Labi Siffre - BBC Sessions, Volume 5: In Concert, Hexagon Theatre, Reading, Britain, 5-14-1989

This is quite a surprise. I thought I'd posted all the BBC material that exists for singer-songwriter Labi Siffre. But a couple of days ago, an anonymous helper sent me this concert. To say it has been hard to find is an understatement. Once I knew the details about its existence, I did an Internet search and only found one mention of it. So hopefully this will bring it back into circulation.

Siffre had a few hits in Britain in the early 1970s, but his music career essentially petered out by the end of that decade. However, in the mid-1980s, he watched a TV documentary about Apartheid in South Africa, and that inspired him to write the song "(Something Inside) So Strong." When it was released in 1987, it went all the way to Number Four in the British singles chart. This gave his career a second wind. He released the album "So Strong" in 1988 (his first since 1975), which contained two more minor hits, "Listen to the Voices" and "Nothin's Gonna Change."

Be aware that the music is quite different from his 1970s stuff. That was very acoustic based. Whereas his late 1980s sound was more typical of that era, with a full band, synths, heavy drums, and so forth. In fact, I was surprised (and disappointed) that he seemed to entirely turn his back on his earlier music. He didn't play any of his earlier hits. His new music isn't bad, but it is a big change. One thing that remained consistent though was his interest in socially progressive topics in his lyrics, like fighting racism.

This album is an hour and 13 minutes long.

01 Lovers (Labi Siffre)
02 Listen to the Voices (Labi Siffre)
03 Schooldays (Labi Siffre)
04 Hard Road (Labi Siffre)
05 And the Wind Blows (Labi Siffre)
06 All I Wanna Do (Labi Siffre)
07 Never Let You Down (Labi Siffre)
08 How Sweet It Is [To Be Loved by You] (Labi Siffre)
09 I Will Always Love You (Labi Siffre)
10 talk (Labi Siffre)
11 With a Little Love (Labi Siffre)
12 Snowman (Labi Siffre)
13 talk (Labi Siffre)
14 Nothin's Gonna Change (Labi Siffre)
15 I'm Alright (Labi Siffre)
16 Hard Road [Second Version] (Labi Siffre)
17 [Something Inside] So Strong (Labi Siffre)
18 Home (Labi Siffre)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/vEHzj6ZQ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/DE75rjUpf71GXyE/file

The cover photo is from the Prince's Trust concert in London in 1987. I've posted that concert here. It features Siffre performing one song, "(Something Inside) So Strong."

Labi Siffre - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: In Concert, Paris Theatre, London, Britain, 12-13-1975

Here's the fourth BBC album I'm posting from singer-songwriter Labi Siffre. It's also the last one, because I don't know of any more material. Like "Volume 2" in this series, it's a short BBC concert. But that previous one was in a solo acoustic format, and this one was with a band.

Siffre released two albums in 1975, "Remember My Song" and "Happy." Unfortunately though, neither of them contained hits, so they didn't sell very well. It seems he got frustrated at this lack of success and didn't put out another album until 1988. However, one of the songs on "Remember My Song" was called "I Got The..." It was just an obscure album track until 1999, when it was sampled by Eminem and became the musical basis of his big hit "My Name Is." It's too bad that one wasn't performed in this concert. 

Generally speaking, Siffre played songs from his two 1975 albums, avoiding his earlier hits. So it's a nice complement to the earlier albums in this series, due to very little overlap. Too bad it's pretty short, though.

The music here is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent.  

This album is 28 minutes long. 

01 Love a Love a Love a Love a Love (Labi Siffre)
02 You Hurt Me (Labi Siffre)
03 Doctor, Doctor (Labi Siffre)
04 talk (Labi Siffre)
05 Starride to Nowhere (Labi Siffre)
06 talk (Labi Siffre)
07 Sadie and the Devil (Labi Siffre)
08 A Simple Love (Labi Siffre)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/EjkWpVN8

alternate:

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

The cover photo is from a concert in Germany in 1984. 

Labi Siffre - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: 1972-1976

Here's another BBC album by singer-songwriter Labi Siffre. Like the first one, it's a collection of BBC studio sessions.

I've mentioned multiple times that I have a musical friend who has been sending me some music from the BBC radio show "Top of the Pops" that hasn't been easily available to the general public. This is another case of that. Every single song here is from that radio show. Volume 1 in this series was also entirely made up of songs from that show. But while the contents of that one made it into an obscure "grey market" bootleg, most of this I don't think has even been available by bootleg until now. 

Generally speaking, the "Top of the Pops" show switched from mostly unique, live performances to just playing the record versions around 1972 or 1973. But sometimes there were still live performances after that. I double checked, and that was the case with a few of Siffre's songs, as tracks 9 and 10 are from 1975, and track 11 is from 1976.

Some of the songs here were not released by Siffre in any form - nice covers of the classic songs "Let It Be," "Simple Man," and "Fire and Rain." 

In my opinion, Siffre is really underrated. I have several theories for this. One, he was openly gay back in the 1970s, as well as being Black and politically outspoken, and I'm sure that created difficulties for him. Two, it seems he didn't tour much, especially after the early 1970s. Three, his music career basically came to a stop for a long time, because he didn't release any albums between 1975 and 1988. He did have a surprise late hit in 1987 with "(Something Inside) So Strong," but he went back into a low profile not much after that. But at least we still have musical recordings like this.

His last "Top of the Pops" performance was from 1976. However, I still have one more volume to post, consisting of a 1975 BBC concert.

This album is 43 minutes long. 

UPDATE: On April 6, 2026, I updated the mp3 download file. I added one song I'd previously missed, a duet with Lulu on the Bacharach-David classic "This Guy's in Love with You." It comes from Lulu's BBC TV show in 1975.

01 Let It Be (Labi Siffre)
02 Simple Man (Labi Siffre)
03 Watch Me (Labi Siffre)
04 Gimme Some More (Labi Siffre)
05 Love, Oh Love, Oh Love (Labi Siffre)
06 My Song (Labi Siffre)
07 If You Have Your Faith (Labi Siffre)
08 Entertainment Value (Labi Siffre)
09 This Guy's in Love with You (Labi Siffre & Lulu)
10 Another Year (Labi Siffre)
11 Fire and Rain (Labi Siffre)
12 Starride to Nowhere (Labi Siffre)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/KuorTDcZ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/js02g7EIpAxmqN9/file

I don't know anything about the cover photo. But it looks to be from the early 1970s. 

Labi Siffre - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: In Concert, Paris Theatre, London, Britain, 11-18-1972

Here's another BBC album by singer-songwriter Labi Siffre. This is a short concert from 1972. It's solo acoustic in format.

I mentioned in my write-up for "Volume 1" that Siffre is an unusually talented guitar player for singer-songwriters of that era. That really comes through here, with it just being him and his acoustic guitar. He has a lot of nice classical and/or jazzy touches. It's too bad though that he didn't play either of his British hits that had been released by the time of this concert, "It Must Be Love" and "Crying, Laughing, Loving, Lying."

This concert was pretty short, at only 26 minutes. So I looked around to see if there were any other live performances from this time. I only found one that wasn't lip-synced, from an appearance on the BBC TV show "The Harry Secombe Show" in December 1972. So that one song, "My Song," is added on at the end as kind of a quasi-bonus track. That song was later heavily sampled for the Kanye West song "I Wonder," including some of Siffre's vocals. 

Note that there appears to have been another BBC concert by Siffre in 1971. Unfortunately, I can't find all of it. His official YouTube account has been posting songs from it, very slowly. Over the past two years, they've posted six songs, with the latest one just from a couple of days ago. I hope they'll keep going until they've posted the whole thing. Although it's frustrating that all the banter and/or applause has been edited out. If and when I get all of that, I'll probably post that, and renumber the BBC albums that come after, like this one. If anyone does have all of that one, please let me know.

Everything here is officially unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. 

This album is 30 minutes long. 

01 talk (Labi Siffre)
02 Fool Me a Good Night (Labi Siffre)
03 Feeling I Got (Labi Siffre)
04 talk (Labi Siffre)
05 Love Song for Someone (Labi Siffre)
06 talk (Labi Siffre)
07 Down (Labi Siffre)
08 talk (Labi Siffre)
09 Children of Children (Labi Siffre)
10 talk (Labi Siffre)
11 Hotel Room Song (Labi Siffre)
12 talk (Labi Siffre)
13 Odds and Ends (Labi Siffre)
14 My Song (Labi Siffre)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/bGLvQMpi

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/dOIQikxDckPsy13/file

The cover photo shows Siffre on the "Harry Secombe Show" in December 1972. It was taken during the performance of the last song here.

Labi Siffre - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1970-1972

When it comes to posting music at this blog, I have a lot of irons in the fire these days, different projects I'm working on. Probably the biggest and oldest one so far is posting BBC recordings. But more specifically, I particularly want to post the BBC recordings that seem to be currently unavailable to the public. I can do that sometimes thanks to an anonymous musical friend who has lots of extremely rare recordings of the "Top of the Pops" BBC radio show. That's the main source for this album, featuring British singer-songwriter Labi Siffre.

For many years, the only thing I knew about Siffre was his version of the song "It Must Be Love." This song he wrote was a hit for him in 1971, almost reaching the Top Ten in Britain. But I was much more familiar with the cover version by Madness, which made it all the way to Number Four in Britain in 1981, and made the Top Forty in the U.S. as well. But there's a lot more to him than just that one song. For instance, he had an even bigger hit much later, "(Something Inside) So Strong," which made it to Number Four in Britain in 1987, and he had two other hits in that country. Also, one 1975 song he did, "I Got The...", was sampled by Eminem's hit single "My Name Is," becoming an essential part of that song. But more than that, he put out many solid albums in the 1970s. He also had a secret weapon of being a much better guitar player than most other singer-songwriters from that time.

If you want to know more about him, here's his Wikipedia entry:

Labi Siffre - Wikipedia 

Here also is a review of his 1972 album, written decades later, that actually serves as a much better summary of his entire career than the Wikipedia entry:

Labi Siffre: Crying Laughing Loving Lying Album Review | Pitchfork

The music on this album comes entirely from "Top of the Pops" studio sessions. I believe that everything here has been very rare to the public until now, and it's all thanks to that anonymous friend I mentioned above. (I did recently notice there's one "grey market" release of these performances, but I couldn't find it so that wasn't my source.) Siffre put out his first album in 1970, and started appearing on the Top of the Pops radio show before the end of that year. 

As you can see from the song list below, 12 out of the 15 songs here were edited, with "[Edit]" in their titles. That's due to BBC DJ Brian Matthew, who annoyingly talked over the beginnings and ends to many songs, as he usually did back then. I got rid of that talking while keeping the music, thanks to the UVR5 audio editing program.

One nice thing about BBC studio sessions back in that era was that sometimes the musical acts would perform songs they didn't put on their albums. That's the case here. The songs "If Only You Were Mine," "You've Got a Friend," and "In the Morning" appear to be exclusive to these BBC sessions.

This album is a 42 minutes long. 

01 Make My Day (Labi Siffre)
02 Too Late [Edit] (Labi Siffre)
03 Rocking Chair [Edit] (Labi Siffre)
04 Thank Your Lucky Star [Edit] (Labi Siffre)
05 I Love You [Edit] (Labi Siffre)
06 A Feeling I Got [Edit] (Labi Siffre)
07 When You Find You Need a Friend [Edit] (Labi Siffre)
08 A Little More Line [Edit] (Labi Siffre)
09 If Only You Were Mine [Edit] (Labi Siffre)
10 Oh Me, Oh My, Mr. City Goodbye [Edit] (Labi Siffre)
11 It Must Be Love [Edit] (Labi Siffre)
12 You've Got a Friend (Labi Siffre)
13 'Cos You're You (Labi Siffre)
14 Crying, Laughing, Loving, Lying [Edit] (Labi Siffre)
15 In the Morning [Edit] (Labi Siffre)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/pUXPxm2Y

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/8ohepi4RC6RcvcO/file

The cover photo is from an appearance on the "Top of the Pops" BBC TV show (not to be confused with the radio show of the same name) some time in 1972.

Various Artists - Prince's Trust Rock Gala, Wembley Arena, London, Britain, 6-5-1987

I just posted the Prince's Trust concert from 1986. This is the 1987 concert. It's the same basic idea, but many of the songs and performers are different. Both are very worthwhile listens.

Like the 1986 concert, this one started with some newer musical acts. With the benefit of hindsight, some were good choices, and others... not so much (cough cough, Curiosity Killed the Cat and Go West, cough cough). But if you don't like all the artists, that's okay, because none of the first few acts lasted more than a single song.

There were fewer big name artists in this concert than the 1986 one. Plus, the entire concert was about half an hour shorter. (If, in fact, this is the whole thing - I'm not entirely sure.) But on the other hand, the finale was probably even more impressive. I'll get to that in a minute.

First though, I want to point out that, like the 1986 concert, for many of the songs, there was a backing band made up of many stars. I don't know which songs exactly, because I can't find the full video of this concert on YouTube. But, for instance, when Ben E. King sang his song, his backing band included Phil Collins on drums, Midge Ure on rhythm guitar, and Eric Clapton on lead guitar.

But the big deal was the finale. In the 1986, the biggest star was ex-Beatle Paul McCartney. But the 1987 concert outdid that by having two ex-Beatles performing together: George Harrison and Ringo Starr! Harrison's appearance was a particularly big deal because he hadn't performed in concert since his 1974 tour (other than a couple of brief appearances in the finales of other artist's concerts). 

I randomly stumbled across a description of the concert's finale in a 2015 article in Guitar World Magazine. Here it is:

"On June 5, 1987, three of the five original musicians who appeared on the classic Beatles 'White Album' track 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' reunited to perform the song live at the Prince's Trust Rock Gala in London's Wembley Arena. George Harrison, Ringo Starr, and Eric Clapton were joined in an all-star U.K. band, including Elton John, Phil Collins, Jeff Lynne, Ray Cooper, and... well, if you're wondering who that understandably happy bassist is, it's Mark King from Level 42. Harrison, Starr, and Clapton last performed the song live 16 years earlier at the Concert for Bangladesh in New York City. What most interesting about this performance is the fact that A., the normally Strat-happy Clapton is playing a beautiful Gibson Les Paul, just as he did on the original 1968 recording, and B., the also-Strat-happy Harrison joins Clapton in the extended guitar solo at the end of the song. The two guitarists trade solos and feed off each other's energy, and their intertwining lines are often pretty damn cool."

In addition to that, someone, I'm guessing Clapton, played a guitar solo for "With a Little Help from My Friends," a song that normally lacked any solo. It's a shame that Jeff Lynne apparently didn't sing any of his Electric Light Orchestra hits. But he sang backing vocals on all three of the Beatles songs at the end. Given that Lynne is a huge Beatles fan, this must have been the closest he ever got to a fantasy of being a part of the Beatles, getting to sing with Harrison and Starr, with Clapton on guitar for good measure!

This album is an hour and 45 minutes long.

01 Running in the Family (Level 42 with Eric Clapton)
02 If I Was (Midge Ure)
03 Misfit (Curiosity Killed the Cat)
04 Don't Look Down (Go West)
05 Invisible (Alison Moyet)
06 Through the Barricades (Spandau Ballet)
07 [Something Inside] So Strong (Labi Siffre)
08 Run to You (Bryan Adams)
09 Hearts on Fire (Bryan Adams)
10 Somebody (Bryan Adams)
11 talk (Dave Edmunds & Bryan Adams)
12 The Wanderer (Dave Edmunds & Bryan Adams)
13 talk (Eric Clapton)
14 Wonderful Tonight (Eric Clapton)
15 Behind the Mask (Eric Clapton)
16 Stand by Me (Ben E. King)
17 talk (Phil Collins)
18 Reach Out, I'll Be There - I Can't Help Myself - Same Old Song (Phil Collins & Paul Young)
19 You've Lost That Loving Feeling (Phil Collins & Paul Young)
20 talk (Elton John)
21 Your Song (Elton John)
22 Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting (Elton John)
23 talk (George Harrison & Ringo Starr)
24 While My Guitar Gently Weeps (George Harrison & Eric Clapton with Ringo Starr & Jeff Lynne)
25 Here Comes the Sun (George Harrison with Ringo Starr & Jeff Lynne)
26 With a Little Help from My Friends (Ringo Starr with George Harrison, Eric Clapton & Jeff Lynne)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/W4HtwzDd

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/6mOchiVwGJ0ZR4P/file

I searched the Internet pretty thoroughly for a color version of the group photo from this concert. All I could find was a black and white version. I tinted it blue. If anyone can find the color version, please let me know so I can upgrade this. There are way too many people in the photo for me to try to make a colorized version.