Wednesday, August 3, 2022

Colin Blunstone - BBC Sessions, Volume 2 (1973-1991)

This is the second of two volumes of BBC performances by Colin Blunstone.

Blunstone put out albums through the 1970s. In my opinion, the first two were really good, and similar in sound to what he did with the Zombies in the 1960s. But each album got a little worse after that. You can see this in the scores at rateyourmusic.com, which aggregates lots of reviews. Trying to make popular music, he increasingly resorted to a bland, middle of the road sound, which lost what made his music special and dropped his popularity. 

The BBC generally likes hit makers, so the first six songs are from 1973 and 1974 (with two of them from the BBC TV show ("Old Grey Whistle Test"), but then the BBC sessions stopped. He did have a hit again in 1982 when he was the guest lead vocalist for the Alan Parsons Project song "Old and Wise." I couldn't find a BBC version of that, but I found one from a Belgian TV show. 

The last four songs come from a 1991 BBC session. I assume that had more to do with the growing popularity of his work with the Zombies in the 1960s, because two of the songs were Zombies songs, and the other two were from his early 1970s albums. Note that different versions of three of those are on Volume 1 of this series.

After that, most of his music has been done with Rod Argent of the Zombies in various Zombies reunions. So this BBC series ends there.

Tracks 5, 6, and 8 through 11 have been officially released on the "Live at the BBC" album. The others generally sound as good.

This album is 42 minutes long.

01 I Want Some More (Colin Blunstone)
02 Setting Yourself Up (Colin Blunstone)
03 Wonderful [Edit] (Colin Blunstone)
04 Weak for You (Colin Blunstone)
05 Brother Lover (Colin Blunstone)
06 Something Happens When You Touch Me (Colin Blunstone)
07 Old and Wise (Colin Blunstone)
08 She's Not There (Colin Blunstone)
09 Time of the Season (Colin Blunstone)
10 Andorra (Colin Blunstone)
11 Caroline Goodbye (Colin Blunstone)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15904624/ColinBlun_1973-1991_BBSessionsVolume2_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is from 1973.

4 comments:

  1. Fyi, the Zippy link gives a "File has expired and does not exist anymore on this server" message.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for the new link!!! Really appreciate it you doing this during your holidays.

    ReplyDelete