Tuesday, May 16, 2023

The Bee Gees - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: In Concert, Wembley Arena, London, Britain, 6-2-1989

I've posted three albums of BBC studio sessions by the Bee Gees, all from the late 1960s and early 1970s. I thought I was done with the Bee Gees at the BBC. But it turns out they did some concerts that were broadcast by the BBC over 15 years later. Here's the first such concert, which is unreleased.

Things changed drastically for the Bee Gees between their last BBC session in 1973 and this concert in 1989. They seemed to be fading into obscurity, but then found new life with disco music, and briefly became one of the biggest musical acts on the planet. Then disco went out of fashion, and suddenly it seemed everyone was sick of them. But they slowly clawed their way back into the charts in the 1980s. They never again were massively popular in the US, but by the time of this concert they restored much of their popularity in Britain and the rest of the world.

As you'd expect, this concert hits the high points from all the different phases of their career. Unfortunately, this is not the full concert though, as the BBC edited it down. According to the setlist.fm database, they also played "Giving Up the Ghost," "One," Tokyo Nights," "Juliet," "Run to Me," "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart," "House of Shame," "Stayin' Alive," and "You Win Again." 

When I saw that list of missed songs, my first thought was "No 'Stayin' Alive?! Are you kidding me?! That's one of the biggest hits of all time. Whoever edited that down for the BBC really blew it." So I decided that had to be added back in. I couldn't find this BBC version, but I found a concert they did in 1989 in Tokyo, Japan that was broadcasted on the radio and thus had similarly excellent sound to this BBC recording. It was pretty short and didn't have most of the other missing songs, but I did find "One" and "You Win Again" as well, so I've added those three to the end.

The Bee Gees have only released two official live albums, one in 1977 and the other in 1998. However, they've released several DVDs of live shows. One of them, "One for All Tour," features this 1989 tour, so you can find a more complete concert from this tour with that video.

This album is an hour and 13 minutes long. If you don't include the three non-BBC performances at the end, it's an hour long.

01 Ordinary People (Bee Gees)
02 talk (Bee Gees)
03 To Love Somebody (Bee Gees)
04 I Gotta Get a Message to You (Bee Gees)
05 Words (Bee Gees)
06 Lonely Days (Bee Gees)
07 talk (Bee Gees)
08 New York Mining Disaster 1941 (Bee Gees)
09 Holiday (Bee Gees)
10 Too Much Heaven (Bee Gees)
11 talk (Bee Gees)
12 Hearbreaker - Islands in the Stream (Bee Gees)
13 Saved by the Bell (Bee Gees)
14 World (Bee Gees)
15 talk (Bee Gees)
16 How Deep Is Your Love (Bee Gees)
17 It's My Neighbourhood (Bee Gees)
18 I Started a Joke (Bee Gees)
19 Massachusetts (Bee Gees)
20 Nights on Broadway (Bee Gees)
21 Jive Talkin' (Bee Gees)
22 You Should Be Dancing (Bee Gees)
23 One (Bee Gees)
24 You Win Again (Bee Gees)
25 Stayin' Alive (Bee Gees)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15236124/TBeeGs_1989_BBSessionsVolum4InConcrtWmbleyArenaLondnBritain__6-2-1989_atse.zip.html

The cover photo actually comes from the right venue, Wembley Arena in London, and from the right year, 1989. But I'm not sure if it's from this exact concert because they played there several times that year.

8 comments:

  1. Interesting to see "Saved by the Bell" there, as it was originally a Robin Gibb solo single, though apparently Maurice played on it.

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  2. I admire your work but for me when you patch in songs that aren't from the same concert I lose interest.

    Certain songs were left out of the original broadcast for varying reasons - sometimes legal - and I prefer to have the originals as broadcast.

    I currently have over 1200 BBC 'In Concerts' in my collection that are all in excellent sound quality with a great many transferred form Transcription Discs, but I never patch in stuff from different shows.

    But, each to their own, best wishes and keep up the good work!

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    1. Those three non-BBC songs are at the end. Just remove them and you have a "pure" BBC concert.

      By the way, I'd be very interested to see your list of BBC concerts. Would you be willing to share?

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    3. I've tried but Blogger won't allow me to post the full list, sadly.

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    4. It's probably too long, if you tried to paste it in. Could you email it to me instead? My email is thompson22 @ runbox.com (remove the spaces).

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  4. Would you happen to have clean audio files for the Beatles songs the Bee Gees covered on a show called Midnight Special in 73? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMhoMrWE18A). I downloaded the audio from the utube link but it sounds muddy. Perhaps you could make a full post of them with other bands doing live Beatles covers?

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