Status Quo - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: 1970-1972

I just posted Volume 1 of Status Quo's BBC sessions mere minutes ago. I thought I'd post this second and final volume right after to show the contrast between the two. Compare the two cover photos, for starters. They look like different bands, but they're the same exact guys, just minus one member (and plus lots more hair!).

It's a lucky break that there was enough music to be able to split the volumes right at the turn of the 1960s into the 1970s, because the band's sound drastically changed right then as well. If you listen to the early songs on Volume 1, you'll see they started out doing rhythm and blues. So in a way they returned back to the type of music they started with, once psychedelic music was no longer popular. 

They had a hit with "Down the Dustpipe" in 1970. At that point, the band must have had the idea: "Let's do this exact same kind of boogie rock for the rest of our lives," because that's exactly what they did. However, in my opinion, their music from the early 1970s is more interesting than their later stuff. Yes, it's mostly boogie, but they still had more variety before firmly settling into a successful formula. Plus, also in my opinion, the early 1970s was a more musically creative time across the board, and this band rode that general musical wave.

The BBC sessions (taken from the official album "Live at the BBC") end in late 1972. There are three more sessions after that that I didn't include here. One is from 1973, but features different versions of the same songs done in 1972, so I didn't see any point in having duplicate versions. Then there's a session from 1989, and another one from 2005. Those are so far removed in time that I felt they didn't belong. In my opinion, it's a lucky thing the sessions end in 1972, because that's right when my interest in the group fades out. I can enjoy some boogie, but only some, and with this band I feel it's a case of diminishing returns since they didn't attempt to evolve their style at all. Your opinion may vary.

When I make these BBC albums, I like to search around and see if there are any good songs done on other TV or radio shows that merit inclusion. In this case, I found two, both officially unreleased. "(April) Spring, Summer and Wednesdays" was done on the German TV show "Beat Club" in 1970. "Roadhouse Blues," a cover of the Doors classic, as done on a Swedish radio show in 1971.

For Volume 1, most of the songs had BBC DJs talking over the music, which I fixed. Thankfully, around 1970, those DJs wised up and stopped that bad habit. This album is a case in point. There's only one example of that here, on the first song. As with Volume 1, I used the audio editing program X-Minus to remove the talking but keep the underlying music.

This album is 52 minutes long.

01 Spinning Wheel Blues [Edit] (Status Quo)
02 Down the Dust Pipe (Status Quo)
03 In My Chair (Status Quo)
04 Need Your Love (Status Quo)
05 [April] Spring, Summer and Wednesdays (Status Quo)
06 Roadhouse Blues (Status Quo)
07 Mean Girl (Status Quo)
08 Railroad (Status Quo)
09 Don't Waste My Time (Status Quo)
10 Oh Baby (Status Quo)
11 Unspoken Words (Status Quo)
12 Paper Plane (Status Quo)
13 Softer Ride (Status Quo)

https://www.imagenetz.de/eYiCS

The cover photo was taken in London in 1972. The two guys at the bottom were originally lower than I liked, making it hard to show all four of them without zooming out a lot. So I used Photoshop to move them up higher in the picture.