Rod Stewart - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: BBC Rock Hour, Olympia Exhibition Hall, London, Britain, 12-24-1976

Some months ago, in my insatiable question for material for my big BBC project here, I came across a recording of this Rod Stewart concert. But I decided it wasn't worth posting here, due to poor sound quality. Then, last week (as I write this in May 2023), I came across the editing work of Captain Acid, and found a bunch of concert recordings that he made sound better. For this one, his version sounded so much better that I think he worked from a different source than the one I had. This now sounds great.

One reason I think Captain Acid worked from a different source is because this one had a flaw that mine did not, in that all the songs faded in at their starts and faded out at their ends. Luckily, this didn't seem to hinder the music or any of the banter between songs. Also, there was a decent amount of applause after the music ended and before the fade-outs began. So I simply cut out the fade-ins and fade-outs, and made sure the applause levels matched. 

This also had the problem of the lead vocals being too low in the mix. But I fixed that with the audio editing program UVR5.

One problem that I couldn't fix though is that sometimes, when Stewart talked between songs, his voice is hard to understand. He had tons of reverb on the microphone, which didn't help. If he talks while the crowd was roaring, it sounds bad. But if he talks when the crowd was quiet, it's pretty decent. His voice is perfectly fine during the actual songs; it's just the banter that sound muddy at times.

In my opinion, Stewart's music was great in the late 1960s and early 1970s, especially when he was part of the Faces, but then it went downhill as the 1970s went on. By the end of the 1970s, his reputation nosedived because he went all in with disco (with songs like "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy"), and then disco soon went way out of fashion. But at the time of this concert in 1976, during his first tour as a solo artist, he still was releasing great songs like "Tonight's the Night (Gonna Be Alright)," "I Don't Want to Talk about It," "The Killing of Georgie (Part I and II)," and "Sailing," all of which are performed here. So this still had that classic rock early 1970s sound all the way through.

This album is an hour and 27 minutes long.

01 Three Time Loser (Rod Stewart)
02 You Wear It Well (Rod Stewart)
03 talk (Rod Stewart)
04 Big Bayou (Rod Stewart)
05 Tonight's the Night [Gonna Be Alright] (Rod Stewart)
06 talk (Rod Stewart)
07 The Wild Side of Life (Rod Stewart)
08 This Old Heart of Mine [Is Weak for You] (Rod Stewart)
09 Sweet Little Rock and Roller (Rod Stewart)
10 talk (Rod Stewart)
11 I Don't Want to Talk about It (Rod Stewart)
12 The Killing of Georgie [Part I and II] (Rod Stewart)
13 Maggie May (Rod Stewart)
14 Get Back (Rod Stewart)
15 talk (Rod Stewart)
16 [I Know] I'm Losing You (Rod Stewart)
17 Sailing (Rod Stewart)
18 Stay with Me (Rod Stewart)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15226569/RodStwrt_1976_BBSessionsVolum1RckHourOlympiaExhbitionHllLondnBritain__12-24-1976.zip.html

The cover photo comes from a concert in Los Angeles in November 1976.