Lenny Kravitz - BBC in Concert, Town and Country Club, London, Britain, 5-24-1990, plus BBC 1993

A lot of people say that Lenny Kravitz mostly imitates other people's styles. I think that's true. But the thing is, he picks really great styles to imitate, mostly classic rock and soul, and he's really good at it. So he's definitely worthy of inclusion in my big BBC project. I particularly like his first few albums, so I went looking for any BBC material from that time period. 

I found two: a BBC concert in 1990, and another in 1993. The 1990 one had better sound quality, and was longer, so I picked that one. However, the 1993 had some key songs he'd released between 1990 and 1993, especially his classic hit "Are You Gonna Go My Way." So I picked three songs from that concert, and added them to the end. (All the others from that concert were also played in the 1990 concert.)  Although those are only three songs, one of them "Always on the Run," was jammed out to be 14 minutes long. So together they make up 25 minutes, a good chuck of this entire album. That's why I added "plus BBC 1993" to the title of the album.

It turns out the main problem with the sound quality of the 1993 BBC show is that the lead vocals were way too low in the mix. So I used the audio editing program Spleeter to bring them up. They sound much better now, nearly on part with the rest. That's why I put "[Edit]" in the titles of those three songs.

But I wasn't done there. Two of my favorite songs of his from this time period are "Believe" and "It Ain't Over 'til It's Over." The latter was his biggest US hit, reaching Number 2 in 1991. So I wanted to include those, but they weren't played at the 1993 BBC show. (They were released after the first show, so they wouldn't have been there either.) I went looking for soundboard-worthy versions from this time period. Surprisingly, I didn't find any good recordings of either song. But on YouTube I found video of a few Kravitz songs from the 1991 Pinkpop Festival in Netherlands, and they happened to include both of them. Those sounded great, because they were from a professional TV broadcast. So I added those at the very end.

The final result is a bit strange: a 1990 concert, but with the last five songs from 1993. But it's all excellent music with excellent sound quality. Two covers are included, "Cold Turkey" by John Lennon, and "If 6 Was 9" by Jimi Hendrix.

The main 1990 concert is an hour and two minutes long. If you add in the five 1993 songs at the end, the entire album is an hour and 38 minutes long.

01 Flower Child (Lenny Kravitz)
02 talk (Lenny Kravitz)
03 Mr. Cab Driver (Lenny Kravitz)
04 Freedom Train (Lenny Kravitz)
05 talk (Lenny Kravitz)
06 My Precious Love (Lenny Kravitz)
07 Be (Lenny Kravitz)
08 talk (Lenny Kravitz)
09 Cold Turkey (Lenny Kravitz)
10 talk (Lenny Kravitz)
11 If 6 Was 9 (Lenny Kravitz)
12 Fear (Lenny Kravitz)
13 talk (Lenny Kravitz)
14 Let Love Rule (Lenny Kravitz)
15 Is There Any Love in Your Heart [Edit] (Lenny Kravitz)
16 Always on the Run [Edit] (Lenny Kravitz)
17 Are You Gonna Go My Way [Edit] (Lenny Kravitz)
18 It Ain’t Over ’Til It’s Over (Lenny Kravitz)
19 Believe (Lenny Kravitz)

https://www.imagenetz.de/kaaEz

The cover photo is not from this exact concert, but it's from another small venue in London just one month earlier. It was taken at the Marquee Club on April 18, 1990.