Honeybus - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: 1969-1973

This is the second of two albums of the British band Honeybus at the BBC. It's the last Honeybus post I plan to make, unless some more music comes to light.

As I've asserted previously, Honeybus is an underrated band. I think much of that had to do with the fact that they were only allowed to release one studio album (in 1970) while the band was still together. Due to their small amount of studio recordings, and a total lack of any live albums or bootlegs, their BBC studio sessions play a big part in their remaining musical legacy. An official BBC album was finally released in 2023, and all of the songs here come from that.

The sound quality is generally excellent, though there is some variability. However, five songs, the ones with "[Edit]" in their titles, suffered the usual problem in that era of BBC DJs talking over the music. Also as usual, I used the UVR5 audio editing program to wipe the talking and keep the underlying music.

Some songs were only ever recorded for the BBC. In those cases, I've put the same performances on the stray album collections and this BBC collection. I figure it's good to have all the BBC stuff together, despite some duplication. The band broke up in 1973, so that's when this album comes to an end.

There are two bonus tracks. One, "Under the Silent Tree," is a nice original that was delegated to bonus track status due to poor sound quality. The other, "Walking Aphrodisiac," sounds much better. But it's a bonus track because Honeybus played two versions of the song for the BBC at different dates. But they're different enough that the second one is at least worth bonus track status.

This album is 55 minutes long, not including the two bonus tracks.

01 My Suzanne (Honeybus)
02 Too Long [Edit] (Honeybus)
03 Fresher than the Sweetness in Water (Honeybus)
04 Walking Aphrodisiac (Honeybus)
05 You Live Good Life [Edit] (Honeybus)
06 Melinda [Edit] (Honeybus)
07 Follow the Plan (Honeybus)
08 Ceilings No. 2 (Honeybus)
09 Story (Honeybus)
10 Broken Wings (Honeybus)
11 Go Away [Edit] (Honeybus)
12 She's a Lady [Edit] (Honeybus)
13 Lady's Not for Burning (Honeybus)
14 I Can't Say It but I Can Sing It (Honeybus)
15 Big Ship (Honeybus)
16 Writing on the Wall (Honeybus)
17 For You (Honeybus)
18 Be Thou by My Side (Honeybus)

Under the Silent Tree (Honeybus)
Walking Aphrodisiac [1970 Version] [Edit] (Honeybus) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/H8b14bEg

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/BgRx9vkaONAUtrk/file 

The cover photo is supposed to be from the band's second phase, in the early 1970s, but I don't know the details.

Honeybus - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1967-1968

I recently posted four albums of stray tracks by the British band Honeybus. I just have two more albums by this band to post, and both of them are collections of BBC studio sessions.

I had been planning on posting Honeybus's BBC material regardless, but my task was made easier by the released of an official album in early 2023. All the performances here come from that album. 

That means the sound quality is generally excellent, though that's not always the case. There are a couple of dodgy sounding songs that were recorded over the radio by fans, but I've put those only as bonus tracks. You will see "[Edit]" in the titles of some songs, due to the usual problem of BBC DJs talking over the music. As I usually do, I used the audio editing program UVR5 to wipe the talking but keep the underlying music.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I consider Honeybus to be a very underrated band. A big problem they had was that their record company only let them release one studio album in the seven years they were together (!), but they had three singer-songwriters, so many songs fell by the wayside. Thank God for these BBC recordings that save many songs from being totally lost. I've included some of those otherwise unreleased songs on the stray tracks albums, but I'm including them here too so one can have all their BBC recordings in one place.

I have an unusually large number of bonus tracks this time. Three of them are nice otherwise unreleased songs that are bonus tracks due to poor sound quality: "Goin' Back," "Looking Down," and "Warwick Town." "Goin' Back" is a cover of the well-known Carole King song. Unfortunately, not only does it have rough sound quality, there also was a big chunk in the middle that was missing, even though it was included on the recent official BBC album. The cut happened during the middle of the second verse. I tried to fix this, somewhat, by patching in an instrumental version of the rest of that verse, taken from elsewhere in the song. But still, there was nothing I could do to fix the missing vocals.

Two more of the bonus tracks actually sound fine: "Girl of Independent Means" and "Maxine's Parlour." The only reason they're bonus tracks is because the band played those songs twice for the BBC, and the versions aren't that different.

This album is 43 minutes long.

01 [Do I Figure] In Your Life (Honeybus)
02 Like an Old Time Movie [Edit] (Honeybus)
03 Arise Sir Henry (Honeybus)
04 Maxine's Parlour (Honeybus)
05 I Can't Let Maggie Go (Honeybus)
06 She Comes to Me [Edit] (Honeybus)
07 Ain't That Just Bonnie for You [Edit] (Honeybus)
08 Francoise [Edit] (Honeybus)
09 Scarlet Lady [Edit] (Honeybus)
10 How Long [Edit] (Honeybus)
11 Black Mourning Band (Honeybus)
12 She Sold Blackpool Rock (Honeybus)
13 Girl of Independent Means (Honeybus)
14 Incredibly Bad (Honeybus)
15 Would You Believe (Honeybus)

Girl of Independent Means [First Version] [Edit] (Honeybus)
Goin' Back [Edit] (Honeybus)
Looking Down (Honeybus)
Maxine's Parlour [1967 Version] [Edit] (Honeybus)
Warwick Town (Honeybus)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/cTgfin9s

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/7kHKjMnb7Xxpxgp/file 

I don't know when or where the cover photo is from, but I'm guessing it's from 1967 due to their "square" clothes. (It can't be from earlier, since the band was formed in early 1967.)

Honeybus - Proof Enough - Non-Album Tracks (1972-1977)

First off, I'm happy to report that the previous Honeybus stray tracks album I had posted - "Broken Wings" - had been banned here, but now it has been unbanned. With this blog, I don't get told any details why something is banned, other than it's a copyright problem. But with YouTube, they'll tell the exact song or songs causing the problem. So I tried uploading that album to YouTube and discovered that just one song was the problem, "Delighted to See You." And luckily that was just a demo, and I'd posted the studio version on the earlier stray tracks album "I Can't Let Maggie Go." So I reposted that album without that one song, and it hasn't been flagged again.

Here's the link to that one again, in case you missed it due to the quick banning:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2023/07/honeybus-broken-wings-various-songs.html

Now, moving on to this album... This is the fourth and last Honeybus stray tracks album. That's pretty remarkable when you consider they only released one album, "Story," in 1970, when they were together. (A second album, "Recital," was supposed to be released in 1972, but the record company kept it in the vaults for several decades.)

The first nine songs here were recorded in 1972, probably during the "Recital" sessions. Those all were only released much later, on the "She Flies like a Bird" anthology. The last three songs are technically solo singles from band members. Two are from Pete Dello and one is from Ray Cane. But I read in an interview that pretty much all solo works by Honeybus members were actually recorded with other guys in Honeybus, so I'm assuming that's the case here too.

Unfortunately, the commercial prospects of Honeybus, which were never that strong to begin with, slowly faded out in the 1970s. Even their solo efforts petered out. The last thing I could find was the A-side of a single from 1977. Pete Dello left the music industry in the mid-1970s and became a music teacher. The band's other main singer-songwriter, Ray Kane, eventually released some more music in the 2000s, but that's beyond the scope of these albums.

This album is 39 minutes long.

01 Music (Honeybus)
02 Madam, Chairman of the Committee (Honeybus)
03 In the End Is My Beginning (Honeybus)
04 Jug of Water (Honeybus)
05 Proof Enough (Honeybus)
06 Like Me like You Used to Do (Honeybus)
07 Lovely Ladies 'n' Things (Honeybus)
08 Caterina (Honeybus)
09 Slow Rock (Honeybus)
10 Working Class Man (Red Herring [Pete Dello & Honeybus])
11 Tattered Robe (Magenta [Pete Dello & Honeybus])
12 The Losing Game (Ray Cane & Honeybus) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/CB2e5DED

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/q5eL92wDiIE1scT/file

Photos of Honeybus are few and far between. All I know about this one is that it's from the early 1970s instead of the late 1960s.

Honeybus - Broken Wings - Non-Album Tracks (1970-1972)

Now that some missing songs have been found, I can continue with more Honeybus. Here's the third stray tracks album by them.

As I've mentioned previously, it's a crying shame how badly this band was treated by their record company. They wrote lots of great songs, but very few of them were released at the time. As a result, their legacy is really underappreciated. Consider that, of all the songs here, only three of them would have been publicly available at the time. "She Is the Female to My Soul" was an obscure 1972 A-side, and "Fighting for Peace" and "For Where Have You Been" were even more obscure B-sides. Adding to the insult, if I were to pick an A-side out of all these songs, "She Is the Female to My Soul" would have been near the bottom of my list.

At least these songs are finally available after all these years. The first three songs were only officially released two months ago as I write this in July 2023. They come from an official BBC compilation. They might be my favorite three songs here. One of them, "Melinda," has "[Edit]" in the title due to the usual problem of having to edit out a BBC DJ who talked over the music.

As with the previous stray tracks album, a number of songs here are technically credited to individual band members, but in fact are Honeybus tracks, since all the band members played on them. This is due to the record company giving up on the band (after releasing a Honeybus album in 1970, called "Story"), leading to singer-songwriters Colin Hare and Pete Dello to release their own solo albums in 1971. None of these songs are from those albums. Both of them ("March Hare" by Hare and "Into Your Ears" by Dello) are very good, and should be owned by any Honeybus fans. These are songs recorded around the same time and latest released as bonus tracks.

Although these songs were recorded between 1970 and 1972, they sound more like 1968 or 1969 tracks to me. The band was still capturing that magical, innocent late 1960s sound, and were seemingly impervious to musical trends. They remind me of the Left Banke, with poppy songs that used a lot of stringed instruments.

This album is 38 minutes long.

01 Follow the Plan (Honeybus)
02 Melinda [Edit] (Honeybus)
03 Broken Wings (Honeybus)
04 Fighting for Peace (Colin Hare & Honeybus)
05 She Is the Female to My Soul (Honeybus)
06 For Where Have You Been (Honeybus)
07 Hold Up, Fold Up (Pete Dello & Honeybus)
08 Texas Candy (Pete Dello & Honeybus)
09 Didn't I Tell You (Colin Hare & Honeybus)
10 Seek Not in the Wide World (Colin Hare & Honeybus)
11 Hear Me Only (Honeybus)
12 Texas Gold (Honeybus)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/RiaSvqCU

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/CYCecsp6i9hgNF8/file 

NOTE: This album got flagged due to a copyright issue with one song, a demo version of "Delighted to See You." That's not a big loss, since a different version is on the album I posted here, "I Can't Let Maggie Go." So I've reposted this without that song.

I've only found a few good photos of this band. So I had to resort to a black and white one here. But I used the program Palette to colorize them, and I'm really impressed at the result. I only did a little bit of touch-up work with Photoshop. I'm not sure what year this photo is from, but I'd guess 1968 or 1969. 

I took the style of the band name at the top from the artwork for one of their singles.

Honeybus - Taking the Heart Out of Love - Non-Album Tracks (1969-1970)

I've been wanting to post this album for a long time. I posted the first Honeybus stray tracks album back in early 2021. This is the second. I had to hold back on posting this one because there were a few key songs I couldn't find anywhere. Happily, a couple of months ago (as I write this in July 2023), an official BBC compilation album was released, containing those missing songs. So now a key logjam has been broken. Not only can I post this album, but I have two more stray tracks albums after this, plus two BBC albums.

As I mentioned in my previous Honeybus, this British band really got screwed by their record company. Despite having a Top Ten hit in 1968 with "I Can't Let Maggie Go," they weren't allowed to record an album at the time. They were coming up with lots of good, original songs, but only were able to release a few on singles - only five singles from 1967 to 1969, and none in 1970. 

That means there are only two songs officially released by Honeybus at the time, the first two, which were the A- and B-sides of a single. Plus, the last song was recorded in 1970, but not released as a B-side until 1972. However, there are four more singles here, because different band members released "solo" singles in 1969. I put "solo" in quote marks because I read an interview with a band member who said all these solo projects were really Honeybus recordings. It seems the record company didn't think the Honeybus name would help sales, so they wanted releases under different names. 

So, in addition to all those A- and B-sides of various "solo" singles (tracks 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 13), we have four more songs that were recorded for the BBC. Those are tracks 9 through 12. As I mentioned above, these were recently officially released, and they generally sound very good. It's such a shame that the record company wouldn't let them release an album, or more singles, because these are very good songs. In fact, I'd say "Walking Aphrodisiac" in particular is one of my favorites from them.

As usual with BBC recordings from this time, there's the occasional problem of BBC DJs talking over the music. That happened with two songs here, "Too Long" and "You Live Good Life." Also as usual, I wiped that talking using the UVR5 audio editing program.

This album is 41 minutes long.

01 She Sold Blackpool Rock (Honeybus)
02 Would You Believe (Honeybus)
03 Mary, Mary (Kelly [Jim Kelly & Honeybus])
04 Reverend Richard Bailey (Kelly [Jim Kelly & Honeybus])
05 I'm a Gambler (Lace [Pete Dello & Honeybus])
06 Go Away (Lace [Pete Dello & Honeybus])
07 Taking the Heart Out of Love (Magic Valley [Pete Dello & Honeybus])
08 Uptight Basil (Magic Valley [Pete Dello & Honeybus])
09 My Suzanne (Honeybus)
10 Too Long [Edit] (Honeybus)
11 Walking Aphrodisiac (Honeybus)
12 You Live Good Life [Edit] (Honeybus)
13 Grannie, Grannie (Colin Hare & Honeybus)
14 The Right to Choose (Honeybus)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/LHmCxLvs 

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/sft64VajemcwYg2/file

As with the earlier stray tracks album, I used some of the band's singles covers to help with making the cover here. In particular, I used the text and colors for the top section from the single "Girl of Independent Means." But I changed the text to "Taking the Heart Out of Love." But the lower half is a photo I found from a different source.

Honeybus - I Can't Let Maggie Go - Non-Album Tracks (1966-1968)

I have to admit that, until recently, I wasn't that into the band Honeybus. I had their double album anthology "She Flies like a Bird," and I figured that was all the music from them that I would want. But I was wrong. If you've been following this blog, you may have noticed that I've been posting a lot of BBC material. Searching for that helped me reappraise Honeybus, because they have lots of good songs that were never officially released, and only exist as BBC recordings. This album will help show what I mean.

It's really shocking how badly Honeybus was treated by their record company. They existed from 1967 to 1973, and had a big Top Ten hit in Britain with "I Can't Let Maggie Go." They were critically acclaimed, and had three talented singer-songwriters in the band. Yet, despite that, the record company only allowed them to record ONE studio album, "Story," in 1970. And in terms of archival material, they continue to be badly served, with many quality songs still unreleased.

So thank God for the BBC! Luckily, this band was well liked by the BBC and had quite a few sessions with them despite only having that one hit. As a result, versions of many of their unreleased songs exist, usually with very good sound quality. This album has seven songs where the only version that exists is the BBC one. All of them have been officially released. They're all good songs, and the band might have had much more success if they'd been able to use them to flesh out a studio album at the time.

Four songs from the BBC suffer from the usual problem of BBC DJs talking over the music. And, as usual, I edited the songs to fix that.Those are the ones with "[Edit]" in their titles.

The first two songs are also rare. They are the A- and B-Sides to the only single by the Anteeeks. (Yes, that's with three e's in a row.) This band was basically an early version of Honeybus, though there were some personnel differences. Crucially, it contained Pete Dello. He wrote both songs. He also wrote Honeybus's one hit, "I Can't Let Maggie Go." Plus, he wrote "(Do I Figure) In Your Life." It wasn't a hit at the time, though it should have been. It has since been covered by many artists, including Dave Berry, Joe Cocker, Ian Matthews, and Paul Carrack.

But the band had a lot more than just two good songs. This album is solid through and through, in my opinion. I believe all the songs are originals. Since the band didn't release any albums in this time period, the remaining songs not mentioned above are eight songs released as the A- and B-sides of singles.

There's one bonus track here, "Lilly." I don't know where it's from exactly, but it's an unreleased studio version. Sadly, the sound quality isn't up to snuff with the others, thus the bonus track status.

I really like this album. If you haven't tried Honeybus, this is an excellent place to start, since it contains their two best known songs. Right after the time period here, the end of 1968, the band would suffer a blow when their main songwriter at the time, Pete Dello, would leave the band. But here, they were firing on all cylinders. It's a real shame that they didn't have more success and that they weren't even allowed to release a full album.

This album is 45 minutes long, not including the bonus track.

UPDATE: On July 12, 2023, I updated the mp3 download file. I removed one song, "Goin' Back." I'll be adding that to a BBC collection instead. I added one song, "Incredibly Bad," which actually is very good. I also updated some other songs with better sourcing.

01 I Don't Want You (Anteeeks [Pete Dello & Ray Cane])
02 Ball and Chain (Anteeeks [Pete Dello & Ray Cane])
03 Delighted to See You (Honeybus)
04 The Breaking Up Scene (Honeybus)
05 [Do I Figure] In Your Life (Honeybus)
06 Throw My Love Away (Honeybus)
07 Arise Sir Henry (Honeybus)
08 Like an Old Time Movie [Edit] (Honeybus)
09 Maxine's Parlour (Honeybus)
10 Ain't That Just Bonnie for You [Edit] (Honeybus)
11 Francoise [Edit] (Honeybus)
12 She Comes to Me [Edit] (Honeybus)
13 I Can't Let Maggie Go (Honeybus)
14 Tender Are the Ashes (Honeybus)
15 Girl of Independent Means (Honeybus)
16 How Long [Single Version] (Honeybus)
17 Incredibly Bad (Honeybus)

Lilly (Honeybus)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/KwNczSPP 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/uhLZjba5rmvZMpn/file

Normally, for an album like this, I prefer to have something that shows the members of the band. I went looking to see what the cover of the "I Can't Let Maggie Go" single looked like. There were several versions, and one had the photo you see above, with a literal interpretation of the song title. It's corny, but I like it as an example of the style of the era, so I used that one. I'll be posting other Honeybus albums where I can show what the band members looked like.