Dexys Midnight Runners - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: In Concert, Exhibition Park, Newcastle, Britain, 6-26-1982

Here's the first album I've posted on the road while on vacation. So far, so good.

I've posted two albums of BBC studio sessions by the Dexys Midnight Runners, all focused on the early 1980s. It turns out they also did three full-length concerts that were broadcast on BBC radio, one in 1981, another in 1982, and the last in 1983. I think posting all three is a bit much, since the songs played were fairly similar, especially between the last two. I picked the 1982 as the best, so here it is.

This concert took place right as the band's biggest song, "Come On Eileen," was released as a single. It's interesting that there's no roar from the crowd as the song starts, since it hadn't become a worldwide number one single yet.

I believe all the songs here are also on the previous two BBC sessions albums. But if you want the ultimate concert recording from the band's peak years, this is probably it. As usual with BBC recordings, the sound quality is excellent.

This concert is 57 minutes long. I'm guessing it may have been edited down a bit by the BBC to fit into an hour time slot, since most concerts from this time period were well over an hour long. But that means you probably get the most popular songs. 

01 TSOP [The Sound of Philadelphia] [Instrumental] (Dexys Midnight Runners)
02 Dance Stance [Burn It Down] (Dexys Midnight Runners)
03 Let's Make This Precious (Dexys Midnight Runners)
04 Jackie Wilson Said [I'm in Heaven When You Smile] (Dexys Midnight Runners)
05 Come On Eileen (Dexys Midnight Runners)
06 Soon (Dexys Midnight Runners)
07 Plan B (Dexys Midnight Runners)
08 Geno (Dexys Midnight Runners)
09 Respect (Dexys Midnight Runners)
10 Old (Dexys Midnight Runners)
11 The Celtic Soul Brothers [More, Please, Thank You] (Dexys Midnight Runners)
12 There, There My Dear (Dexys Midnight Runners)
13 Show Me (Dexys Midnight Runners)
14 I'll Show You (Dexys Midnight Runners)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15288292/DexysMR_1982_BBSessionsVolum3InConcrtExhibitionPrkNewcastle__6-26-1982_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is from a 1982 concert, but I don't know the details.

Dexys Midnight Runners - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: 1981-1983

Here's the second of three volumes of BBC sessions by Dexys Midnight Runners. Like this first one, this mainly consists of studio sessions.

The first seven performances have been officially released. Those come from three different sources, as bonus tracks for the studio albums "Searching for the Young Soul Rebels" and "Too-Rye-Ay"), plus the album "Radio 1 Sessions."

The last four songs are unreleased. Surprisingly, the band's signature song "Come On Eileen" doesn't seem to have been performed in a BBC studio session. But it was done live for a British TV show aimed at children called "No. 73." So I used that. "Kevin Rowland's 13th Crime" is basically the song "Kevin Rowland's Band," which would appear on the band's 1985 album "Don't Stand Me Down." But it has some differences, including being played at a different tempo.

The last two songs come from a 1983 BBC concert. I've included them because they didn't appear on any of the previous sources here. I'm not going to post the full concert those are from, because I do plan on posting a 1982 BBC concert with a very similar song list.

This album is 44 minutes long. 

01 Let's Make This Precious (Dexys Midnight Runners)
02 Dubious [Outlook] (Dexys Midnight Runners)
03 Your Own [Early Version of Liars A to E] (Dexys Midnight Runners)
04 Until I Believe in My Soul (Dexys Midnight Runners)
05 Jackie Wilson Said [I'm in Heaven When You Smile] (Dexys Midnight Runners)
06 All in All [This One Last Wild Waltz] (Dexys Midnight Runners)
07 Old (Dexys Midnight Runners)
08 Come On Eileen (Dexys Midnight Runners)
09 Kevin Rowland's 13th Crime [Kevin Rowland's Band] (Dexys Midnight Runners)
10 Let's Get This Straight [From the Start] (Dexys Midnight Runners)
11 The Celtic Soul Brothers [More, Please, Thank You] (Dexys Midnight Runners)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15110262/DexysMR_1981-1983_BBSessionsVolume2_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is a promo photo from 1982.

Dexys Midnight Runners - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1978-1981

I recently posted an album of stray tracks from the early years of Dexys Midnight Runners. I like to post those kinds of albums before posting BBC albums. This is the first of three BBC albums I plan on posting, all from the early 1980s time period.

The first three songs here are actually from the late 1970s, and technically aren't from Dexys Midnight Runners at all. For Dexys's first album, released in 1980, the two most important band members were lead singer Kevin Roland, and Kevin 'Al" Archer. Together, their musical careers got started with the band the Killjoys. That band never put out an album. But in 1977, they did a BBC session for DJ John Peel. They sounded like a punk band, which was all the rage in 1977, and frankly there was nothing special about them. But they did a second Peel session in 1978, and sounded like a totally different band, much more like the sound of the future Dexys Midnight Runners. So I've included the (unreleased) songs from that second BBC session, but not the first session. Since Roland is the lead singer, it would be easy to think these are Dexys Midnight Runners songs.

By the way, Archer had a hand in writing some songs for the first Dexys Midnight Runners album in 1980, but he quit the band in 1981. Basically, he found Rowland too difficult to get along with. That would be a frequent theme, with a lot of turnover of other band members.

After those first three Killboys songs, all the other songs have been released as bonus tracks on the deluxe edition of the band's first album, "Searching for the Young Soul Rebels." Most of those come from BBC studio sessions, but the last two are from a BBC concert. The songs are generally from that album or the singles associated with it.

This album is 44 minutes long.

01 Spit on Me (Dexys Midnight Runners [Killjoys])
02 Smoke Your Own (Dexys Midnight Runners [Killjoys])
03 All the Way (Dexys Midnight Runners [Killjoys])
04 Geno (Dexys Midnight Runners)
05 Respect (Dexys Midnight Runners)
06 Dance Stance [Burn It Down] (Dexys Midnight Runners)
07 The Teams that Meet in Caffs [Instrumental] (Dexys Midnight Runners)
08 Tell Me When My Light Turns Green (Dexys Midnight Runners)
09 The Horse [Instrumental] (Dexys Midnight Runners)
10 Breaking Down the Walls of Heartache (Dexys Midnight Runners)
11 There, There My Dear (Dexys Midnight Runners)
12 Soon - Plan B (Dexys Midnight Runners)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/1mKWwrw9

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/0CQtXwVw97d1Zjz/file

The cover photo depicts the band from around 1980, before they adopted their "hayseed farmer" look in 1982. I used the Krea AI program to improve the image quality

Dexys Midnight Runners - Show Me - Non-Album Tracks (1979-1982)

If you live anywhere but in Britain, you probably know the British band Dexys Midnight Runners mainly for one song: "Come On Eileen." That was a number one hit in the US, Britain, and many other places in 1982, and continues to be played all over the place. In the US, the band is a true one-hit wonder. But in Britain, they had seven other top twenty hits, including another number one, "Geno," in 1980.

In my opinion, Dexys Midnight Runners (note that, weirdly, there's no apostrophe in "Dexys") is much more than a one-hit wonder.  The band has basically been Kevin Rowland, the lead singer and main songwriter, and a frequently changing bunch of supporting musicians. They put out a lot of good music from 1979 to 1982. At the end of that time, Rowland had trouble dealing with massive success, and got addicted to drugs, and suffered from depression. He didn't release much more for a long time after that, but eventually pulled himself together and has released some good records later in his career. But this is a stray tracks album that deals only with the band's years of peak popular success.

 During this time period, the band released two studio albums, "Searching for the Young Soul Rebels" in 1980, and "Too-Rye-Ay" in 1982. I've avoided including any songs on those albums, unless there are significantly different versions. It turns out the band was just as focused on releasing singles they didn't put on their albums as their albums. There are five A-sides included here, and eight B-sides.

Three of the A-sides were top forty hits in Britain: "Dance Stance," "Show Me," and "Let's Get This Straight (From the Heart)." "Dance Stance" is rather confusing, because that was its name when released as a single, but it later appeared on the "Searching for the Young Soul Rebels" album with the name "Burn It Down." It was a different version, but they're basically the same song, so I gave it the title "Dance Stance" but I put "Burn It Down" into the title as a second name as well.

In addition to all those A- and B-sides, there are a few rarities. "Hold On, I'm Coming" is a demo version of the classic Sam and Dave soul hit, done as a studio demo. It was eventually released as a bonus track. "Big Time Operator" is a cover of a song originally done by Zoot Money's Big Roll Band in the 1960s. This is unreleased, but it comes from a concert that was broadcast on the radio at the time, so the sound quality is a good as the rest. "Merry Xmas Everybody" is a cover of the Slade hit from the 1970s that was done for a Christmas-themed British TV show.

In my opinion, there's enough good material here for an album that would rival either of the band's two albums from this time period, though it probably would be improved by trimming one or more of the four instrumentals. 

I'm posting this album now because there are three BBC albums by the band that I want to post soon. I usually like to post stray tracks albums first.

This album is 48 minutes long.

01 Dance Stance [Burn It Down] (Dexys Midnight Runners)
02 Hold On, I'm Coming [Demo] (Dexys Midnight Runners)
03 The Horse [Instrumental] (Dexys Midnight Runners)
04 Breaking Down the Walls of Heartache (Dexys Midnight Runners)
05 Big Time Operator (Dexys Midnight Runners)
06 Keep It, Part Two [Inferiority, Part 1] (Dexys Midnight Runners)
07 One Way Love (Dexys Midnight Runners)
08 Plan B (Dexys Midnight Runners)
09 Soul Finger [Instrumental] (Dexys Midnight Runners)
10 Show Me (Dexys Midnight Runners)
11 Soon (Dexys Midnight Runners)
12 Love, Part 2 (Dexys Midnight Runners)
13 Dubious [Outlook] [Instrumental] (Dexys Midnight Runners)
14 Let's Get This Straight [From the Start] (Dexys Midnight Runners)
15 TSOP [The Sound of Philadelphia] [Instrumental] (Dexys Midnight Runners)
16 Merry Xmas Everybody (Dexys Midnight Runners)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15110162/DexysMR_1979-1982_ShwMe_atse.zip.html

The promo photo of the band is from 1982.