The Move - BBC Sessions, Volume 1, 1967

I'm fast-tracking posting albums for the Move because I don't want to post stuff from too many artists at once, and I have other similar artists to get to (such as the Yardbirds, the Pretty Things, the Velvet Underground, etc...).

The Move were a fairly important and popular band in Britain in the late 1960s (though they were largely unknown in the US), and the vast majority of the songs on their singles and studio albums were their own originals. So I find it interesting that they kind of had a separate career playing lots of covers in concert and at the BBC. Furthermore, they didn't just play obscure songs from different eras, like, say, the Byrds did. They played lots of songs that were big hits right at that time, by their main competitors.

This album is a good example of that. In it, they do a few of their own songs, mainly their hits ("Night of Fear," "I Can Hear the Grass Grow," and "Flowers in the Rain") and a few original non-hits ("Kilroy Was Here," "Walk upon the Water," and "Cherry Blossom Clinic"). But that's only six out of the 16 songs here. The rest are like a 1967 station playing soul and rock hits, except with all of them played by the Move. Here's who they cover:

You Better Believe It Baby - Joe Tex
Stop and Get a Hold of Myself - Gladys Knight and the Pips
Our Love (Is in the Pocket) - Darrell Banks (and J. J. Barnes)
Tired of Being Lonely- Sharpees
Cherry, Cherry - Neil DIamond
Morning Dew - Bonnie Dobson (and many others)
So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star - Byrds
Stephanie Knows Who - Love
Hey Grandma - Moby Grape
Eight Miles High - Byrds

Note that some of the songs here are fairly obscure danceable soul songs, the type of music that would later be known as "northern soul." The Move played a lot of this kind of music in 1966 and 1967, but moved away from it by 1968, as rock music got more serious, and became less about dancing.

All the songs here were played by the Move on the BBC in 1967. Nearly all of the recordings were released on an official album called "The BBC Sessions," so the sound quality is generally excellent. Two songs are officially unreleased, but they sound pretty good as well.

Thankfully, there are no instances of annoying BBC DJ talking over the starts or ends of songs. However, one song, "You Better Believe It Baby," clearly had the intro of about 10 seconds cut off until the very second the vocals began, probably to get rid of that DJ talking. So I went to the original version of the song by Joe Tex and found out that the intro is repeated exactly halfway through the song. So I copied and pasted that from later in the Move version of the song to make it whole again.

I have three more albums of the Move at the BBC to post.

01 Night of Fear (Move)
02 You Better Believe It Baby (Move)
03 Stop and Get a Hold of Myself (Move)
04 Our Love [Is in the Pocket] (Move)
05 Tired of Being Lonely (Move)
06 Cherry, Cherry (Move)
07 Kilroy Was Here (Move)
08 I Can Hear the Grass Grow (Move)
09 Walk upon the Water (Move)
10 Morning Dew (Move)
11 So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star (Move)
12 Flowers in the Rain (Move)
13 Stephanie Knows Who (Move)
14 Hey Grandma (Move)
15 Cherry Blossom Clinic (Move)
16 Eight Miles High (Move)

https://www.imagenetz.de/cuAVf

For the cover art, I wish I could have found a photo of the Move playing at the BBC, or at least playing in concert in 1967. But I didn't find any really good ones in color. So I went with a publicity photo of that band from that year.