The Animals - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: 1967-1968

This is the fourth and final album of the Animals playing at the BBC. There can be no more because the Animals ceased to exist in 1968 (although they did get back together for two reunions many years later).

Technically speaking, the Animals ceased to exist in late 1966, and became "Eric Burdon and the Animals." But as I pointed out with Volume 3 in this series, I prefer to call them "the Animals" all the way through, for consistency and simplicity. But the name change was meaningful, because it marked some personnel changes, as well as a change of style. The Animals had been an R&B band. They retained some of that style, but they also dabbled quite a lot in psychedelic music. You can see that mix here, with some soulful and/or bluesy songs like "Shake, Rattle and Roll" and "It Hurts Me Too," but also ones celebrating the emerging psychedelic culture, like "San Franciscan Nights" and "Monterey."

As I've said many times before, BBC recordings are often bedeviled by BBC DJs talking over the starts and ends of songs. The first three volumes in this series didn't have much of that, helped by the fact that I'm only including one version of each song and I often had multiple versions to chose from with those earlier volumes. But for this one, seven of the songs needed to be edited to remove the DJ talking. Those are the ones marked with "[Edit]" in the titles.

Just like the previous albums in this series, all these performances remain officially unreleased. Generally speaking, the sound quality is good. But since the band appeared less often at the BBC in these years (or at least less of their BBC sessions have survived), I've often had to make do with less than pristine versions of some songs.

Only the last three songs here are from 1968. But the one and only really great sounding concert bootleg of the band from the 1960s is from 1968. I plan on posting that soon.

01 If I Were a Carpenter [Edit] (Animals)
02 Shake, Rattle and Roll (Animals)
03 When I Was Young (Animals)
04 A Love like Yours [Don't Come Knocking Everyday] (Animals)
05 Connection [Edit] (Animals)
06 San Franciscan Nights (Animals)
07 All Night Long [Edit] (Animals)
08 It's All Meat [Edit] (Animals)
09 Good Times [Edit] (Animals)
10 I'm So Excited (Animals)
11 Hey Gyp [Dig the Slowness] (Animals)
12 Monterey (Animals)
13 Anything [Edit] (Animals)
14 It Hurts Me Too [Edit] (Animals)
15 White Houses (Animals)
16 Every Day I Have the Blues (Animals)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15124066/TAnimls_1967-1968_BBSessionsVolume4_atse.zip.html

It seems there are very few good color photos of the band from their last two years. I had to resort to using a photo just of lead singer Eric Burdon at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967.