The Tremeloes - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: 1968-1970

This is the fourth volume of out five of the Tremeloes performing for the BBC.

The first eleven songs here have officially released, from the album "BBC Sessions, 1967-1969." But as you can tell from that album title, it ended in 1969. The remaining five songs, all from 1970, are unreleased. Their sound quality is as good as the others.

Typically, British Invasion bands like this one did covers for the BBC that they never recorded in the studio and released. That's the case with the Tremeloes. I didn't check every last song, but I know for instance that "Good Times," "Proud Mary," "I Can't Turn You Loose," were only done for the BBC. Note that a different version of "Blessed" from 1966 was included on Volume 2 in this series, since it was an A-side that year.

The band really blew it with the song "Yellow River." A songwriter by the name of Jeff Christie offered it to the Tremeloes. They recorded it and planned to release it as a single in early 1970. But at the last minute they decided it was too poppy and they wanted to try for a more serious image and sound. So Christie used the Tremeloes' version, but with his lead vocals, and had a number one hit with it under the name "Christie" in Britain, as well as a Top Twenty hit in the US. Given that the Tremeloes hits dried up soon after this, I'll bet they were kicking themselves later. The band's studio version did come out on archival releases years later, but it's interesting to see they did a BBC version at the time.

However, the band did have some other big hits in this time period, including "(Call Me) Number One" and "Me and My Life," both of which reached the top five in the British charts. They were writing a lot more of their own material by this time, including both of those hits.

As you'd expect from this time period, many of the songs had BBC DJs talking over the music (all the ones with "[Edit]" in their titles). As usual, I used the X-Minus audio editing program to wipe out the talking while keeping the underlying music. 

This album is 47 minutes long.

01 I Shall Be Released (Tremeloes)
02 Good Times [Edit] (Tremeloes)
03 Hello World (Tremeloes)
04 En Tu Mondo (Tremeloes)
05 Once on a Sunday Morning (Tremeloes)
06 Proud Mary (Tremeloes)
07 I Can't Turn You Loose (Tremeloes)
08 Blessed (Tremeloes)
09 [Call Me] Number One (Tremeloes)
10 You [Edit] (Tremeloes)
11 What Can I Do [Edit] (Tremeloes)
12 Anything [Edit] (Tremeloes)
13 Yellow River [Edit] (Tremeloes)
14 It's a Long Road [Edit] (Tremeloes)
15 Before I Sleep [Edit] (Tremeloes)
16 Me and My Life [Edit] (Tremeloes)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16376843/TTREMLOS1968-1970BBSssonsVol4_atse.zip.html

The cover photo was taken in Australia in 1968.