Peter, Paul & Mary - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: Rhythm on Two, Southport Theatre, Southport, Britain, 3-1983

Here we go again, with another album discovered via musical associate Progsprog, leading to another renumbering. This is a 1983 BBC concert by the folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary.

I previously posted a BBC concert they did all the way back in 1965. That is now getting renamed to "BBC Sessions, Volume 1." Here's the link to that:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2023/05/peter-paul-mary-bbc-in-concert-tonight.html

Peter, Paul and Mary were very popular in the 1960s. But they broke up in 1970, and stayed broke up throughout the 1970s, though with occasional reunions for special occasions. They decided to regroup permanently starting in 1981. They stayed together until the 2000s, when health issues finally got to them. 

At this point, they were still going strong musically, though most of their songs were ones they'd help make popular in the 1960s. However, I find it strange the concert ended with a version of "Leavin' on a Jet Plane," since they'd performed it earlier in concert and they had lots of other classic songs to play. But it seems that's what they did. 

Note that the timing of this concert is just an educated guess. The BBC website merely says it's from 1983. I tried to figure out an exact date. The best I could come up with was a mention in a newspaper article that the trio began a short European tour in Paris, France, on the last day of February, 1983. So the odds are good this took place in March. 

The music is unreleased. (It appears to be from a BBC TV show originally). The sound quality is excellent. 

This album is 57 minutes long. 

01 If I Had a Hammer (Peter, Paul & Mary)
02 talk (Peter, Paul & Mary)
03 Such Is Love (Peter, Paul & Mary)
04 Blowin' in the Wind (Peter, Paul & Mary)
05 This Land Is Your Land (Peter, Paul & Mary)
06 A' Soalin' (Peter, Paul & Mary)
07 Puff, the Magic Dragon (Peter, Paul & Mary)
08 There but for Fortune (Peter, Paul & Mary)
09 Leavin' on a Jet Plane (Peter, Paul & Mary)
10 Music Speaks Louder than Words (Peter, Paul & Mary)
11 Don't Think Twice, It's Alright (Peter, Paul & Mary)
12 Well, Well, Well (Peter, Paul & Mary)
13 Sweet Survivor (Peter, Paul & Mary)
14 Ballad of Spring Hill [Spring Hill Disaster] (Peter, Paul & Mary)
15 Power (Peter, Paul & Mary)
16 Day Is Done (Peter, Paul & Mary)
17 Leavin' on a Jet Plane [Second Version] (Peter, Paul & Mary)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Qq9HS5Fq

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/MLf9p9XZYMWOwZZ/file

The cover photo is from a concert at the Casino de Paris, in Paris, France, on February 28, 1983.

A Conspiracy of Hope, Giants Stadium, East Rutherford, NJ, 6-15-1986, Part 1 - John Eddie, Third World, the Hooters, and Peter, Paul & Mary

I've recently had a focus on posting big festival concerts, since those often seem to be overlooked. The next one up is the "A Conspiracy of Hope" concert from 1986. 

There actually was a short tour of six concerts across the United States in June 1986. But this one in East Rutherford, New Jersey (near New York City), the last one of the tour, was special. The six shows featured U2, Sting, Bryan Adams, Peter Gabriel, Lou Reed, Joan Baez, and the Neville Brothers, with occasional additions or reductions in the line-up from show to show. But this final show of the tour was much longer, with many more big names. It was almost like a lesser version of Live Aid, which took place the year earlier. 

The cause this time was the non-profit group Amnesty International, which supports human rights across the world, with an emphasis on using public pressure to get governments to release political prisoners. The concerts had more of a focus on raising awareness than raising money. You can read the Wikipedia page about the Conspiracy of Hope tour here:

A Conspiracy of Hope - Wikipedia

And the Wikipedia page on Amnesty International here:

Amnesty International - Wikipedia 

Luckily for us, the entire concert (from noon to 11 P.M.) was professionally recorded and broadcast on MTV at the time. The last three hours were also broadcast on network TV. Furthermore, the Westwood One radio network broadcast it live. That's why bootlegs of the entire show exist. (I don't know of any good ones from the other five shows on the tour. I actually attended the first one, in San Francisco, as one of my first concerts.)

I'm presenting all of it in chronological order. There's enough for seven hours of music, which I've broken into five albums. I believe it includes all the songs that were played. However, there was a lot of dead air between acts, as well as introductions and speeches that got cut. For instance, I learned from the Wikipedia article above that there were speeches by Senator Bill Bradley, Robert de Niro, Christopher Reeve, Michael J. Fox, Daryl Hannah, and Muhammad Ali that are not included here (they weren't on the bootleg either).

Not surprisingly, the concert started with some lesser known acts and worked up to the better known ones. The ones on this first album make up a very diverse group. John Eddie had just released his debut album, and had one hit on it, "Jungle Boy." That turned out to be his only hit. (I didn't include his first song because the first half of it was missing.) Third World is a Jamaican reggae band that is still in existence as I write this in 2023. They'd had some poppy crossover hits in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The Hooters, an American rock band, just had two hits in the US the year before, "All You Zombies" and "And We Danced." They wouldn't have much more success in the US, but they'd have more hits in Europe. Finally, there's Peter, Paul and Mary, the folk music trio that found their greatest fame in the 1960s.

I did a lot of editing to improve the sound quality. Most importantly, I thought the lead vocals were consistently low in the mix, so I boosted them for ALL the songs in the entire concert using the audio editing program UVR5. On this album, the song "No Easy Walk to Freedom" had a major glitch that I fixed, which is why it's the only one here with "[Edit]" in the title.

This album is an hour and 17 minutes long.

001 Waste Me (John Eddie)
002 Pretty Little Rebel (John Eddie)
003 Jungle Boy (John Eddie)
004 Now That We Found Love (Third World)
005 96 Degrees in the Shade (Third World)
006 You're Playing Us Too Close (Third World)
007 Try Jah Love (Third World)
008 Jah, Jah Children Moving Up (Third World)
009 talk (Third World)
010 Day by Day (Hooters)
011 Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (Hooters)
012 Where Do the Children Go (Hooters)
013 Blood from a Stone (Hooters)
014 talk (Hooters)
015 All You Zombies (Hooters)
016 And We Danced (Hooters)
017 If I Had a Hammer (Peter, Paul & Mary)
018 El Salvador (Peter, Paul & Mary)
019 No Easy Walk to Freedom [Edit] (Peter, Paul & Mary)
020 Blowin' in the Wind (Peter, Paul & Mary)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/8dnVuhUM

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/3IHQJShCkeLnYSN/file 

The cover photo comes from this exact concert. Since the artists on this volume aren't big names, I decided to show a photo of the big crowd of over 50,000 people instead.

Peter, Paul & Mary - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: Tonight in Person, London, Britain, 10-4-1965

A few weeks back, a commenter (Sax and Guitar) at this blog said they'd seen a Peter, Paul and Mary BBC concert on YouTube, and it would be a good idea to post the music for it here. I found that video and discovered that it was from back when they were in their prime, and the sound quality is excellent. So here it is.

Chances are, you've heard of the folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary to some degree. But if you haven't, here's the Wikipedia page on them:

Peter, Paul and Mary - Wikipedia 

In 1965, Peter, Paul and Mary were at or near their peak in popularity. But folk music was rapidly getting overtaken by folk-rock that year. Just one year later, musical trends would change drastically, and then change even more drastically in 1967, the year of psychedelia. So this was a great time for a BBC concert.

I don't know much about it, but it seems there was a BBC TV show called "Tonight in Person" that focused on folk music and ran from 1963 to 1967. If anyone has any music from the other shows in this series, please let me know. The show was only half an hour long. This is the combination of two back-to-back episodes, obviously taken from the same concert. The date I've used, October 4, 1965, is actually the date of the first episode. It must have been recorded some time before that, then edited down, but I'm going with this date (for now) since I don't know the actual date of the concert (or the exact location).

It's a solid concert, with no sonic flaws. Peter, Paul and Mary released live albums before this and after this, but there isn't one from around this time period.

This album is 58 minutes long.

UPDATE: On November 11, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. The music is exactly the same. But I found a later volume in this series that I'd missed, so I added "Volume 1" to the title. That meant the cover art and mp3 tags changed too. 

01 When the Ship Comes In (Peter, Paul & Mary)
02 talk (Peter, Paul & Mary)
03 The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face (Peter, Paul & Mary)
04 talk (Peter, Paul & Mary)
05 San Francisco Bay Blues (Peter, Paul & Mary)
06 For Lovin' Me (Peter, Paul & Mary)
07 Jesus Met the Woman (Peter, Paul & Mary)
08 Early Morning Rain (Peter, Paul & Mary)
09 talk (Peter, Paul & Mary)
10 Children Go Where I Send Thee (Peter, Paul & Mary)
11 talk (Peter, Paul & Mary)
12 The Whole Wide World Around (Peter, Paul & Mary)
13 Early in the Morning (Peter, Paul & Mary)
14 The Times They Are a-Changin' (Peter, Paul & Mary)
15 talk (Peter, Paul & Mary)
16 Hangman (Peter, Paul & Mary)
17 talk (Peter, Paul & Mary)
18 In My Dreams (Peter, Paul & Mary)
19 Puff, the Magic Dragon (Peter, Paul & Mary)
20 Rising of the Moon (Peter, Paul & Mary)
21 Great Day (Peter, Paul & Mary)
22 talk (Peter, Paul & Mary)
23 Blowin' in the Wind (Peter, Paul & Mary)
24 If I Had My Way (Peter, Paul & Mary)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Vs7DHptw

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/M7FASBehYnXtx3s/file

I could have gone with a black and white screenshot from this exact concert. But I decided instead to use a color photo from "circa 1965" at an unknown date and location.