Graham Gouldman - Live Acoustic (2013)

Graham Gouldman is a songwriting genius. Have you heard of him? He wrote all sorts of 1960s hit songs you know, such as "For Your Love" by the Yardbirds, "Bus Stop" and "Look through Any Window" by the Hollies, and "No Milk Today" by the Hermin's Hermits, then in the 1970s and after he's been a member of 10cc, and wrote or co-wrote many more hits by them, such as "I'm Not in Love," "The Things We Do for Love," "Rubber Bullets," and "Dreadlock Holliday."

As I write this, Gouldman is 74 years old, yet he's still going strong, frequently touring both as the leader of 10cc and as a solo artist. As someone who has a particular fondness for acoustic music, I am most interested in his occasional solo acoustic tours. However, there are basically no official or unofficial recordings from any such tour, except for one. In 2014, Gouldman released an album of his 2013 solo acoustic tour, simply called "Live!" (It also is sometimes called "Heart Full of Songs," which is his name for his acoustic tours in general.) But he only released this as a promotional item to radio stations, then sold it at his 2014 concerts. Since then, it's totally disappeared. It's not listed in his discography on his personal website, nor is it listed on his Wikipedia page or most other places where one would find such things. It seems to have totally disappeared down the memory hole.

Luckily, I have a copy, and it's fantastic. The sound quality is excellent, and the performance is excellent. He played most of his famous songs, both from 10cc as well as his 1960s hits done by others. He was supported by a couple of his 10cc touring band members, but they kept things acoustic, with only occasional light drumming.

However, there is one thing sorely lacking for the album, and that is any kind of banter between songs. Because the album was made as a promo for radio stations, I guess the idea was to deliberately not include any such banter, since it was more of a selection of individual songs (taken from different concerts on the tour, not just one concert), than having a natural flow of a concert. So, for instance, sometimes songs start with the audience still clapping from something that had just happened, or a song comes to a sudden halt in the middle of the audience applause. The songs themselves were great, but the transitions between them were problematic.

So I decided to fix this, because I love Gouldman's songs so much. I spent way too much time finding banter to go before almost every song, but I'm proud of the result. I didn't have much to go on, since, as I said, there's very little in the way of official or bootleg live Gouldman tracks. But I scoured YouTube and all the bootlegs I could find, including 10cc ones from the last 20 years or so, and I found just enough to come up with fitting banter for most of the songs. As I said, I put a lot of work into this, so hopefully it sounds just like a normal concert, with thank yous at the ends of songs and the like. But every single word has been added by me. The original album didn't even have a single "thank you" on it!

I didn't keep track of where all the different talking bits came from. It would have been a bear to mark all that down. In some cases, even for only a short comment, I had to piece it together from more than once source. There are a few comments where the sound quality is noticeably poorer than the rest, and/or his voice sounds a little different. That couldn't be helped, since the rare material I had to go with was so scanty.

The other thing I did which took some work was getting the applause at the end of each song just right. Because the songs came from different concerts, those were all over the map. Some were quiet, some were loud, some faded out, some stopped suddenly, and some actually ended as they should, with the clapping trailing off. I fixed the applause for almost every song in some way. Hopefully, it should now sound normal, with the flow of a typical concert, instead of being a bunch of live songs collected together.

I changed the title slightly, since "Live!" is so generic and I changed the album significantly. I also changed the cover, since the original just had some text on it.

The album is an hour and ten minutes long. Seven of those minutes consist of the extra banter that I added.

I highly, highly recommend this album. The vast majority of the songs here are classic hits. Hearing them done by Gouldman reveals what a songwriting genius he truly is. Plus, these well known songs are shown in an appealing new light being done in the acoustic format.

By the way, I like Gouldman so much that I plan on posting a collection of covers of his songs for my "Covered" series, as well as a separate collection of his own performances from his pre-10cc years.

01 talk (Graham Gouldman)
02 Pamela, Pamela (Graham Gouldman)
03 talk (Graham Gouldman)
04 Heart Full of Soul (Graham Gouldman)
05 talk (Graham Gouldman)
06 Good Morning Judge (Graham Gouldman)
07 talk (Graham Gouldman)
08 No Milk Today (Graham Gouldman)
09 talk (Graham Gouldman)
10 Sunburn (Graham Gouldman)
11 talk (Graham Gouldman)
12 Love's Not for Me [Rene's Song] (Graham Gouldman)
13 talk (Graham Gouldman)
14 Look through Any Window (Graham Gouldman)
15 talk (Graham Gouldman)
16 Bridge to Your Heart (Graham Gouldman)
17 talk (Graham Gouldman)
18 Daylight (Graham Gouldman)
19 talk (Graham Gouldman)
20 Bus Stop (Graham Gouldman)
21 Dancing Days (Graham Gouldman)
22 talk (Graham Gouldman)
23 I'm Not in Love (Graham Gouldman)
24 talk (Graham Gouldman)
25 Ariella (Graham Gouldman)
26 talk (Graham Gouldman)
27 Ready to Go Home (Graham Gouldman)
28 talk (Graham Gouldman)
29 The Things We Do for Love (Graham Gouldman)
30 Memory Lane (Graham Gouldman)
31 talk (Graham Gouldman)
32 For Your Love (Graham Gouldman)
33 talk (Graham Gouldman)
34 Donna (Graham Gouldman)
35 talk (Graham Gouldman)
36 Dreadlock Holiday (Graham Gouldman)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15844999/GrahmGouldmn_2013_LivAcoustc_atse.zip.html

I don't know where Gouldman was when the photo for the cover art was taken, but apparently it dates to September 2013.