Marmalade - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: 1971-1973

Here's a bit of BBC history. Form 1960s until decades later, the best BBC recordings of each week were compiled onto a show for countries outside of Britain (mostly current or former British colonies) called "Top of the Pops." (Note this is not to be confused with a BBC TV show of the same name!) The transcription discs of this show were sent all over world, so great quality versions of all the shows exist when many other radio shows were lost or were only poorly recorded over the radio.

I don't know why, but for some reason, the 1960s "Top of the Pops" recordings have gotten around a fair amount and have often been bootlegged or put on official records, but the early 1970s ones are much, much rarer. However, a musical friend Marley has most of them, and has been sharing them with me. This is allowing me to fill in gaps. For instance, I was able to post all the Bee Gees BBC recordings from 1967 to 1973, when the early 1970s ones are extremely rare. (Unfortunately, after about 1973, "Top of the Pops" mostly played singles instead of having in studio performances, though there were some exceptions.)

Now, Marmalade is getting the same treatment. Previously, I'd only been able to find one albums' worth of their 1970s BBC material. But thanks to Marley, that has turned to three albums, plus the unchanged one from the 1960s. I radically overhauled Volume 2, so if you downloaded that, you should get it again. Volume 3 is a live concert broadcast by the BBC that I hadn't posted before. And everything here is new, all thanks to what Marley was able to find.

Marmalade kept evolving with the times and kept having (British) hits, from 1967 to 1972. Their last big hit is "Radancer," included here, which reached number six on the British charts. The band increasingly switched from pop to an almost hard rocking sound at times to stay relevant. 

In late 1971, one of the band's lead singers and songwriters, Junior Campbell, left for a briefly successful solo career. Three of the songs here are from his solo career, including the hit "Hallelujah Freedom." Also, note that the song "Dinosaur," which was done for the BBC in late 1973, does not seem to have been released by Marmalade in any form. They released an album in 1971 and another one in 1974, and had some significant personnel changes between the two. I'm guessing the song got lost in the shuffle.

Four of the songs have "[Edit]" in their titles, due to the usual problem of BBC DJs talking over the music. As usual, I used the X-Minus audio editing program to fix that. Thankfully, this practice died out, so the latter songs here are free of that.

Marmalade's popularity faded as the 1970s went on. But they had a hit song in 1976, "Falling Apart at the Seams," and then never made the charts again. However, as far as I can tell, the last BBC session they did with unique performances was in late 1973, so that's when this series ends.

This album is 43 minutes long.

01 Lonely Man [Edit] (Marmalade)
02 Sarah [Edit] (Marmalade)
03 Radancer [Edit] (Marmalade)
04 Empty Bottles (Marmalade)
05 Just One Woman (Marmalade)
06 Hallelujah Freedom [Edit] (Junior Campbell)
07 If I Call Your Name (Junior Campbell)
08 Ode to Karen (Junior Campbell)
09 Engine Driver (Marmalade)
10 Our House Is Rockin' (Marmalade)
11 [Your Wish Is In] The Wishing Well (Marmalade)
12 Dinosaur (Marmalade)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15264358/Marmld_1971-1973_BBSessionsVolume4_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is of the band in concert in 1972, but I don't know the details beyond that.