Friday, February 25, 2022

Tomorrow - BBC Sessions (1967-1968)

Have you ever heard of the British rock band "Tomorrow?" They were one of the pioneer psychedelic bands, but were only in existence for a short time, from 1967 to 1968. Today, they're probably best known for their guitar player Steve Howe, who later became a key member of the band "Yes."

If you want to know more, here is the Wikipedia page on them:

Tomorrow (band) - Wikipedia

It turns out they have enough BBC sessions for an album, but just barely. This album is 31 minutes long. Unfortunately, the sound quality is variable. They're all good enough for me to include them here, but still, I had to lower my standards some to the small amount of available material.

Also, many of the songs suffered from the usual BBC problem of the time of BBC DJs talking over some of the music. Those are marked with "[Edit]," as usual, and I wiped those DJ voices with the X-Minus audio editing program, as usual.

You may see that one song here, "Excerpt from a Teenage Opera (Grocer Jack)," is credited to Keith West instead of Tomorrow. I've included it because West was the lead singer of Tomorrow at the time. He got kind of a side job of singing the lead vocals for a planned rock opera. It ended up not being released, but this single was in 1967, and it was a number two hit in Britain, and a hit in most other Western countries except for the US. The song was very produced, with a children's chorus and other such things, so it was challenging to perform live. Thus, this version had live lead vocals, but the rest was a backing track. 

UPDATE: On May 21, 2022, I updated the mp3 download file. I didn't add or remove any songs, but I found three of the songs in officially released versions on an obscure BBC rarities compilation (tracks 1, 2, and 7). They had slightly better sound, so I've replaced those. Everything else is officially unreleased.

01 Real Life Permanent Dream [Edit] (Tomorrow)
02 Colonel Brown [Edit] (Tomorrow)
03 Three Jolly Little Dwarfs [Edit] (Tomorrow)
04 Revolution [Edit] (Tomorrow)
05 My White Bicycle [Edit] (Tomorrow)
06 Excerpt from a Teenage Opera [Grocer Jack] [Live Lead Vocals Only] (Keith West)
07 Blow Up (Tomorrow)
08 Strawberry Fields Forever [Edit] (Tomorrow)
09 Now Your Time Has Come [Edit] (Tomorrow)
10 The Incredible Journey of Timothy Chase [Edit] (Tomorrow)

https://www.imagenetz.de/gAd4G

I was complaining recently how there seems to be no or almost no good color photos of bands like the Idle Race or the Steampacket. Tomorrow is another such case. I found what I thought at first was a good color photo, shown here, but then on closer inspection I realized it was colorized with sepia tones. So I took that and colorized it some more, changing the clothes, hair, greenery, and such.

11 comments:

  1. I was still at school when I saw these guys in Croydon on tour with Traffic. My friends and I went to see Traffic, but came away talking about Tomorrow and the guitarist who stood there, just hunched over his guitar, playing amazing stuff, who turned out - of course - to be Steve Howe.

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  2. Twink, the band's drummer, went on to more success as well as some notoriety with the Pretty Things and the Pink Fairies.

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  3. Hola,los discos de la bbc editados y sin brian matthew, son un crimen.Seria bueno que los suba tal cual fueron editados.Gracias

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  4. Hello, your blog is very good, but I will make a criticism, a little continuing the previous comment. It doesn't make sense to cut the presentation of the announcers or DJs, they are precisely songs or albums made for and by the radio, there are many consumers of these recordings, due to their essence. There are also those who are bothered by the speaker's presentation. You could upload them both ways, with and without presentation, it's the same job, which I say again is a very good blog. I would like you to consider my request. Greetings

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    1. Thanks for the feedback. But I am very passionate about getting rid of that DJ talk. If you want to hear it that way, those versions are widely available elsewhere. The DJ-less versions are pretty much only available here. So you do have both options.

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    2. Okay, it's easier to say, if you don't like it, leave, than it is to try to offer another alternative. And that they are only available here?... It's a fallacy, I've uploaded many of this kind of albums with or without an announcer from 2008 to today. Thank you very much, good luck.

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    3. There's a guy on SoulseekQT named "stevensteve." Pretty much 100% of what he shares is BBC stuff, and he has a huge amount. He's totally in favor of keeping the DJ talk. So if you want that, you can get it from him, just learn to use SoulseekQT if you haven't already. He even has the obscure stuff like the Casuals or Tomorrow - that's where I've found much of it.

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    4. Thanks for the information, but imagine that in 14 years as a blogger I already learned how to use SS, in fact, I supplied many of its members for years. I was referring to your work, not that of others. No problem, I know I won't find what I'm looking for here. Thanks again

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  5. I wanted to throw out a suggestion for one of your "Covered" series: Michael Nesmith. Linda Ronstadt has a bunch, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band did some covers, "Mary, Mary" by Paul Butterfield, etc. I think it'd be a good'un if there's enough variety.

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    1. I'm not sure if there's enough material, but I'll check it out.

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