Pink Floyd - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: In Concert, Paris Theatre, London, Britain, 7-16-1970

Around 1970, the BBC began playing hour-long concerts in front of live audiences. Pink Floyd was one of the bands that benefited from being able to stretch out in that new format. They wound up playing concerts from the BBC in 1970 and 1971, as well as a longer one in 1974. This is the first of those.

Note that I've already posted three albums of Pink Floyd playing at the BBC (done in the BBC studios with no audience present). Since I'm continuing with three more BBC albums from them, I've decided to rename those earlier albums slightly, so they all have "Volume" in the title. For instance, the first one was known as "BBC Sessions, 1967," but now I'm calling it "BBC Sessions, Volume 1." I've just renamed those and updated the cover artwork accordingly. This one, then, is Volume 4.

Although this is live, it was professionally recorded, and it widely considered one of the few really great concert recordings of the band. It was included on the official box set "The Early Years." I'm including it here to continue the BBC series, plus it really should be heard on its own.

I've broken the talking between songs onto their own tracks, but other than that, I didn't need to change anything. Note that the concert was hosted by legendary BBC DJ John Peel. He's the one that does all the talking between songs.

The concert took place while the band was in the middle of recording the album "Atom Heart Mother." So it's not surprising that it features three songs from that album, "If," "Fat Old Sun," and "Atom Heart Mother." We're especially fortunate that "If" was included, because the band only played that excellent song a handful of times. The song "Atom Heart Mother" had been played a few times already, using the clunky title "The Amazing Pudding." They wanted something better, and realized that had to come up with something fast so that Peel would have a new title to give it for this BBC show. Luckily, they came up with the new title shortly before the concert when band member saw the headline "Atom Heart Mother Named" in a newspaper article about a nuclear-powered pacemaker.

Also note that the song "Atom Heart Mother" really needed a full choir, plus a full orchestra, to play right. For this concert, they hired a professional choir and professional orchestra to back them. Later, when they played the song on tour, they had to make do with a revolving group of back-up musicians who often didn't perform nearly as well. As a result, they shortened the song in concert and cut out the parts that needed the choir and orchestra. So this is probably the definitive live version, especially due to the sound quality.

01 talk (Pink Floyd)
02 Embryo (Pink Floyd)
03 talk (Pink Floyd)
04 Fat Old Sun (Pink Floyd)
05 talk (Pink Floyd)
06 Green Is the Colour (Pink Floyd)
07 Careful with that Axe, Eugene (Pink Floyd)
08 talk (Pink Floyd)
09 If (Pink Floyd)
10 talk (Pink Floyd)
11 Atom Heart Mother (Pink Floyd)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16697017/PNKFLYD1970c_BBSssonsVlum4InConcrtParsThetre__7-16-1970_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo comes from a Pink Floyd concert later in 1970, at the Fillmore East in New York City.