 talk (Deep Purple)
75 Space Truckin' - Mandrake Root (Deep Purple)
76 talk (Deep Purple)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15571990/CalifrniaJmOntrioMtorSpeedwyOntarioCA__4-6-1974_07DpPrple.zip.html

The cover is from this exact concert. I believe that's Glenn Hughes standing in front of the fire the band had caused.

Deep Purple - BBC Sessions, Volume 7: Gaumont State Theatre, London, Britain, 5-22-1974

A while back, I posted six volumes of Deep Purple playing for the BBC. The different personnel changes of the band are commonly known as Mark I, Mark II, and so on. All of those volumes features the Mark I or Mark II versions. I mentioned that the Mark III version of the band also had a concert broadcast by the BBC in 1974. Several people asked me to post it. I was reluctant because I'm mainly a fan of the Mark I and II versions, plus this concert has been officially released in full. But I'm trying to be more thorough posting BBC material from the 1960s and 1970s especially, so here we are.

The Mark II version of the band is the most celebrated one, especially due to the classic 1972 album "Machine Head," and the song "Smoke on the Water." Two band members left in 1973. Since of them included the lead singer, Ian Gillan, the sound of the band changed significantly. He was replaced by two lead vocalists, Glenn Hughes and David Coverdale, which was the start of the Mark III phase. They released the album "Burn" in 1974, which was both a critical and commercial success.

This concert took place just a few months after the release of "Burn," so it naturally features a good number of songs from that album, plus older favorites. As mentioned above, the concert has been officially released, through the album "Live in London."

The band almost always played an encore. In this time period, it usually was a cover of the song "Going Down," with the band's own "Highway Star" sometimes added. But apparently something happened backstage, though it wasn't clear what, and there was no encore this night. It wasn't really necessary, but I wanted to hear this concert with the encore that should have been. So I went looking for any recordings of those two songs from around that time period. I had to go all the way to early 1975 and the official album "Live in Paris" to find them. So those are the last two songs here. If you're a purist, especially if you already have the "Live in Paris," then just disregard those.

The Mark III version of the band released the "Stormbringer" album in late 1974. But there was another personnel change in early 1975. The new Mark IV version of the band only lasted about a year. After that, the band broke up and didn't reunite until 1984. I don't know of any BBC recordings by the Mark IV version of the band, so this is where this BBC series ends, I think.

This concert is an hour and 35 minutes without the encore, and an hour and 51 minutes with it.

01 talk (Deep Purple)
02 Burn (Deep Purple)
03 talk (Deep Purple)
04 Might Just Take Your Life (Deep Purple)
05 talk (Deep Purple)
06 Lay Down, Stay Down (Deep Purple)
07 talk (Deep Purple)
08 Mistreated (Deep Purple)
09 talk (Deep Purple)
10 Smoke on the Water (Deep Purple)
11 talk (Deep Purple)
12 You Fool No One (Deep Purple)
13 talk (Deep Purple)
14 Space Truckin' (Deep Purple)
15 talk (Deep Purple)
16 Going Down (Deep Purple)
17 Highway Star (Deep Purple)

https://www.imagenetz.de/ioreH

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/auS6Z229

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/78aiwOFr1PDhnhZ/file 

I didn't find a photo in concert featuring everyone in the band. So for the cover, I used one showing the two lead singers, Glenn Hughes and David Coverdale, and lead guitarist Ritchie Blackmore. All I know about it is that it dates to the year 1974.

Deep Purple - BBC Sessions, Volume 6: In Concert, Paris Theatre, London, Britain, 3-9-1972

Here's the sixth and possibly last album of Deep Purple playing for the BBC. (Regarding that "possibly last" comment, see below.) 

This is an entire concert broadcast live for the BBC. However, it's only an hour and 15 minutes long, shorter than their usual concerts at the time, probably due to BBC time limits. Most of the comments between songs are done by a BBC DJ. This time it's Mike Harding instead of the usual John Peel, since Peel soured on the band by this time, finding their music too loud and heavy. 

This concert took place a few weeks before the release of the band's classic album "Machine Head." The songs from that album were fresh in their mind. So this was one of only two times the songs "Maybe I'm a Leo" and "Never Before" were played by the original Mark II version of the band. They also closed with a rare cover of the 1950s classic "Lucille."

I mentioned above that this might be the last in this series. The "might" is because I know of a 1974 concert the band played for the BBC. However, that's with the Mark III version of the band. I'm much more of a Mark II fan. It also has been officially released in full. But if people here express interest, I could post that too. (That 1974 concert seems to be the last BBC recording before the band broke up for eight years, starting in 1976.) 

In my opinion, 1972 is when the band was at its peak, both in terms of songwriting and in terms of instrumental prowess. So if you listen to just one of these BBC albums from them, I'm recommend this one.

01 talk (Deep Purple)
02 Highway Star (Deep Purple)
03 talk (Deep Purple)
04 Strange Kind of Woman (Deep Purple)
05 talk (Deep Purple)
06 Maybe I'm a Leo (Deep Purple)
07 talk (Deep Purple)
08 Never Before (Deep Purple)
09 talk (Deep Purple)
10 Lazy (Deep Purple)
11 talk (Deep Purple)
12 Space Truckin' (Deep Purple)
13 talk (Deep Purple)
14 Smoke on the Water (Deep Purple)
15 talk (Deep Purple)
16 Lucille (Deep Purple)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15109509/DeepP_1972_BBSessionsVolume6InConcertParisTheatre__3-9-1972_atse.zip.html

The cover photo shows the band playing a concert in Copenhagen in March 1972. You can only see a couple of the band members, but I like how it showed some of the crowd as well.

Deep Purple - BBC Sessions, Volume 5: 1971-1973

Here's the next album in my long series of Deep Purple at the BBC.

This one is a very long stretch to call a BBC album, as there are no songs performed at the BBC on it! However, everything here is from other TV or radio appearances, so it still fits the general concept, in my opinion. It seems that famous BBC DJ John Peel soured on Deep Purple around 1970. He'd previously supported them and gave them key early exposure. But he disliked their hard rock direction they took from the 1970 album "In Rock" and onwards, and criticized them publicly about it. So that probably has a lot to do with the band not playing for the BBC music after 1970. (They did do one live show in 1972, which will be the next album in this series.)

As a matter of fact, even as Deep Purple surged in popularity in 1971 onwards, it seemed the amount of TV and radio shows they did to promote their music dropped dramatically. This is about all there is, as far as I can see, not couldn't any lipsync stuff. I can only guess that maybe they thought such promotional efforts were uncool or unnecessary because they were so well known by then. 

The first four songs are from TV shows in Germany and Denmark, with each song come from a different date. For "Demon's Eye," there was a DJ talking in German over the solo section, but I cleaned that up in the usual way I take care of BBC DJs talking over the music. However, the sound quality in that section is worse than the rest.

The last three songs come from a concert in the US. For some reason, three of the songs were broadcast on TV, so the sound quality for those are excellent. The rest of the concert has been bootlegged, but the quality is much worse, so they're not included here. Luckily, this captures most of their best known songs from this time period, including the classic "Smoke on the Water." 

Also, everything here comes from officially released albums, though they're scattered over a bunch of different albums. Everything sounds top notch, except for the one section of "Demon's Eye" mentioned above.

This album is 49 minutes long.

01 Demon's Eye [Edit] (Deep Purple)
02 No No No (Deep Purple)
03 Fireball (Deep Purple)
04 Highway Star (Deep Purple)
05 Strange Kind of Woman (Deep Purple)
06 Smoke on the Water (Deep Purple)
07 Space Truckin' (Deep Purple)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15109497/DeepP_1971-1973_BBSessionsVolume5_atse.zip.html

The album cover uses a promotional photo from 1972.

Deep Purple - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: In Concert, Paris Theatre, London, Britain, 2-19-1970

Here's the next in my series of Deep Purple BBC albums.

This one is different from the three previous ones in that it's a complete, though somewhat short, live concert. It was broadcast on the BBC, with DJ John Peel serving as the host. Peel soured on the band shortly after this, finding their new music too loud and bombastic. But you can hear him talking between most of the songs here, and he sounded approving.

This concert has been officially released several times, the first time as part of an album called "Deep Purple in Concert." My version doesn't differ from the official one, but I've posted this here so I can present everything the band did for the BBC in their prime years.

The concert is 55 minutes long. There are only five songs because there's a lot of jamming. The last three songs are all over 10 minutes long.

01 talk (Deep Purple)
02 Speed King (Deep Purple)
03 talk (Deep Purple)
04 Child in Time (Deep Purple)
05 talk (Deep Purple)
06 Wring That Neck [Instrumental] (Deep Purple)
07 talk (Deep Purple)
08 Mandrake Root (Deep Purple)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Pe5XRemP

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/vL0peLhDgHQdPor/file

For the cover art, I took a screenshot of a YouTube video of the band playing on the TV show "Doing Your Thing." I had to resort to doing that because I couldn't find any really good color photos of the band on stage in 1970. February 2025, I updated the image with the help of the Krea AI program.

Deep Purple - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: 1970

Here's the next album of Deep Purple at the BBC. In my opinion, the band was hitting its stride at this time, moving more into hard rock with the "In Rock" album in 1970.

All but one of the songs here come from official album "BBC Sessions 1968-1970." The one exception is the last track, "Mandrake Root." This also comes from an official source, but a lesser known one, and something that only came out on DVD, "Rock Review 1969-1972." The reason for the difference is that last song is the only one that wasn't actually performed at the BBC. Instead, it was done for a French TV show. I've included it to get all the other songs the band did on TV or radio that weren't also done for the BBC. It so happens there simply aren't many of those, at least not with excellent sound quality.

You may note three songs have "[Edit]" in their names. Generally speaking, by 1970, the BBC DJs were ending their bad habit of talking over the starts and ends of the songs they were playing, but as you can see they still did that for those songs. As usual, I used the audio editing program X-Minus to wipe out the talking while keeping the underlying music.

This album is 43 minutes long. There aren't as many songs as before because the songs were getting longer. "Mandrake Root" in particular is 14 minutes long.

01 Bloodsucker [Edit] (Deep Purple)
02 Living Wreck [Edit] (Deep Purple)
03 Black Night (Deep Purple)
04 Grabsplatter [Instrumental Version of I'm Alone] (Deep Purple)
05 Into the Fire [Edit] (Deep Purple)
06 Child in Time (Deep Purple)
07 Mandrake Root (Deep Purple)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15109453/DeepP_1970_BBSessionsVolume3_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is of the band performing for the Top of the Pops BBC TV show in early 1970. (I didn't include that exact performance on this album because they lipsynced the vocals.)

Deep Purple - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: 1969-1970

I'm currently prioritizing the posting of Deep Purple BBC albums so I can get to other BBC albums by other artists, so here's another one of those from them.

My favorite Deep Purple line-up by far is the Mark II one, which is the one responsible for "Smoke on the Water" and most of their other best known songs. This is mostly made by that line-up. However, the first two songs were done by the Mark I line-up, since they were recorded in June 1969 and the Mark II line-up had their first concert in early July 1969. (The different between the line-ups is very noticeable, since they had different lead singers.)

All but three of the songs here come from the official album "BBC Sessions 1968-1970." Of those three, "Paint It Black" comes from a Dutch radio show, and is the only officially unreleased performance here. "Hallelujah" was done for the German TV show "Beat Club," and comes from an obscure compilation of Beat Club performances. "Kentucky Woman" was played in concert, and comes from the official live album "Live in Montreux 69." I included that one because the song was played for the BBC but the recording was lost, and the sound quality is on par with the rest of the album.

Note that three of the songs have "[Edit]" in their titles. In the first two cases, that was because BBC DJs were talking over part of the songs. For the third case, "Hallelujah," a German DJ talked over part of the song during the "Beat Club" TV show. In all cases, I used the audio editing program X-Minus to wipe out the talking while keeping the underlying music.

By the way, the song "Jam Stew" needs a bit of explanation. This was done as an instrumental in the studio, and that version was later released as a bonus track to the "In Rock" album. But this version actually does have lead vocals and lyrics, so this particular version is also known as "John Stew."

This album is 42 minutes long.

01 Hush [Edit] (Deep Purple)
02 The Painter [Edit] (Deep Purple)
03 Ricochet [Early Version of Speed King] (Deep Purple)
04 The Bird Has Flown (Deep Purple)
05 Paint It Black - Drum Solo - Paint It Black [Instrumental] (Deep Purple)
06 Hallelujah [Edit] (Deep Purple)
07 Kentucky Woman (Deep Purple)
08 Speed King (Deep Purple)
09 Jam Stew [John Stew] (Deep Purple)
10 Hard Lovin' Man (Deep Purple)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15109449/DeepP_1969-1970_BBSessionsVolume2_atse.zip.html

I believe the cover art photo dates from 1970. I had a hard time finding a really good photo of the band from 1969. But this is the Mark II version of the band in the photo, featured on all but two tracks here.

Deep Purple - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1968-1969

Last month (December 2021), I posted some albums by Episode Six, including two BBC sessions albums. I considered that a prelude to posting anything by Deep Purple, since two members of Episode Six became key members of the Mark II version of Deep Purple, including the lead vocalist. Now, I can start posting Deep Purple BBC albums. I have a bunch of them coming.

This album dates from 1968 and 1969, and features the Mark I version of Deep Purple. It's from a time when Episode Six still existed, in their last stages. The Mark I version sounded fairly different from the much more famous Mark II version, with Rod Evans as lead vocalist instead of Ian Gillan, and more of a pop rock song instead of a hard rock sound.

All of the performances here have been officially released on an album called "BBC Sessions 1968-1970)." But I feel I can add value by removing the BBC DJ talk over the intros and ends of some songs. On this album, there are only two such songs with that problem, the ones with "[Edit]" in their titles. There will be more on later volumes in this series. In all such cases, I used the audio editing program X-Minus to erase the DJ talking while keeping the underlying music.

This doesn't include all the BBC session from this time period, because the BBC made no effort to save their recording sessions, and some were lost to history. But it's not that big of a loss, in my opinion, because most of those lost sessions were repeats of songs included here, such as multiple versions of their first big hit, "Hush." I also searched for non BBC TV or radio performances, but there was nothing significant from this time period.

This album is 43 minutes long. 

01 Hush (Deep Purple)
02 One More Rainy Day (Deep Purple)
03 Help (Deep Purple)
04 And the Address [Instrumental] [Edit] (Deep Purple)
05 Hey Bop a Re Bop [Early Version of The Painter] (Deep Purple)
06 Emmaretta (Deep Purple)
07 Wring That Neck [Instrumental] (Deep Purple)
08 Hey Joe (Deep Purple)
09 It's All Over (Deep Purple)
10 The Painter (Deep Purple)
11 Lalena (Deep Purple)
12 I'm So Glad [Edit] (Deep Purple)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15109405/DeepP_1968-1969_BBSessionsVolume1_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo comes from a TV performance in 1968, but I don't know the exact details.

Episode Six - BBC Sessions, Volume 2 (1968-1969)

I just posted Volume 1 of Episode Six at the BBC. While I'm at it, here's Volume 2.

Hopefully, by posting these two together, I don't need to explain Episode Six and their music again. If you don't know, just read what I wrote with Volume 1.

As with that volume, the band mostly did cover songs for the BBC. I could be wrong, but I think the only originals here are: "Monster in Paradise," "Mozart Versus the Rest," "I Am the Boss," and "I Am a Cloud."

All the songs here come from the archival compilation "Cornflakes and Crazyfoam." There are a handful of songs near the end that the liner notes claim come from an unknown source, and say they could have been demos or from a radio show. However, there's another archival compilation that has those exact same versions of those songs with BBC DJ talk before and after them, clearly identifying their source.

A bunch of the songs (including those supposedly unidentified ones) come from a long BBC session in early 1969 of half an hour or more. The session was supposed to feature Pink Floyd, but they canceled at the last minute. The BBC called up Episode Six, and they raced to the studio just in time to fill in. So while that was nice, I must say I wish we could have had more of Pink Floyd at the BBC. 

Exactly the same as on Volume 1, only two out of the 19 songs here had the problem of BBC DJs talking over the music. As usual, I used the audio editing program X-Minus to fix those (which are marked with "[Edit]" in their titles).

This album is 58 minutes long. It's the last of anything worthwhile I have to post from this underrated band. Now I'll be free to start posting Deep Purple BBC sessions albums, since two of the band's members moved to that band in 1969.

Here are the original artists for each song:

01 Sunshine Superman - A Hard Day's Night - Donovan - Beatles
02 Can't Be So Bad - Moby Grape
03 Orange Air [Edit] - Fifth Dimension
04 Mr. Universe - Episode Six
05 I Had a Talk with My Man - Misty Collier
06 Stay with Me - Lorraine Ellison
07 Light My Fire - Doors
08 Temptation - Bing Crosby
09 Alone Again Or - Love
10 Monster in Paradise - Episode Six
11 Mozart Versus the Rest - Episode Six
12 [I Can't Get No] Satisfaction - Paint It, Black - Rolling Stones
13 The Morning - Dusty Springfield
14 I Am the Boss - Episode Six
15 I'll Be Your Baby Tonight - Bob Dylan
16 Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart - Gene Pitney
17 It's Been Such a Long Way Home - Garnet Mimms
18 Spanish Caravan - Doors
19 I Am a Cloud - Episode Six

Here's the usual song list:

01 Sunshine Superman - A Hard Day's Night (Episode Six)
02 Can't Be So Bad (Episode Six)
03 Orange Air [Edit] (Episode Six)
04 Mr. Universe (Episode Six)
05 I Had a Talk with My Man (Episode Six)
06 Stay with Me (Episode Six)
07 Light My Fire (Episode Six)
08 Temptation (Episode Six)
09 Alone Again Or (Episode Six)
10 Monster in Paradise (Episode Six)
11 Mozart Versus the Rest [Instrumental] [Edit] (Episode Six)
12 [I Can't Get No] Satisfaction - Paint It, Black (Episode Six)
13 The Morning (Episode Six)
14 I Am the Boss (Episode Six)
15 I'll Be Your Baby Tonight (Episode Six)
16 Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart (Episode Six)
17 It's Been Such a Long Way Home (Episode Six)
18 Spanish Caravan (Episode Six)
19 I Am a Cloud (Episode Six)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/EG7RHyy6

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/Iib63vFYcir8NCV/file

As I mentioned in the last post for this band, the best color photos I could find for the cover art all seem to come from the exact same photo shoot, done in 1965 or 1966. One can tell because they're wearing the exact same clothes and have the same haircuts. But at least the photos are significantly different from each other. For instance, this one was taken at night, and the other two I used were taken during the day. For this one, many of the colors were off, but I used Photoshop to align them with the colors from the other photo session photos.

Episode Six - BBC Sessions, Volume 1 (1967-1968)

I posted an Episode Six stray tracks album a few days ago, and that got a good reaction, so here's more from them already.

To review: Episode Six are very little known today, because they didn't have much success back when they were a band in the 1960s. They never released a studio album, and they had no hit singles. But they were a talented band. Their biggest claim to fame today is that lead singer Ian Gillan and bassist Roger Glover were band members, then left in mid-1969 to join the Mark II version of Deep Purple. 

So if you're a big Deep Purple fan you might have interest in this band, especially because most of the songs are song by Gillan, though the band also had a female lead singer named Sheila Carter, and many of the songs were written by the Gillan and Glover songwriting team. That said, the band was far more pop-oriented than Deep Purple ever was, so don't expect any headbanging here.

As I mentioned in that previous post, given how little success the band hand, it's surprising how much the BBC favored them. They performed many BBC sessions. There's enough for me to make two volumes. And that's with duplicates of the same songs removed, poor sound quality songs removed, a few songs I simply didn't like removed, and some entire BBC sessions lost. But it's easy to see why the BBC liked them, because they knew a ton of cover songs, in a wide variety of styles. 

The vast majority of the songs here are covers. The only originals here are the first three songs, plus "Incense" and "Little One" near the end. Note that I cheated by including "Love, Hate, Revenge" here. In my opinion, that's their best original song, but no version of them doing it for the BBC has survived. In order to have it represented here, I've included the US single version, which has some differences from the version I put on the stray tracks album I've already posted, including a different instrumental section in the middle.

All the songs are officially released. The vast majority come from an archival compilation called "Cornflakes and Crazyfoam," though three come from another compilation called "Love, Hate, Revenge." The sound quality is pretty good throughout, though some songs sound better than others. Two of the songs, "I Hear Trumpets Blow" and "Morning Dew," actually come from the German TV show "Beat Beat Beat." You can see the video footage of those on YouTube.

On a different note, with 1960s BBC recordings, one usually runs into the problem of BBC DJs talking over the intros and outros of some songs. For instance, I posted a Status Quo BBC album yesterday where most of the songs had that problem. But for some reason, Episode Six got lucky. Only two of the 19 songs here have "[Edit]" in their titles, which means those are the only two where I had to use the audio editing program X-Minus to wipe out the DJ talking. I suppose it was largely a matter of which BBC radio shows one was on. For instance, there's no sign any of these particular shows were hosted by DJ Brian Matthew, and he was the worst offender.

This album is 55 minutes long.

Here's a list of the original artists for each song, other than the five originals I just mentioned:

04 Morning Dew - Bonnie Dobson / Tim Rose
05 A Hazy Shade of Winter - Simon & Garfunkel
06 Him or Me - Paul Revere & the Raiders
07 Slow Down - Beatles
08 Stagger Lee - traditional / Lloyd Price
09 Que Sera, Sera [Whatever Will Be, Will Be] - Doris Day
10 Say You Don't Mind - Denny Laine
11 Island in the Sun - Harry Belafonte
12 [There's] Always Something There to Remind Me [Edit] -
13 My Little Red Book - Manfred Mann / Love
14 You Can Have Him - Dionne Warwick
15 Here, There and Everywhere - Beatles
16 The Castle - Love
19 River Deep, Mountain High - Ike & Tina Turner

As you can see, pretty far removed from the typical Deep Purple fare! Here's the usual song list:

01 Love, Hate, Revenge [US Single Version] (Episode Six)
02 I Can See Through You (Episode Six)
03 I Hear Trumpets Blow (Episode Six)
04 Morning Dew (Episode Six)
05 A Hazy Shade of Winter (Episode Six)
06 Him or Me (Episode Six)
07 Slow Down (Episode Six)
08 Stagger Lee (Episode Six)
09 Que Sera, Sera [Whatever Will Be, Will Be] (Episode Six)
10 Say You Don't Mind (Episode Six)
11 Island in the Sun (Episode Six)
12 [There's] Always Something There to Remind Me [Edit] (Episode Six)
13 My Little Red Book (Episode Six)
14 You Can Have Him (Episode Six)
15 Here, There and Everywhere (Episode Six)
16 The Castle (Episode Six)
17 Incense (Episode Six)
18 Little One [Edit] (Episode Six)
19 River Deep, Mountain High (Episode Six)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/6aEFzUee

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/4PTYImGQka2gxCg/file

There are very few good Episode Six color photos that aren't already used for album covers or the like. I've found three that seem to come from the same 1965 or 1966 photo session, because they're wearing the same clothes and have the same haircuts. At least they're in very different poses.

Episode Six - I Can See Through You - Non-Album Tracks (1965-1969)

After reading the headline of this post, you're probably wondering, "Who or what the heck is Episode Six?" If you're already familiar with this band, then I'm impressed with the depth of your musical knowledge. Although they were a British band from 1965 to 1969, they never put out an album, and they never had even a minor hit single. These days, they're remembered for one thing: two future key members of Deep Purple were originally members of this band. 

More specifically, lead vocalist Ian Gillan and bassist Roger Glover would leave Episode Six and join Deep Purple in mid-1969. So that made Gillan the lead vocalist of the most critically and commercially successful "Mark II" version of Deep Purple in the early 1970s. Gillan and Glover were also a songwriting team, and had key roles in writing most of Deep Purple's most famous songs, from "Smoke on the Water" on down.

Gillan was the main lead vocalist for the entire duration of Episode Six represented here, and he and Glover wrote some of their best songs. So that makes this band of interest for serious Deep Purple fans. But Gillan wasn't the only lead vocalist. This band was unusual for that time in that they had both a male lead vocalist and a female one. The female, Sheila Carter, sang a lot fewer songs than Gillan, but she did sing a fair share.

Here's the Wikipedia page if you want to know more about the band:

Episode Six - Wikipedia

All Deep Purple connections aside, Episode Six was a talented band that deserved more success than they had. One hint of this is that the BBC loved them. Despite having zero hits, and not even having that many singles released, they performed sessions for the BBC over and over again. In fact, after posting this album, I plan on posting two albums of the band's BBC sessions.

In a way, the band had a problem of being TOO talented, because they could capably play just about any song in any style, and they did, which meant they didn't have an easily defined musical identity. Note that, in general, the band was far more poppy than Deep Purple. They had just decided to move into more of a hard rock style when Gillan and Glover were poached by Deep Purple, and the band's fortunes effectively came to an end (though they lingered on longer and slowly fizzled out).

Although the band never put out an album while they were together, there has been a handful of archival compilations in subsequent decades. I've taken what I consider the best songs from all of those (not counting the copious BBC material) to make this album. Thirteen out of the 20 songs here are A- and B-sides. The others are studio demos and outtakes that didn't get released at the time.

I think this is a solid collection all the way through, but the highlights in my opinion are the songs "Love, Hate, Revenge," "I Can See through You," and "Morning Dew." The first two are originals, like most of the other songs here. "Love, Hate, Revenge" was included on Rhino Record's classic "Nuggets" box set. In a better universe, it would have been a big hit. Oddly, "Morning Dew," a cover of the folk classic, was a number one song in Lebanon, but nowhere else! That suggests to me their lack of commercial success probably had more to do with record company promotion and/or distribution problems than the actual music.

This album is 52 minutes long.

Note that I plan on posting a bunch of Deep Purple BBC sessions albums soon, but I think it makes logical and chronological sense to post this and the Episode Six BBC sessions albums first.

01 Love Is Such a Swinging Thing (Episode Six)
02 I Will Warm Your Heart (Episode Six)
03 I Hear Trumpets Blow (Episode Six)
04 True Love Is Funny That Way (Episode Six)
05 Incense (Episode Six)
06 Love, Hate, Revenge (Episode Six)
07 Baby Baby Baby (Episode Six)
08 Plastic Love (Episode Six)
09 Time and Motion Man (Episode Six)
10 Only Lonely People (Episode Six)
11 Morning Dew (Episode Six)
12 Sunshine Girl (Episode Six)
13 I Won't Hurt You (Episode Six)
14 I Can See through You (Episode Six)
15 Little One (Episode Six)
16 Lucky Sunday (Episode Six)
17 Mr. Universe (Episode Six)
18 Mozart Versus the Rest [Instrumental] (Episode Six)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15111746/EpisodeSx_1965-1969_I_CnSeeThroughYou_atse.zip.html

There are very few good color photos of this band. I don't know where or when this one is from exactly. I'm glad to have any decent photo at all. If anyone can identify which band member is which, please let me know, and I'll add that info in.