The Style Council - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: In Concert, Glastonbury Festival, Worthy Farm, Pilton, Britain, 6-22-1985

Here's yet another renumbering screw-up. I keep finding things mainly through people sharing music via SoulseekQT. Some are on my wanted list, but most I just stumble upon. Like this one. It turned out Paul Weller's 1980s band the Style Council played the annual Glastonbury Festival one time, in 1985. That also happened to be the first year the BBC broadcast some sets from the festival, including this one.

The Style Council never made much of a commercial impact in the U.S., but they were big in Britain. They actually hit their commercial peak the very same month of this concert, when their 1985 album "Our Favourite Shop" reached Number One in the British album chart. So naturally, this concert featured lots of songs from that album. In fact, ten of the songs here were from it.

The sound quality is excellent, as you'd expect from a BBC recording. I don't think any of this has been officially released.

I mentioned above that I had to renumber the Style Council concert that came after this. If you want the renumbered Volume 4, with updated cover art and such, here's the link:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2023/02/the-style-council-bbc-sessions-volume-3.html

This album is 57 minutes long.

01 Internationalists (Style Council)
02 Homebreakers (Style Council)
03 Come to Milton Keynes (Style Council)
04 talk (Style Council)
05 See the Day (Style Council)
06 The Lodgers [Or She Was Only a Shopkeeper's Daughter] (Style Council)
07 The Whole Point II (Style Council)
08 Our Favourite Shop (Style Council)
09 talk (Style Council)
10 Long Hot Summer (Style Council)
11 [When You] Call Me (Style Council)
12 Walls Come Tumbling Down (Style Council)
13 Money-Go-Round (Style Council)
14 Strength of Your Nature (Style Council)
15 It Just Came to Pieces in My Hands (Style Council)
16 The Stand Up Comic's Instructions (Style Council)
17 The Big Boss Groove (Style Council)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/D2qaFFAr

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/tAc2HDURJlO2AZI/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. I happened to find a few. I decided to go with a rather unusual one for variety's sake, instead of just showing a close-up of lead singer Paul Weller or something like that. (Weller is the guy on stage with a raised fist.)

Live Aid - Wembley Stadium, London, Britain, 7-13-1985, Part 1: Status Quo, the Style Council, the Boomtown Rats, Adam Ant, and Ultravox

A couple of days ago, I finished posted the Philadelphia portion of Live Aid. Now it's time for the British portion (with all British or Irish musical acts), which took place in Wembley Stadium, London.

The basic idea was to have the concerts in Philadelphia and London happen simultaneously, with the acts in one city filling in the music-free gaps while the stage was getting prepared for the next act in the other city, and then vice versa. However, there was a five hour time zone difference. So the London concert began at noon, London time, while it was still seven A.M. in Philadelphia. The London concert ran ten hours, ending around 10 P.M., London time. However, only about five and a half hours of that contained music from London, since there was down time between sets and speeches and so on. The Philadelphia concert began at 9 A.M., Philadelphia time, and kept going until 11 P.M., Philadelphia time. However, that meant it ended at about 7 P.M., London time. So the last two hours were in London only.

Anyway, I explained the basics about Live Aid in my write-up for the first album of the Philadelphia show. Please refer to that if you want to know more about the concert in general. There's a Wikipedia link there as well. For this write-up, I'm only going to discuss the acts that played this part of the concert.

The London concert began with Status Quo. They seem to be one of the acts that wasn't liked by organizer Bob Geldof and the other insiders who decided who got to play. But they were so very popular in Britain that they were allowed to play anyway. Geldof even told the band's lead singer Frank Rossi, "It doesn't matter what the f-ck you sound like, just so long as you're there." Rossi says he replied, "Thanks for the f-ucking honesty, Bob."

The next band was the Style Council. They weren't hugely popular on their own, but it was lead singer Paul Weller's successor band to the Jam, which were more popular, and probably explains why they got a time slot.

The Irish band the Boomtown Rats came next. Live Aid organizer Bob Geldof was the lead singer, so it's no surprise they were included. Their popularity was waning at the time, and they broke up a year later.

Adam Ant was next. Ant shared the same manager as the Police, which was led by Sting, and broke up in 1983. Geldof later wrote in a book, "I thought [Ant] was a bit passe. But then so were the Boomtown Rats, and each represented a certain piece of pop history, so I agreed. I also thought that might entice him to encourage Sting, or perhaps all three of the Police." Ant was only allowed to perform one song. Ant was understandably upset when he later found out what Geldof said about him, and criticized the concert. (Geldof was successful in getting Sting to play, but the hoped for Police reunion didn't happen.)

In my opinion, this is a case in point why it was a bad idea that the decision on who to include was left to Geldof and maybe some other insiders. It was too important of an event to be left to the whims of which acts Geldof personally liked. But oh well, obviously what's done is done.

Ultravox was the final act for this part of the London concert. It's not surprising they played, since the band's lead singer was Midge Ure, and he was involved in organizing the concert along with Geldof.

I ran into many of the same problems with the London concert that I had with the Philadelphia concert. For instance, although all the music is here, sometimes the introductions were lost. Luckily, for this part of the show, I do have all of the introductions, but that's sometimes not the case for the other parts. Another problem was that the cheering at the ends of songs was sometimes cut off. So, like I did with the Philadelphia show, I patched in more cheering at times. 

This album is an hour and eight minutes long.

001 talk (Tommy Vance)
002 talk (Richard Skinner)
003 Rockin' All Over the World (Status Quo)
004 talk (Status Quo)
005 Caroline (Status Quo)
006 talk (Status Quo)
007 Don't Waste My Time (Status Quo)
008 talk (Tommy Vance)
009 You're the Best Thing (Style Council)
010 Big Boss Groove (Style Council)
011 talk (Style Council)
012 Internationalists (Style Council)
013 Walls Come Tumbling Down (Style Council)
014 talk (Tommy Vance)
015 I Don't Like Mondays (Boomtown Rats)
016 Drag Me Down (Boomtown Rats)
017 Rat Trap (Boomtown Rats)
018 talk (Harvey Goldsmith)
019 Vive le Rock (Adam Ant)
020 Reap the Wild Wind (Ultravox)
021 Dancing with Tears in My Eyes (Ultravox)
022 One Small Day (Ultravox)
023 Vienna (Ultravox) 

https://www.upload.ee/files/15748937/LveAidJFKStdiumLondnPA__7-13-1985_Part1.zip.html

I kept the same cover art format as for the Philadelphia show, except I replaced "Philadelphia" at the top with "London." I also kept the same format of using four small photos of the acts instead of one big one. In this case, that's Frank Rossi, lead singer of Status Quo, at the top left, Paul Weller, lead singer of the Style Council, at the top right, Bob Geldof, lead singer of the Boomtown Rats, at the bottom left, and Midge Ure, lead singer of Ultravox, at the bottom right. I didn't have room for a fifth act, so Adam Ant got the cut, since he only performed one song.

Paul Weller - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: In Concert, Town and Country Club, London, Britain, 12-5-1990

I recently posted lots of BBC albums from the first two phases of Paul Weller's long music career: his time with the Jam and then his time with the Style Council. Now, I turn my attention to Weller's history with the BBC as a solo artist. 

Paul Weller has smartly used BBC promotion to his advantage for his entire career. He's played a full concert for the BBC once every year or two, and done many, many studio sessions on top of that. I plan on posting all the studio session stuff. But there are so many full concerts that I'm only going to post some of them. Here's the first one.

This concert took place at a critical time in Weller's career. His band the Style Council had petered out towards the end of the 1980s, then broke up when their record company wouldn't even release their last album. After that, the music industry people considered him washed up, and wouldn't give him a new record contract as a solo artist. This hurt his confidence, and he had trouble writing new songs. But he decided to go on tour in 1990 without having any new record to promote, although he did have some new songs. The positive crowd reaction gave him a shot in the arm, and after more touring and recording he was able to restart his career with his first solo album, "Paul Weller," in 1992.

In retrospect, it's strange the record companies ever doubted his musical talent, and his ability to sell records. He had many hits with the Jam and the Style Council, for instance. But, restarting his career at this point, he didn't want to lean on his old material too much and be seen as an "oldies" act. He only had a few new songs he played at this point: "Round and Round," "Kosmos," and "The Strange Museum." So he largely relied on Style Council songs, plus the cover "Work to Do." He only did two songs from his days with the Jam, and relatively obscure ones: "Precious" and "Pity Poor Alfie."

This concert has been officially released on his box set "Weller at the BBC." However, I noticed that there was virtually banter between songs. I noticed there was a bootleg of his exact same concert. I discovered it has the same excellent sound quality, but it did include all the talking. So I've used that version. With more applause too, there are a few more minutes than the official version. 

This album is 58 minutes long.

01 My Ever Changing Moods (Paul Weller)
02 A Man of Great Promise (Paul Weller)
03 Round and Round (Paul Weller)
04 talk (Paul Weller)
05 Kosmos (Paul Weller)
06 Homebreakers (Paul Weller)
07 talk (Paul Weller)
08 The Strange Museum (Paul Weller)
09 The Whole Point II (Paul Weller)
10 Speak like a Child (Paul Weller)
11 Just like Yesterday (Paul Weller)
12 talk (Paul Weller)
13 Precious (Paul Weller)
14 talk (Paul Weller)
15 Headstart for Happiness (Paul Weller)
16 Work to Do (Paul Weller)
17 Pity Poor Alfie (Paul Weller)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/xwq3UEbW

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/KuAEBYgce44YqbB/file

The cover photo was taken at an unknown club in 1990.

Paul Weller - Paul Weller Has Got Soul, Volume 2: The 1970's and 80's

I just posted Volume One of this two volume series. For most of the info on it, please refer to my notes there. In short, British rocker Paul Weller is a huge soul music fan, and I thought it would be fun to compile all the soul covers he's done in his long career. There were so many (as I write this in 2023) that I had to make two big albums.

I think my tastes in soul music are very similar to Weller's. It's my opinion that the soul music was devastated by the rise of disco in the late 1970s, and it's never been as good since then. Weller must have a similar idea, because even though this is billed as covers of the songs from the 1970s and 1980s, everything is from the 1970s except for the last two songs.

As with Volume One, the songs are ordered by when the original versions were released, not by when Weller did his versions. 

It's quite possible that I've missed some cover versions here and there. If you see any that I've missed, please let me know.

Here's the list of the original artists for each song:

01 Move On Up - Curtis Mayfield
02 War - Temptations / Edwin Starr
03 Give Me Just a Little More Time - Chairmen of the Board
04 Hanging On to a Memory - Chairmen of the Board
05 What's Going On - Marvin Gaye
06 Family Affair - Sly & The Family Stone
07 Will It Go Round in Circles - Billy Preston
08 I Wanna Be Where You Are - Michael Jackson
09 If I Could Only Be Sure - Nolan Porter
10 Work to Do - Isley Brothers
11 Hercules - Aaron Neville
12 Stoned Out of My Mind - Chi-Lites
13 The Bottle - Gil Scott-Heron
14 Ain't No Love in the Heart of the City - Bobby 'Blue' Bland
15 Wishing on a Star - Rose Royce;
16 One Nation Under a Groove - Funkadelic
17 Thinking of You - Sister Sledge
18 The Razor's Edge - Defunkt
19 Promised Land - Joe Smooth

And here's the usual song list:

01 Move On Up (Jam)
02 War (Jam)
03 Give Me Just a Little More Time (Jam)
04 Hanging On to a Memory (Style Council)
05 What's Going On (Paul Weller)
06 Family Affair (Paul Weller)
07 Will It Go Round in Circles (Paul Weller with Jools Holland)
08 I Wanna Be Where You Are (Carleen Anderson & Paul Weller)
09 If I Could Only Be Sure (Paul Weller)
10 Work to Do (Paul Weller)
11 Hercules (Paul Weller)
12 Stoned Out of My Mind (Jam)
13 The Bottle (Paul Weller)
14 Ain't No Love in the Heart of the City (Paul Weller)
15 Wishing on a Star (Paul Weller)
16 One Nation Under a Groove (Style Council)
17 Thinking of You (Paul Weller)
18 The Razor's Edge (Style Council)
19 Promised Land (Style Council)

This album is an hour and eight minutes long.

https://www.upload.ee/files/15100060/PaulW_2023_HasGotSoulVolume21970and80_atse.zip.html

Just like Volume One, I had some fun making the album cover heavily based on soul music concert poster art. Here is the exact poster I based this one on.

Paul Weller - Paul Weller Has Got Soul, Volume 1: The 1950's and 60's

Here's something a little different I felt like making. I saw someone on YouTube made a compilation of soul covers by Paul Weller. I thought that was cool, but I also knew that he'd covered way more than a dozen such songs. Even though he's mainly a rock and roll guy, he's been massively influenced by soul music. Heck, his first band the Jam did soul covers in concert even before they got a record contract.

He's done so many covers, in fact, that I had to split this into two very big album. This one deals with his covers of songs that were first done in the 1950s and 1960s. The second one deals with his 1970s and 1980s covers. Rather than order these by the years he recorded them, I thought it would be more interesting to order them by the years the original versions of the songs were first released. One can get a better appreciation over the type of soul music he's liked the most. For instance, this volume only has three songs from the 1950s. But there's a big number of songs from around 1965.

This repeats a lot of stuff I've posted on other stray track albums and such. Look to the mp3 tags for the details. (Note that I put the year the song first came out in the year field, instead of the year Weller released his version.)

Here's a list of the original artists for each song:

01 Don't Go to Strangers - Orioles
02 Fever - Little Willie John
03 Slow Down - Larry Williams
04 Stand by Me - Ben E. King
05 [Love Is like A] Heat Wave - Martha Reeves & the Vandellas
06 My Girl - Temptations
07 Every Little Bit Hurts - Brenda Holloway
08 How Sweet It Is [To Be Loved by You] - Marvin Gaye
09 I Got You [I Feel Good] - James Brown
10 [I'm A] Roadrunner - Jr. Walker & the All Stars
11 Back in My Arms Again - Supremes
12 I Take What I Want - Sam & Dave
13 Meeting [Over] Up Yonder - Impressions
14 Going to a Go Go - Smokey Robinson & the Miracles
15 In the Midnight Hour - Wilson Pickett
16 I Don't Need No Doctor - Ray Charles
17 Things Get Better - Eddie Floyd
18 Sweet Soul Music - Arthur Conley
19 I Heard It through the Grapevine - Gladys Knight & the Pips
20 I'd Rather Go Blind - Etta James
21 Big Bird - Eddie Floyd
22 Abraham, Martin and John - Dion
23 Oh Happy Day - Edwin Hawkins Singers
24 I've Never Found a Girl [Who Loves Me like You Do] - Eddie Floyd
25 What Does It Take [To Win Your Love] - Jr. Walker & the All Stars
26 My Whole World Is Falling Down - William Bell

And here's the usual song list:

01 Don't Go to Strangers (Paul Weller)
02 Fever (Jam)
03 Slow Down (Jam)
04 Stand by Me (Jam)
05 [Love Is like A] Heat Wave (Jam)
06 My Girl (Jam)
07 Every Little Bit Hurts (Jam)
08 How Sweet It Is [To Be Loved by You] (Paul Weller)
09 I Got You [I Feel Good] (Jam)
10 [I'm A] Roadrunner (Paul Weller)
11 Back in My Arms Again (Jam)
12 I Take What I Want (Paul Weller)
13 Meeting [Over] Up Yonder (Style Council)
14 Going to a Go Go (Paul Weller)
15 In the Midnight Hour (Jam)
16 I Don't Need No Doctor (Paul Weller)
17 Things Get Better (Paul Weller)
18 Sweet Soul Music (Jam)
19 I Heard It through the Grapevine (Amy Winehouse & Paul Weller)
20 I'd Rather Go Blind (Paul Weller)
21 Big Bird (Jam)
22 Abraham, Martin and John [Acoustic Demo] (Paul Weller)
23 Oh Happy Day (Paul Weller)
24 I've Never Found a Girl [Who Loves Me like You Do] (Paul Weller)
25 What Does It Take [To Win Your Love] (Paul Weller)
26 My Whole World Is Falling Down (Paul Weller)

This album is an hour and 17 minutes long.

This is just a fun listen. But he's covered so many soul classics over the years that the two volumes put together are practically a history of the golden era of soul music.

https://www.upload.ee/files/15100034/PaulW_2023_HasGotSoulVolume11950and60_atse.zip.html

Since this is a tribute to Weller's love of soul music, I thought it would be fitting to base the cover art on the style of soul music concert posters from the era featured here. In case you're curious, here's the exact poster that I based it on.

The Style Council - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: In Concert, Royal Albert Hall, London, Britain, 4-29-1987

This is the fourth and last of four Style Council BBC volumes. Like Volumes 2 and 3, it's a full concert that was broadcast on BBC radio at the time.

By 1987, the Style Council was on the decline. I think in retrospect even band leader Paul Weller would agree that he took the band in the wrong direction, increasingly pursuing house music, which only had a limited audience. They broke up in 1989, with their last studio album rejected by their record company and thus unreleased. Weller would later say that band should have broken up two or three years earlier.

That said, this still is a very good concert, in my opinion. By this point, the band had built up an impressive number of hit songs, and mostly played those rather than the new music that would be less successful. Personally, I like all the songs here. From the point of view of this concert, it's hard to imagine the band would fall out of favor so quickly only about a year later.

This concert is officially unreleased, but the sound quality is still very good. It's only 59 minutes long, so I'm guessing it was edited down from a longer concert to fit in an hour-long time slot on the radio.

UPDATE: On January 22, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file because I changed the name of this album from "Volume 3" to "Volume 4" after discovering a BBC concert I'd missed. I changed the cover art and mp3 tags accordingly, but the music is the same.

01 talk (Style Council)
02 My Ever Changing Moods (Style Council)
03 Shout to the Top (Style Council)
04 It Didn't Matter (Style Council)
05 Waiting (Style Council)
06 Walk in the Night (Style Council)
07 talk (Style Council)
08 The Cost of Loving (Style Council)
09 With Everything to Lose (Style Council)
10 A Woman's Song (Style Council)
11 talk (Style Council)
12 The Whole Point of No Return (Style Council)
13 Homebreakers (Style Council)
14 Heavens Above (Style Council)
15 [When You] Call Me (Style Council)
16 Internationalists (Style Council)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/VMS8yEMP

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/8OaEfTMzMy14uka/file

The cover photo is from the Red Wedge Tour in January 1986, at the Manchester Apollo in Manchester, Britain.

The Style Council - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: Sight and Sound, Goldiggers, Chippenham, Britain, 3-10-1984

Here's the second of three volumes of Paul Weller's band the Style Council playing for the BBC. The first volume consists of BBC studio sessions. This one is a concert broadcast live on the BBC at the time.

This concert took place just a few days before the release of the band's first album, "Cafe Bleu." In my opinion, the band peaked around this time, so it's a good time for a BBC concert.

The sound quality of this concert is very good. Unfortunately, this is not the complete show. The last song fades out near its ending. I don't know what came after that. But some of the show is better than nothing.

This album is 38 minutes long.

01 talk (Style Council)
02 Meeting [Over] Up Yonder (Style Council)
03 My Ever Changing Moods (Style Council)
04 Speak like a Child (Style Council)
05 talk (Style Council)
06 The Whole Point of No Return (Style Council)
07 talk (Style Council)
08 Le Depart [Instrumental] (Style Council)
09 The Paris Match (Style Council)
10 talk (Style Council)
11 Party Chambers (Style Council)
12 Money-Go-Round (Style Council)
13 talk (Style Council)
14 Headstart for Happiness (Style Council)
15 Hanging On to a Memory (Style Council)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700527/STYLCONCL1984_BBSessonsVol2SghtSund_GoldiggrsChippnhmBrtin__3-10-1984_atse.zip.html

The cover photo of band leader Paul Weller was taken at a concert at the Dominion Theatre in London on March 15th, 1984. So while it isn't from this concert, it was taken in the same city just a few days later.

The Style Council - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1983-1985

I've recently finished posting a bunch of albums of the Jam performing for the BBC. I'm moving through Paul Weller's music career, and he played for the BBC a heck of a lot. So his next band Style Council is up. Then I'll get to his long solo career.

I have enough material for three BBC volumes. This first one consists of studio sessions. The other two are concerts. This is an especially interesting listen because some of the sessions were acoustic in nature, and other than this, there is very little of that from this band.

Everything here is officially unreleased. The sound quality is generally pretty good, but variable. Some of the acoustic stuff sounds a bit rougher than the rest, but it's all listenable. I have "[Edit]" in the titles for a few of the acoustic songs because I used X-Minus audio editing software to boost the vocals.

There were a couple of songs done twice, and I've only included one version of each. However, I've added a second version of "Headstart for Happiness" as a bonus track. I figure that's worth hearing because it's an acoustic version, different from the other full band version. Yet the sound quality isn't as good as the other version, thus it only being a bonus track.

This album is 48 minutes long, not including the bonus track.

01 Micks Up [Instrumental] (Style Council)
02 The Paris Match (Style Council)
03 Here's One that Got Away (Style Council)
04 Headstart for Happiness (Style Council)
05 Le Depart [Instrumental] [Acoustic Version] (Style Council)
06 My Ever Changing Moods [Acoustic Version] [Edit] (Style Council)
07 Long Hot Summer [Acoustic Version] [Edit] (Style Council)
08 Mick’s Blessings [Instrumental] [Acoustic Version] (Style Council)
09 The Paris Match [Acoustic Version] [Edit] (Style Council)
10 [When You] Call Me (Style Council)
11 You're the Best Thing (Style Council)
12 The Lodgers (Style Council)
13 Homebreakers (Style Council)
14 A Stones Throw Away [Acoustic Version] (Style Council)

Headstart for Happiness [Edit] [Acoustic Version] (Style Council)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700512/STYLCONCL1983-1985_BBSessonsVol1_atse.zip.html

I don't know exactly where or when the cover photo was taken, but judging by their clothes and hair styles, I think it was early in the band's existence.

The Style Council - Cafe Bleu - Alternate Version (1984)

A few days ago, I posted a stray tracks album of 1983 and 1984 material from the Style Council, Paul Weller's main band during the 1980s. Despite having all that material on singles and such, there were enough songs for a studio album at the same time, 1984's "Cafe Bleu." In my opinion, this album was very hit or miss. So I've kept the good songs, removed the clunkers, and replaced them with other A- and B-sides from 1984.

As I mentioned in my write-up for the stray tracks album mentioned above (called "Long Hot Summer"), Weller was in an experimental mode with the Style Council, largely giving up on rock in favor of different kinds of soul and jazz. Unfortunately for the "Cafe Bleu" album, he included songs that didn't go well together. There were several jazz instrumentals that were a showcase for keyboardist Mike Talbot, but most veered on sounding like Muzak and weren't that memorable. So I've removed all but the two of those that I liked the best. (Specifically, I cut "Blue Cafe," "Me Ship Came In" and "A Gospel.") By (drastic) contrast, the album also included some experiments with heavy funk and rap that didn't fit with the mellow jazzy stuff whatsoever. I wouldn't mind those except a couple of them weren't very good either, and didn't even feature Paul Weller much ("Strength of Your Nature" and "Dropping Bombs on the White House"). So those got the axe as well.

With five songs removed, the remainder is strong, but short, at only 26 minutes. So I've added five more songs that I didn't include on the "Long Hot Summer" stray tracks album. Those five are at the end. Three are B-sides. "Shout to the Top" is an A-side that made the Top Ten in Britain. Also, "Big Boss Groove" was an excellent song that the band played in most of their concerts, and was included on their "Greatest Hits" album, so it's odd that it was only initially released as a B-side. The last of the five is "The Razor's Edge," a cover song that is unreleased because it was only played once on a TV show.

With five songs gone and five songs added, the album is now 44 minutes long. Personally, I think it's a very strong album like this. It's too bad Weller seemed to make particularly bad choices about what songs to include or leave off albums during his Style Council years.

01 Mick's Blessings [Instrumental] (Style Council)
02 The Whole Point of No Return (Style Council)
03 The Paris Match (Style Council with Tracey Thorn)
04 My Ever Changing Moods [Acoustic Version] (Style Council)
05 You're the Best Thing (Style Council)
06 Headstart for Happiness (Style Council)
07 Here's One that Got Away (Style Council)
08 Council Meetin' [Instrumental] (Style Council)
09 The Big Boss Groove (Style Council)
10 The Razor's Edge (Style Council)
11 Shout to the Top (Style Council)
12 Ghosts of Dachau (Style Council)
13 Spring, Summer, Autumn (Style Council)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700524/STYLCONCL1984_CfeBleuAlternte_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I simply used the official cover without any changes.

The Style Council - Long Hot Summer - Non-Album Tracks (1983-1984)

Last week, Paul Weller released a new studio album, "Fat Pop, Volume 1." I'm glad to see he's still going strong. In celebration of that, I wanted to post something from him, but I don't have much worthy from the Jam or his solo career left to post. However, it occurred to me that I've never posted anything from his 1980s band, the Style Council, so here's my first effort related to that band.

I have to admit that, for a long time, I wasn't that big on the Style Council. I much preferred his time with the Jam and his solo work. But I've warmed to the Style Council over the years. What I've decided is that that band put out a lot of good music, on par with his music before and after. But... they also put out some stuff that's best forgotten, so one has to do some work to separate the wheat from the chaff. Weller was in a very musically exploratory mood at the time, which resulted in everything from mellow jazz that approached Muzak to hardcore techno - sometimes on the same album! Also, I think the band started out strong, but went downhill, ending in a whimper with a terrible techno album that his record company refused to release at the time - rightly, in my opinion.

This album focuses on the start of the Style Council - they formed in 1983. Even though this is a stray tracks album, I'd argue this is actually better than any of the band's official studio albums, since those are all inconsistent, and it's right up there with the Jam and Weller's early solo albums. It helps that it has the band's two biggest hits and most enduring songs, "Long Hot Summer" and "My Ever Changing Moods." (The latter song was also included on the band's debut album "Cafe Bleu," but that's a very different and longer acoustic version, whereas the version here is the hit single version.)

Actually, the fact that this album is so good points to a big problem the Style Council had: Weller often put some of the band's worst songs on albums and left some of their best songs off them. One reason for this is that he usually wanted to give band member Mike Talbot some songs on each album, but Talbot's songs were generally mellow jazz often approached Musak that I mentioned earlier. I haven't included any of those here.

Plus, at least when the band started out, Weller continued a habit of not putting many of his hit singles on albums. In fact, most of the songs here are either hits - the two I mentioned above, plus "Speak like a Child," "Money Go Round" and "Solid Bond in Your Heart," which were all Top Ten hits in Britain or close to it - or well chosen soul covers. For instance, he did "One Nation Under a Groove," a funk classic by Parliament / Funkadelic. (All of the covers come from official live albums, which means their sound quality is excellent.) So if you haven't given the Style Council a try, this is an excellent place to start. 

Note that I haven't exhausted all of the band's good stray tracks from 1984. I plan on posting alternate version of their 1984 album "Cafe Bleu," and I'll add some more there.

01 Long Hot Summer (Style Council)
02 Speak like a Child (Style Council)
03 Party Chambers [First Version] (Style Council)
04 Money Go Round, Parts 1 & 2 (Style Council)
05 A Solid Bond in Your Heart (Style Council)
06 It Just Came to Pieces in My Hands (Style Council)
07 My Ever Changing Moods [Single Version] (Style Council)
08 Hanging On to a Memory (Style Council)
09 One Nation Under a Groove (Style Council)
10 Meeting [Over] Up Yonder (Style Council)
11 Up for Grabs (Style Council)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700513/STYLCONCL1983-1984_LngHotSmmer_atse.zip.html

For the album cover art, I took the easy path and used the cover to the "Long Hot Summer" single. I didn't change it at all, except for cleaning and sharpening it a bit.