This first volume just deals with the years 1965 and 1966. At that time, the Moody Blues were a drastically different band than what they'd become just one year later, with the 1967 album "Days of Future Passed." In this early phase, the band's lead singer was Denny Laine, and they mainly played R&B music. Laine left in late 1966 for a solo career. He was replaced by Justin Hayward as the new main lead singer, as well as John Lodge. Hayward would go on to write and sing most of the band's hits.
The Hayward-Lodge band line-up is represented on this album, but just barely. They're only on one song, "Fly Me High," which was written by Hayward. It was performed on the very last day of 1966. I've included it here because I have a different version of the song on the next volume in this series.
It seems to me that the version of the band from 1967 until the current day would prefer to act like the earlier Denny Laine-led version of the band never existed. Nearly all of their compilations and archival recordings start from 1967. That's the case with their main BBC release, "Live at the BBC, 1967-1970." All the band's BBC performances prior to that have been included as bonus tracks on a deluxe version of the Laine-led band's sole album, "The Magnificent Moodies." So that's where 12 of the songs here come from.
But I didn't stop there. All of those songs are from 1965. The band didn't have any BBC sessions in 1966 at all, probably because of declining popularity due to a lack of new hit singles. I've tried to fill this gap with four unreleased performances done for French or German TV shows. (The early band was especially popular in France because "Bye Bye Bird" was a number three hit single there while not being a hit anywhere else.) I also found an unreleased performance of the band playing "Hey Bo Diddley" in concert in 1965 that sounded good, so I added that too.
This volume ends with a song that's kind of a quasi-bonus track. Technically, it's not a Moody Blues song at all, and it also doesn't fit the time frame, being recorded in the latter half of 1967. I'm referring to "Say You Don't Mind," a solo single by Denny Laine. I'm including it because I think it's a great song (written by Laine, by the way), that really should have been a hit. It fits here better than it would in Volume 2, since this volume focuses on songs sung by Laine.
(Note there are some more songs Laine performed for the BBC as a solo artist, but I didn't want to go too far down that path here. I want to keep the focus on the Moody Blues, but this one song is too good to be ignored.)
By now, I must sound like a broken record, complaining about how BBC DJs talked over the beginnings and ends of some songs. That was the case here too, but it wasn't that bad this time, with only six of the songs needing editing. All of those have "[Edit]" in their titles. I used X-Minus to wipe the DJ chatter while keeping the underlying music.
This album is 51 minutes long.
01 Go Now (Moody Blues)
02 I Don't Want to Go On without You [Edit] (Moody Blues)
03 I'll Go Crazy (Moody Blues)
04 Hey Bo Diddley (Moody Blues)
05 From the Bottom of My Heart [I Love You] (Moody Blues)
06 Jump Back [Edit] (Moody Blues)
07 I've Got a Dream (Moody Blues)
08 And My Baby's Gone [Edit] (Moody Blues)
09 It's Easy Child [Edit] (Moody Blues)
10 Stop (Moody Blues)
11 Everyday (Moody Blues)
12 You Don't [All the Time] (Moody Blues)
13 I Want You to Know (Moody Blues)
14 Bye Bye Bird (Moody Blues)
15 Can't Nobody Love You (Moody Blues)
16 I Really Haven't Got the Time (Moody Blues)
17 Fly Me High [Edit] (Moody Blues)
18 Say You Don't Mind [Edit] (Denny Laine's Electric String Band)
https://www.imagenetz.de/cE2Rg
The cover art photo dates from January 1965, when the band made an appearance on the "Top of the Pops" TV show.
I'm a great fan of the R&B years of the Moodies. Many thanks for sharing their BBC sessions.
ReplyDeleteI take your point about the BBC dj's but please consider this: so-called "pop music" was a novelty on British radio and they gave it a little bit of raised status. Sounds ridiculous in 2021 but up till then it was all light music and orchestras. The dj's often "knew their stuff" - especially somebody like Brian Matthew who conducted loads of interviews with groups. If it hadn't been for the BBC "daring" to go down this route lots of bands would never have made it as the BBC was the main source of pop music for people like me growing up in the 60's and 70's. Also, these performances were meant to be different and to give a sense of what the band sounded like live rather than just on record - lots of us were too young or too skint to afford gigs. Finally, they were not meant to be listened to again and again so we shouild consider ourselves luckky to have what we've got. Cheers for all your hard work by the way.
ReplyDeleteYou make some good points. I consider the BBC having some big pluses but also some big minuses. For instance, yeah, they had a big influence, but that was in large part because the British government banned all other options, even shutting down the offshore pirate stations. They also had about the most uptight censorship in the world, banning songs for the slightest of reasons, for instance not playing Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl" in 1967 because of the line "making love in the green grass behind the stadium." Heck, as late as 1981, they refused to play any songs from the Selecter's album "Celebrate the Bullet" just because they didn't like the album title!
DeleteAnd Matthew and others could have done exactly what they did without talking over songs. Case in point: John Peel. He was a BBC DJ in the late 1960s too, but I can't think of any instances of him talking over songs. Why is it he was respectful enough not to do that, but some of the other DJ's weren't?
Overall, I'm extremely grateful for the BBC recordings, believe me. I focus on posting that stuff because I consider it such a treasure. Even so, there are some frustrating aspects too.
I agree with you completely, Paul. Perhaps, being active DJs, the other presenters were accustomed to talking over intros and intros of records on their radio shows, so they continued to do it for these BBC sessions. Also, the band would come in and record each song in a single attempt, but the shows were only live in the sense that the DJ would talk to band members and introduce the next (pre-recorded earlier in the day) song.
DeleteSax and Guitar
Autocorrect fouled up my comment above. Intended was "intros and outros."
DeleteI grew up with the pirates, Radio Luxembourg, BFBS and AFN. And DJ's like Brian Matthew, Tony Blackburn and especially Emperor Rosko were my heros. Their style was very much influenced by american AM Radio DJs. And talking over the intros of songs was very common. Infact I enjoyed it very much, and I still feel that this was art. And the stations they worked for were POP STATIONS.
ReplyDeleteJohn Peel was more like american FM DJs. They just introduced the music and played it.
Frankly - For my taste you could leave the DJs talking. But hey, this is your Blog and you're doing a great job. Thanks for this.
Tutti saluti
Willi
I hear what you're saying. But I didn't grow up with that experience, so for me the talking over the music is just annoying. Besides, I think your comment points to an important distinction between the DJ style of the likes of Brian Matthew compared to the likes of John Peel. For Matthew, he was all about music as a product to be sold. He loved talking about songs becoming hits and how popular things were, and he basically sounded like a slick salesman. Whereas for Peel, it was more about the art. He pushed the music he liked, and he didn't care much about how popular it was. In fact, it seemed he often went out of his way to promote the obscure, non-commercial stuff.
DeleteIf one looks at music as product vs. art, I side with art. And I think that shows in terms of who talked over the music or didn't. If you think of music as just product, there's nothing wrong with talking over it.
Fly Me High is the acetate that Justin Hayward played to Mike Pinder that got him into the Moody Blues. He had recorded it for EMI with his band "The Jets". After EMI failed to release it the Jests fell apart and he moved back to Swindon. I am a huge fan of the original version of the Moody Blues. They did record a second studio album with Rod Clark on bass. He had played on their 1966 single Boulevard de la Madelaine. The tracks intended for the second album are on the double CD version of the Maginificent Moodies issued by Cherry Red a few years ago. I did know the albums intended name at one time, but it has escaped my memory. Maybe someone remembers? It was announced as coming out in the music press in 66 but obviously never happened.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the info. :)
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