The Hollies - Live - Konserthuset, Stockholm, Sweden, 12-12-1966

The Hollies don't get much respect. True, they were embarrassingly square, but they consistently made great pop music for many years.

One aspect of them not getting respect is that their live performances are very poorly documented. They didn't release a live album of any kind until the mid-1975, by which time they were well past their peak. They do have some officially released live music from 1968, as part of a box set, which I turned into an album, here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-hollies-live-1968.html

But it would be nice to have more than that, especially from something even earlier, when they were arguably at their commercial and creative peak around 1966 and 1967. There are virtually no Hollies bootlegs, at least not from the 1960s. But luckily, it turns out there are just enough high quality live recordings to make up an album, though it's a short one.

The bulk of this album comes from a concert the Hollies did at the Konserthuset in Stockholm, Sweden, in late 1966. I've recently posted a Traffic concert recorded at the Konserhuset, and noted a lot of bands have excellent sounding recordings from there during this time period. It turns out that's because shows there were regularly recorded for a Swedish radio show.

I could only find seven songs the Hollies did at that concert. Three of them have been officially released as bonus tracks, and the other four are from a bootleg. But the sound is nearly as good for all seven. In addition to playing their expected hits, they do covers of "You Don't Know like I Know" and "Reach Out, I'll Be There," which they never officially recorded.

To flesh out the album a little more, I found two more songs performed around the same time for a German TV show called "Beat Club," and two other songs played for a different German TV show, "Beat Beat Beat." As luck would have it, there are no repeats between any of the songs played in Sweden or on the two German shows. (And all of these performances are definitely live and not mimed.)

The album is only 31 minutes long, but this is a case of quality over quantity. All the songs here sound just as good as the lucky three that got chosen for official release as bonus tracks. The Hollies were as square as a cardboard box, but they were a very tight group when they played live, and the proof can be heard here.

UPDATE: On March 14, 2023, I updated the mp3 download file. A commenter sent me a version of the Stockholm that had one song that I'd missed, "What's Wrong with the Way I Live." It also had some banter between songs I didn't have. However, my version had slightly better sound quality. So I combined the best versions from both.

01 I Can't Let Go (Hollies)
02 You Don't Know like I Know (Hollies)
03 talk (Hollies)
04 The Times They Are A-Changin' (Hollies)
05 talk (Hollies)
06 What's Wrong with the Way I Live (Hollies)
07 talk (Hollies)
08 Reach Out, I'll Be There (Hollies)
09 Too Much Monkey Business (Hollies)
10 talk (Hollies)
11 Stop, Stop, Stop (Hollies)
12 Look through Any Window (Hollies)
13 Very Last Day (Hollies)
14 Bus Stop (Hollies)
15 On a Carousel (Hollies)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15122398/THollis_1966_KonserthustStockholmSweden__12-12-1966_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I found a photo of the Hollies playing at Wembley Studios in London in 1966, performing for some kind of TV show.