Monday, March 22, 2021

The Hollies - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: 1969-1970

Here's the third out of four albums of the Hollies at the BBC.

In late 1968, Graham Nash left the Hollies to join Crosby, Stills and Nash. He was a key part of the band's songwriting and singing, and was the "hippest" member of the band when keeping up with the times was extremely important. The band continued having hits just fine without him, although they were increasingly seen as a pop band that was out of step with the increasingly serious and "heavy" music being made. 

During the time frame here, 1969 and 1970, the Hollies continued to perform for the BBC a lot, although that would soon peter out in the early 1970s. The first six songs come from a concert that was broadcast on the BBC in early 1969. I've only included the songs that don't appear elsewhere in this series. One of the songs, "Maybe I'll Settle Down," appears to be an original that never got officially released. 

In 1970, an Australian TV station recorded the Hollies in concert as they toured Australia and made a TV special out of the footage that was shown in 1971, called "Don't Get Sunburnt." Four of the songs here are from that: "Gasoline Alley Bred," "Let It Be," "Woodstock," and "Amazing Grace." The last three are covers that the band never officially released.

The remaining songs come from typical BBC sessions. I had to edit three of those due to the usual problem of BBC DJs talking over the music. I used the X-Minus audio editing program to wipe the talking while keeping the underlying music. One BBC song, "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother," is the only officially released performance from this entire album. But the sound quality is nevertheless high, because everything here is either from the BBC or that Australian TV special.

01 Carrie Anne (Hollies)
02 Quit Your Lowdown Ways (Hollies)
03 I'll Be Your Baby Tonight (Hollies)
04 Stop, Stop, Stop (Hollies)
05 The Mighty Quinn [Quinn the Eskimo] (Hollies)
06 Maybe I'll Settle Down (Hollies)
07 Sorry Suzanne (Hollies)
08 He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother (Hollies)
09 Lady Please [Edit] (Hollies)
10 Gasoline Alley Bred (Hollies)
11 Let It Be (Hollies)
12 Woodstock (Hollies)
13 Amazing Grace (Hollies)
14 Isn't It Nice [Edit] (Hollies)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15124667/THollis_1969-1970_BBSessionsVolume3_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo was taken in January 1969.

2 comments:

  1. Paul, Elevated observation on your work. What you are doing is killing music twice. At first you delete DJ comments thus killing the spirit of radio show. Second, you replace very rare radio intro of the song by standard official released stereo piece. Your lame edit kill rare radio song version. I'm not talking about clear visible border with different EQ between stereo and radio track.
    If you hate so much Brian Matthew voice you could use splitter SW to separate voice from music. In this way you will keep radio version of the song.
    Why all real Beatles and Hollies fans throw Beatles Live on BBC and Hollies Radio Fun to garbage bin? Because stupid people from EMI decided to cut the songs and delete DJ comments. The reason is clear, they do not want to pay royalties to Brian Matthew (RIP). What was you reason to delete DJ comments is not clear.
    What fans are listening? Beatles BBC archives compilations. In Hollies case BBC transcription service disc with Top of the Pops shows.
    Hope you understand my comment correctly.
    Michael

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I understand your opinion, but I have a different opinion. You like the DJ talking part, and I don't. I'm not going to change my feelings on that, sorry.

      Regarding removing that better without changing the intro, now that I've learned about the editing program Spleeter in the last month or so, that's something I might be able to do. It just so happens that a few days ago, I updated some Kinks BBC albums because I used Spleeter to do a better editing job on a few intros. Check out the Kinks BBC Sessions Volume 2 album for an example. So I could probably try to make those kinds of improvements with the Hollies too. However, the thing about Spleeter is that sometimes it works well and sometimes it doesn't. Often one has to see on a case by case basis, so we'll see.

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