The Small Faces - BBC Sessions, Volume 2 (1968)

I just posted the first Small Faces BBC sessions album. While I'm at it, here's the second and last one.

For the first album, most of the songs were officially released on a BBC compilation for the band. But for this one, only three songs come from that. (By the way, two of those songs, "If I Were a Carpenter" and "Every Little Bit Hurts," were also put on my "1862" compilation album, because these BBC performances were the best versions of those songs available.)

The big difference is band's appearance on a TV show called "Colour Me Pop." This was a short-lived BBC show in 1968 where a popular band would get an entire show (of half an hour) to play unique versions of their songs for the TV cameras. Most of the footage on various bands on the show has been lost, and even most audio recordings of it have been lost, but luckily in the case of the Small Faces their footage survives. You can watch it on YouTube. The band's lead singer Steve Marriott shows so much energy and charisma that it's tiring just to watch him!

Anyway, the band had just put out their 1968 album "Odgen's Nut Gone Flake." Half of that album is a "rock opera" about a person named Happiness Stan, while the other half consists of conventional, unrelated songs. The rock opera half has spoken word sections between the songs narrated by a comic performer named Stanely Unwin who had a very strange semi-nonsensical way of speaking he called "Unwinese." For their "Colour Me Pop" show, the band decided to play their entire rock opera. They even got Unwin to do his talking bits for the camera. If you're not familiar with this, be warned that it can be very hard to understand what he's saying, but that's kind of the point.

You may have noticed that the previous volume deals with the years 1965 and 1966, and this volume deals with the year 1968. I find it rather odd that there were no BBC sessions from 1967, even though the band had three big hit singles in Britain that year: "Here Come the Nice," "Itchycoo Park," and "Tin Soldier." I also couldn't find any good recordings of them doing other TV or radio shows. My theory is that the band's psychedelic sound was hard to reproduce on stage, so they generally resorted to lip-synching when promoting their singles. Luckily, I did find a version of "Itchycoo Park" performed on a French TV show in 1968. Only the vocals were done live. That's understandable given the studio tricks on the recorded version, especially the phased drumming.

I've included four bonus tracks. "(If You Think You're) Groovy" is from that same French TV show, and again only the vocals were done live. The reason it's only a bonus track is because the lead singer was P. P. Arnold. She was a soul singer based in Britain. For a while, she was linked to the Small Faces, often singing backing vocals on their songs. This song was written by the Small Faces for her. On both the recorded version and this French TV show version, the band played all instruments and sang backing vocals. So I figure it's Small Faces related enough to merit inclusion at least as a bonus track, despite the fact that it's more of a P. P. Arnold performance.

The three remaining bonus tracks aren't from the BBC, or any other radio or TV show, for that matter. It's just that I think they're really cool and I don't have a better place to put them in my music collection, so I've stuck them here. All three are alternate versions of Small Faces songs that are done in a solo acoustic style. Two are mixes with everything but the vocals and acoustic guitar removed. The other one, "The Autumn Stone," is an alternate take. That take was just made public a few weeks prior to my posting of this album, as a free CD that came with an issue of Mojo Magazine. It's meant to be a teaser for an expanded version of "The Autumn Stone" album that's in the works.

This album is 34 minutes long, not including the bonus tracks. If you do include them, it's 45 minutes long.

01 Itchycoo Park [Live Vocals Only] (Small Faces)
02 If I Were a Carpenter [Edit] (Small Faces)
03 Lazy Sunday (Small Faces)
04 Every Little Bit Hurts [Edit] (Small Faces)
05 Song of a Baker (Small Faces)
06 talk (Small Faces)
07 Happiness Stan (Small Faces)
08 talk (Small Faces)
09 Rollin' Over (Small Faces)
10 talk (Small Faces)
11 The Hungry Intruder (Small Faces)
12 talk (Small Faces)
13 The Journey (Small Faces)
14 talk (Small Faces)
15 Mad John (Small Faces)
16 talk (Small Faces)
17 Happy Days Toy Town (Small Faces)
18 talk (Small Faces)
19 Happy Days Toy Town [Reprise] (Small Faces)

[If You Think You're] Groovy [Live Vocals Only] (P. P. Arnold & the Small Faces)
Red Balloon [Stripped Down Mix] (Small Faces)
Show Me the Way [Stripped Down Mix] (Small Faces)
The Autumn Stone [Jenny's Song] [Take 1] (Small Faces)

https://www.imagenetz.de/ksKDh

The cover art is a screenshot from the "Colour in Pop" TV show.