Various Artists - Prince's Trust Rock Gala, Dominion Theatre, London, Britain, 7-7-1982

I had decided that, in addition to working on my big BBC project and having other musical attentions, I want to make a more concerted effort to post "various artists" concerts. People know of the big ones, like Woodstock and Live Aid, but there are many lesser ones that often slip through the cracks, where they don't get officially released in full or at all, yet bootlegs aren't common either since there isn't one big performance by someone famous to draw attention.

Here's one such example. It's the first of several semi-annual Prince's Trust concerts from the 1980s that I plan on posting. I don't know much about these concerts since I'm not British and only recently discovered recordings of them. But I looked up the Prince's Trust on Wikipedia. It's a charity that was founded in 1978 by then Prince Charles, who is now King Charles III as I write this in 2023. It funds a variety of programs to help troubled youths. According to Wikipedia, it has been very successful and is the country's biggest youth-targeted charity.

This was the first benefit concert for the charity. More would be held in the 1980s, though not every year. They stopped happening around 1990, but then have resumed occasionally in the 2010s. The 1980s versions typically had impressive line-ups of usually British musical acts. 

What I think is particularly interesting about them is that different stars didn't just perform with their usual backing bands and then leave the stage. That was sometimes the case, but other times, a house band would be formed that played for a bunch of different artists. For this show, Madness started out with a 26-minute long set, easily the longest of the show, and it was just them. Then came a reggae band called Unity, and it was just them. Joan Armatrading performed two songs next, alone on stage with her acoustic guitar.

After that, Phil Collins played his classic "In the Air Tonight" in an unusual stripped down version with just him on piano and no drums. From that point on, I'm pretty sure he didn't leave the stage for the rest of the concert. He backed "Jethro Tull" on drums. I put that name in quotes because it was really just lead singer Ian Anderson. Then the same band stayed on stage for the rest of the concert. It featured some big names playing together, including Phil Collins on drums, Pete Townshend on lead guitar, and Gary Brooker on keyboards. I found it especially interesting having Townshend playing guitar behind the likes of Kate Bush and Robert Plant. I don't know if that's happened on other occasions. You can watch the whole concert on YouTube if you want to see who played what exactly.

Speaking of Townshend, he was still mostly preoccupied being a member of the Who at this time and almost never performed in concert without them. So that's interesting all by itself. But he also said that his performance of "Slit Skirts" was the first time he'd played piano in public. But what really surprised the heck out of me is that the final song of the concert, "I Want to Take You Higher," was a cover of the Sly and the Family Stone classic funk sung mostly by Townsend (with Robert Plant on backing vocals). I looked it up on setlist.fm, and that's the only time he ever performed that.

Speaking of rare, Kate Bush concert appearances are slightly less rare than hen's teeth. She only sang one song and then left the stage. But this seems to be the only time she ever sang "The Wedding List" in front of an audience.

In case you're curious, Prince Charles and his new wife Princess Diana (they married the year before) sat in the balcony and watched the entire show. I wonder if they really enjoyed these musical styles or if they were just being polite.

The sound quality is pretty good, but not great. I took it from YouTube videos, and there was some loss of quality along the way. However, I used the UVR5 audio editing program to boost the lead vocals relative to the instruments in some cases, and that helped. I especially did a lot of that for "In the Air Tonight." In the beginning of the song especially, the vocals were very low. That's why that one song has "[Edit]" in its title.

The album is an hour and 25 minutes long.

01 God Save the Queen (Madness)
02 House of Fun - Shut Up (Madness)
03 talk (Madness)
04 Tomorrow's Dream (Madness)
05 Madness (Madness)
06 talk (Madness)
07 One Step Beyond (Madness)
08 Baggy Trousers (Madness)
09 Driving in My Car (Madness)
10 It Must Be Love (Madness)
11 talk (Unity)
12 Crab Race (Unity)
13 talk (Joan Armatrading)
14 Love and Affection (Joan Armatrading)
15 talk (Joan Armatrading)
16 Steppin' Out (Joan Armatrading)
17 In the Air Tonight [Edit] (Phil Collins)
18 Jack in the Green (Jethro Tull with Phil Collins)
19 talk (Jethro Tull with Phil Collins)
20 Pussy Willow (Jethro Tull with Phil Collins)
21 talk (Midge Ure)
22 No Regrets (Midge Ure)
23 Let My Love Open the Door (Pete Townshend)
24 talk (Pete Townshend)
25 Slit Skirts (Pete Townshend)
26 A Whiter Shade of Pale (Gary Brooker)
27 talk (Gary Brooker)
28 The Wedding List (Kate Bush)
29 talk (Pete Townshend)
30 Worse than Detroit (Robert Plant)
31 I Want to Take You Higher (Pete Townshend & Everyone)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/vGspapgK

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/gOWdPKGbgy9TK02/file

alternate:

https://www.upload.ee/files/15483233/VarArtsts_1982_PrincsTrstRckGalaDomnionTheatrLondnBritain__7-7-1982_atse.zip.html

I could have taken a screenshot of the video for the cover art, but the video quality was merely okay. Luckily, I found a couple of photos. I chose one with Robert Plant (left), Mick Karn (center, the bassist in the band Japan), and Pete Townshend (right). The photo was in black and white, but I knew the colors from the video, so I made sure they matched, especially Plant's "Where's Waldo"-styled red and white shirt.

Procol Harum - BBC Sessions, Volume 5: Sight and Sound, Golders Green Hippodrome, London, Britain, 3-12-1977

This is the fifth and last of Procol Harum BBC albums I'm posting. If you were to only download one, I would suggest this one. The sound quality is excellent, a notch above some of the others. The song selection is well done as well, including some of their earlier classics they'd sometimes missed on their last few BBC albums, especially their signature song "A Whiter Shade of Pale," but also including some of their later good songs not on the earlier volumes, such as their 1975 Top Twenty hit "Pandora's Box."

The band broke up later in 1977. They didn't release another studio album until 1991, so this effectively comes at the end of their classic period.

The first track consists of a BBC DJ introducing the band. I cut it down, because much of it was the DJ talking about different BBC stations and programs, which isn't relevant anymore. That's why there's an "[Edit]" in the title. 

All of the performances here come from the deluxe version of the band's 1977 album "Something Magic." Except, strangely, for one: "A Salty Dog" wasn't included on that release. So that song comes from a bootleg of the show.

This concert is an hour and three minutes long. I would imagine their concerts were usually longer than that, but they had to cut them down for BBC programming purposes.

01 talk [Edit] (Procol Harum)
02 Something Magic (Procol Harum)
03 Conquistador (Procol Harum)
04 Nothing but the Truth (Procol Harum)
05 Strangers in Space (Procol Harum)
06 Grand Hotel (Procol Harum)
07 Pandora's Box (Procol Harum)
08 talk (Procol Harum)
09 Skating on Thin Ice (Procol Harum)
10 talk (Procol Harum)
11 The Mark of the Claw (Procol Harum)
12 A Salty Dog (Procol Harum)
13 Wizard Man (Procol Harum)
14 talk (Procol Harum)
15 This Old Dog (Procol Harum)
16 A Whiter Shade of Pale (Procol Harum)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16697029/PROCLHRM1977BBSessonsVolum5SghtSundGoldrsGrenHippdrme__3-12-1977_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from an appearance on a Dutch TV show in 1976.

Procol Harum - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: In Concert, Golders Green Hippodrome, London, Britain, 3-30-1974

Here's the next Procol Harum BBC album. Like the last one, it's a full concert. There's one more to go after this, another full concert from the 1970s.

This one takes place four years after the last BBC concert. In the meantime, they'd released three albums, so the song list is pretty different. The concert took place shortly before the release of the album "Exotic Birds and Fruit," so songs from that one are particularly featured.

The concert has the same format as the last one, in which the BBC DJ did all the talking between songs. Last time, that was John Peel, and this time it's Bob Harris. 

Also like last time, it seems the concert was meant to fit in an hour long time slot, because this concert is an hour and three minutes long.

01 talk (Procol Harum)
02 Conquistador (Procol Harum)
03 talk (Procol Harum)
04 Whaling Stories (Procol Harum)
05 Bringing Home the Bacon (Procol Harum)
06 talk (Procol Harum)
07 New Lamps for Old (Procol Harum)
08 talk (Procol Harum)
09 Beyond the Pale (Procol Harum)
10 talk (Procol Harum)
11 As Strong as Samson (Procol Harum)
12 talk (Procol Harum)
13 Simple Sister (Procol Harum)
14 talk (Procol Harum)
15 The Idol (Procol Harum)
16 talk (Procol Harum)
17 Grand Hotel (Procol Harum)
18 talk (Procol Harum)
19 Butterfly Boys (Procol Harum)
20 talk (Procol Harum)
21 Nothing but the Truth (Procol Harum)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16697028/PROCLHRM1974_BBSessonsVolum4InConcrtGoldrsGrenHippdrme__3-30-1974_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from an appearance on the TV show "Midnight Special" in 1973. The colors are a bit off, I think, but this was the best color photo I could find from the time period.

Procol Harum - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: 1968-1971

Here's the second of five BBC albums from the British band Procol Harum. Just like the first volume, all of the songs come from a series of BBC studio sessions.

Nine of these performances have been officially released as bonus tracks. The other seven (tracks 4 and 7 through 12) still sound pretty good.

There's not much else to say here. Procol Harum got lucky in that there are no examples of BBC DJs talking over the music. The song "Nothing That I Didn't Know" fades out in the middle of singing, which is a bummer, but I left it like that.

As far as I can tell, the band didn't do more BBC studio sessions after this. But they did have three full concerts broadcast by the BBC in the 1970s, so that's what the other albums in this series will consist of.

This album is 54 minutes long.

01 Skip Softly [My Moonbeams] (Procol Harum)
02 Wish Me Well (Procol Harum)
03 Long Gone Geek (Procol Harum)
04 In Held 'Twas in I (Procol Harum)
05 The Milk of Human Kindness (Procol Harum)
06 Juicy John Pink (Procol Harum)
07 Too Much Between Us (Procol Harum)
08 About to Die (Procol Harum)
09 Your Own Choice (Procol Harum)
10 Whiskey Train (Procol Harum)
11 Juicy John Pink (Procol Harum)
12 Nothing That I Didn't Know (Procol Harum)
13 Simple Sister (Procol Harum)
14 Quite Rightly So (Procol Harum)
15 Broken Barricades (Procol Harum)
16 Power Failure (Procol Harum)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16697014/PROCLHRM1968-1971_BBSssonsVolum2_atse.zip.html

The album cover comes from a 1970 publicity photo session.

Procol Harum - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1967-1968

Next up with my BBC project is the British band Procol Harum. These days, they're primarily known for their international number one hit "A Whiter Shade of Pale." But they were a classic rock band with a number of hits, especially in Britain, and a long career of albums with intelligent songs.

There's enough material for five BBC albums. This and the second one consist of songs performed in various BBC studio sessions. The remaining three albums are full concerts. That was a typical pattern, with full concerts becoming common starting in the early 1970s.

There has never been any kind of official BBC album. However, some songs have been released as bonus tracks. For this album, all but one of the songs (plus the bonus track) come from bonus tracks. 

The exception is the song"Conquistador." This recording isn't from the BBC at all. It's a key song (and a minor hit) that the band played at the BBC around this time period, but the recordings apparently didn't survive. However, I found a version performed on a French TV show without a cheering audience, so I used that. Unfortunately, for a portion of the song, the lead vocals microphone was turned off. But I was able to find another soundboard quality recording of the song (I forget from where exactly, it's been a while), and I used that to fill in the missing portion, which if I recall lasted for a verse or two. That's why that song has "[Edit]" in the title.

Speaking of "[Edit]," there are a few more songs with that in the title. These recordings are from the time period when BBC DJs were commonly talking over the music. Procol Harum got off fairly lightly, with only four songs with that problem on this album. I suspect that's because the band played for more serious BBC shows where the talking was less compared to the pop based shows where there could be talking over nearly every song.

This album is 39 minutes long, not including the bonus track.

Regarding that bonus track, the instrumental "Repent Walpurgis," it comes from the same BBC session as some others here (tracks 5 through 8), but it's officially unreleased. In this case I can understand, because the sound quality is poor. Thus it's just a bonus track.

01 Morning Dew [Edit] (Procol Harum)
02 Mabel [Edit] (Procol Harum)
03 A Whiter Shade of Pale (Procol Harum)
04 Homburg [Edit] (Procol Harum)
05 Good Captain Clack (Procol Harum)
06 She Wandered through the Garden Fence (Procol Harum)
07 Kaleidoscope (Procol Harum)
08 Conquistador [Edit] (Procol Harum)
09 Quite Rightly So (Procol Harum)
10 Ramblin' On (Procol Harum)
11 Shine On Brightly [Edit] (Procol Harum)
12 Skip Softly [My Moonbeams] (Procol Harum)

Repent Walpurgis [Instrumental] [Edit] (Procol Harum)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16697012/PROCLHRM1967-1968_BBSssonsVolum1_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from 1967. That year, it seems every band tried to wear the most colorful and outrageous looking clothes possible, and Procol Harum was no exception.

The Band du Lac with Eric Clapton, Gary Brooker - Wintershall Estate, Bramley, Britain, 6-11-2005

For many years, Eric Clapton and Gary Brooker (lead singer of Procol Harum) had a fun and little known tradition going on. From at least 1988 to 2011, they held a concert about once a year that would differ from their usual concerts. These concerts featured a variety of stars taking turns singing lead vocals and collaborating with each other. They went by a variety of names, but most often used the name "Band du Lac." 

Apparently, Clapton and Brooker are friends, and both live in the Bramley area of England. These concerts were generally private, attended mainly by the local upper class, and done for various charity causes. Most often they were held at the Wintershall Estate, a private property with a lake on it. That explains the band name, which in French means "band of the lake." Sometimes the band did two shows a year, and other times they went a few years without any shows. But maybe the tradition is over, since it seems to have been over ten years since the last concert.

Nothing by this band has ever been officially released. I've found and listened to a handful of "Band du Lac" bootlegs. But generally speaking, the sound quality is good, since they're all audience bootlegs and there's only one concert to potentially record a year, if that, instead of entire tours. But recently I came across an excellent sounding version of the band's 2005 show on YouTube. What makes this one different is that a professional DVD was filmed and released of this show, called "One Night Only Live." I converted it to mp3s and broke it into individual tracks. In my opinion, it sounds as good as a typical official live album, and way better than all the bootlegs by this band, so this is the one to listen to.

Eric Clapton is probably the biggest name here, but Gary Brooker had a more important role in this show. He stayed on stage playing keyboards for virtually the entire show, and was the emcee that introduced the other artists. Clapton, by contrast, stayed on stage for about half of the show. I've included his name for the songs where he was involved. I was able to know for sure which ones those are, due to the video footage.

Generally speaking, the other stars in these concerts are the friends of Clapton and/or Brooker. For instance, Phil Collins played a lot of these shows, though he wasn't at this one. (Although, oddly, the last song was one if his Genesis hits, "I Can't Dance.") There tended to be lots of repeat appearances, but each year's show would have different artists, with different set lists. Ringo Starr probably needs no introduction - the drummer for the Beatles. If you don't know, Roger Taylor was the drummer (and occasional songwriter) for Queen. Paul Carrack was in Ace, Squeeze, Mike + the Mechanics, and had some solo hits. The Drifters is a famous soul group, though all the members from the band's classic years were long gone by the time of this concert. Chris Barber is a jazz musician most popular in the 1950s who helped launch the skiffle music trend that was pivotal in the development of rock and roll in Britain. Andy Fairweather Low was the lead singer of Amen Corner in the 1960s.

Katie Melua is the odd one out in this concert in two respects. For one, all the others are friends from an older generation. But also, many of them generally played on each other's songs for this concert. For instance, Andy Fairweather Low stayed on stage most of the time and took the occasional lead guitar solo. But for Melua's three song set, all the other musicians departed the stage and were replaced by Melua's band. I must say I'd never heard of her before (apparently she's bigger in Britain than in my country, the U.S.), but I liked her songs here.

This concert is one hour and 53 minutes long.

01 talk (Gary Brooker with the Band du Lac)
02 Tequila (Gary Brooker with the Band du Lac)
03 talk (Gary Brooker with the Band du Lac)
04 Over My Shoulder (Paul Carrack with the Band du Lac)
05 talk (Gary Brooker with the Band du Lac)
06 Reconsider Baby (Eric Clapton with the Band du Lac)
07 Lay Down Sally (Eric Clapton with the Band du Lac)
08 How Long (Paul Carrack with Eric Clapton & the Band du Lac)
09 Willie and the Hand Jive (Eric Clapton & Gary Brooker with the Band du Lac)
10 talk (Gary Brooker with the Band du Lac)
11 Crawling Up a Hill (Katie Melua with the Band du Lac)
12 talk (Katie Melua with the Band du Lac)
13 My Aphrodisiac Is You (Katie Melua with the Band du Lac)
14 The Closest Thing to Crazy (Katie Melua with the Band du Lac)
15 talk (Gary Brooker with the Band du Lac)
16 Glory, Glory - Will the Circle Be Unbroken (Andy Fairweather Low with the Band du Lac)
17 talk (Gary Brooker with the Band du Lac)
18 Say It's Not True (Roger Taylor with the Band du Lac)
19 These Are the Days of Our Lives (Roger Taylor with the Band du Lac)
20 I Want to Break Free (Roger Taylor with the Band du Lac)
21 talk (Gary Brooker with the Band du Lac)
22 This World Is Rich (Gary Brooker with the Band du Lac)
23 talk (Ringo Starr & Gary Brooker with the Band du Lac)
24 Act Naturally (Ringo Starr with the Band du Lac)
25 talk (Ringo Starr with the Band du Lac)
26 Photograph (Ringo Starr with the Band du Lac)
27 talk (Ringo Starr with the Band du Lac)
28 With a Little Help from My Friends (Ringo Starr with the Band du Lac)
29 A Whiter Shade of Pale (Gary Brooker with the Band du Lac)
30 talk (Gary Brooker with the Band du Lac)
31 Call It Stormy Monday (Chris Barber & Eric Clapton with the Band du Lac)
32 Under the Boardwalk (Drifters with Eric Clapton & the Band du Lac)
33 talk (Drifters with Eric Clapton & the Band du Lac)
34 Stand by Me (Drifters with Eric Clapton & the Band du Lac)
35 Cocaine (Eric Clapton with the Band du Lac)
36 I Can't Dance (Gary Brooker with Eric Clapton & Band du Lac)

https://www.imagenetz.de/foyUZ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/vSM5B5k5w3duNfI/file

For the cover art, I wanted a picture of as many of the band members as possible. I took a screenshot from the end of the concert, when many of the stars were on stage. The picture is dominated by the Drifters, who are the four guys in the red suits. But you can see some of the others if you look closely. For instance, Brooker is playing keyboards on the far left, and Clapton is in a purple suit behind one of the Drifters on the far right.