The Idle Race - BBC Sessions (1967-1969)

Have you heard of the Idle Race? They aren't well known these days, but they were the first major band led by Jeff Lynne, who later went on to be in the Move, ELO (Electric Light Orchestra), and the Traveling Wilburys. They put out two albums led by Lynne in 1968 and 1969, and then one without him in 1971 after he left to join the Move. You can read more about them at their Wikipedia entry here:

The Idle Race - Wikipedia

The good news is the Idle Race did a lot of sessions for the BBC (all of them while Lynne was still in the band). And they're musically important because no live recordings of the band have emerged whatsoever, other than a couple of tracks included here. The bad news is their BBC recordings are a mess, more than the vast majority of other artists I've come across so far. There are almost no official versions of any of the performances. There have been two obscure releases of only a couple of "Symonds on Sunday" sessions, but these have dealt with BBC DJs talking over the intros by removing the intros entirely, so I haven't used them. Their sound quality isn't any better than the bootleg versions anyway.

So we're left with the bootleg versions. These are all over the place in terms of sound quality. Furthermore, things are a mess in terms of figuring out which songs were done at which sessions, because many songs were done more than once, and the different bootlegs label them differently. I've gathered the best versions from multiple sources, and I've used my best guesses as to the sourcing detailed in the mp3 tags. If anyone knows better information, please let me know.

Happily, if one sorts through the different versions and multiple performances of the same songs and selects just the best ones, the sound quality is generally very good. I've decided to aim for high standards, so songs with merely okay sound quality have been relegated to bonus tracks.

I think the results are excellent in two ways. First off, the Idle Race were known for their everything but the kitchen sink production. You know how ELO songs are generally heavily produced, with lots of orchestra and synths? The Idle Race were basically the 1960s version of that, using the more limited technology of the time. These BBC versions are still full band versions, to be sure, but they're more stripped down in a relative sense. I like them more than the album versions because of that.

The second reason this is excellent is that the band played a number of cover songs they never recorded in the studio. The Idle Race's recorded output with Jeff Lynne is small, only two albums and a few songs released only on singles. Songs here done only as covers include "Hey Grandma," "Blueberry Blue," "Frantic Desolation," and the bonus tracks "Born to Be Wild," "Debora," and "Love Me Two Times."

As usual for the time period, BBC DJs talked over the intros or outros for about half of the songs (the ones with "[Edit]" in their titles). So I did what I usually do, and used the X-Minus audio editing program to wipe out the talking while keeping the underlying music.

This album is 54 minutes long without the bonus tracks, and an hour and ten minutes with them included.

01 [Here We Go Round] The Lemon Tree [Edit] (Idle Race)
02 Imposters of Life's Magazine (Idle Race)
03 Hey Grandma [Edit] (Idle Race)
04 The Lady Who Said She Could Fly (Idle Race)
05 Skeleton and the Roundabout [Edit] (Idle Race)
06 Don't Put Your Boys in the Army, Mrs Ward (Idle Race)
07 Blueberry Blue [Edit] (Idle Race)
08 End of the Road (Idle Race)
09 Pie in the Sky (Idle Race)
10 Told You Twice (Idle Race)
11 Follow Me Follow [Edit] (Idle Race)
12 Worn Red Carpet [Edit] (Idle Race)
13 Days of Broken Arrows [Edit] (Idle Race)
14 Frantic Desolation (Idle Race)
15 Mr. Crow and Sir Norman (Idle Race)
16 Sea of Dreams (Idle Race)
17 Reminds Me of You (Idle Race)
18 Someone's Knocking [Edit] (Idle Race)
19 Please No More Sad Songs [Edit] (Idle Race)
20 Come with Me (Idle Race)

Born to Be Wild [Edit] (Idle Race)
Debora (Idle Race)
Love Me Two Times [Edit] (Idle Race)
On with the Show [Edit] (Idle Race)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15130083/IdleRac_1967-1969_BBSessions_atse.zip.html

I'm frequently amazed at how hard it is to find any decent photos of musical artists from the 1960s and 1970s that aren't already used as album covers unless they're really big names like the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. The Idle Race is a case in point. I only found a few color photos period, and most of them had low resolution. I was forced to use one that was rather small and had some major color balance problems. But I made some adjustments in Photoshop so it hopefully looks acceptable. 

I have no idea where or when the picture was taken. In case you're curious, Jeff Lynne is in the middle with the curly hair and his arms crossed.