Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich - BBC Sessions, Volume 1 (1966-1967)

I have to say straight up that I'm not that big of a Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich fan. (Since that's such an unwieldy name, from now on I'll refer to them as DDBMT.) But I'm in the middle of a big BBC project, and I want to post all the music of artists who have had their music marred by BBC DJs talking over their songs. So I'm posting some music that I'm not crazy about, and this is one.

That said, it's not like I dislike DDBMT. Some of their hit songs are pretty good, and everything they did is bathed in that mid to late 1960s British Invasion sound that I really like. And I've come to appreciate them more after putting this BBC collection together (which spans three volumes). This first volume consists almost entirely of their hits and better album tracks, and isn't that revelatory. But the later two volumes have more cover versions they never put on record, and the band was moving in an interesting direction before it broke up in the early 1970s.

DDBMT isn't liked much by the critics. I think there are two reasons for that. First, their dumb band name. It clearly was a gimmick, and it helped gain them attention at the time, but nowadays it makes it hard to take them seriously, much like the name "Herman's Hermits." The second strike against them is that they sold tons of records, way more than bands that were more deserving of success. They didn't make much of a mark in the US, but in Britain they apparently had their singles on their charts more weeks than even the Beatles (though they didn't sell nearly as much as them). They also had a zany stage act, wore wild clothes, and so on. Hopefully, nowadays one can look past their name, their sales, their teenybopper appeal, and so on, and just focus on their music. 

Another strike against them is that they didn't write many of their own songs. In fact, the vast majority of their songs, including all their hits, were written by the songwriting team of Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley. This team was quite talented, writing other hits as well, such as "Have I the Right," a number one hit by the Honeycombs, and "From the Underground" by the Herd.

All the songs here come from an officially released album, called "The BBC Sessions."  Luckily, only two of them had the usual problem of BBC DJs talking over the music (the ones with "[Edit]" in their names). This was helped by the fact that the band played many songs twice or more at the BBC, allowing one to pick the best versions. I've only included one version of each song in this series.

This album is 45 minutes long.

01 Is It Love [Edit] (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)
02 Hold Tight (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)
03 You Make It Move (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)
04 We've Got a Good Thing Going (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)
05 Hideaway (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)
06 Frustration (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)
07 Bend It (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)
08 She's So Good (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)
09 Hands Off (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)
10 Hello Josephine (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)
11 Hard to Love You [Edit] (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)
12 I'm on the Up (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)
13 Save Me (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)
14 Help Me (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)
15 Touch Me, Touch Me (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)
16 Watch Your Step (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)
17 He's a Raver (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)
18 Okay (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15281002/DaveDBMT_1966-1967_BBSessionsVolum1_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from a 1966 appearance on the British TV show "Ready, Steady, Go."