Orange Bicycle - BBC Sessions (1966-1970)

Here's a BBC collection from a British band you've probably never heard of, Orange Bicycle. If you have heard of them, I'm impressed by your musical knowledge. They never had a hit single in Britain or the U.S., and they aren't considered cool enough to have developed much of a cult following.

The story of Orange Bicycle is pretty typical for British bands of their era. They started as a skiffle band, transitioned to doing R&B covers, then morphed into a more psychedelic style around 1967. They did have one hit single in 1967 that was an original song, "Hyacinth Threads," but only in France. It went to Number One there while being ignored in most other countries. Unfortunately, it's not included here, but you should check it out, since it's a lost classic.

All their other singles failed. They finally were able to put out an album in 1970, simply called "The Orange Bicycle," but it avoided the charts. They broke up soon thereafter.

Here's their Wikipedia entry:

Orange Bicycle - Wikipedia

Given their lack of success, it's pretty remarkable that there's enough material for me to make a BBC album, especially since everything here is officially unreleased. The reason for that is even though they were never very popular (except in France), the BBC loved them, and treated them almost like a house band. They performed over 100 studio sessions in the late 1960s. The reason is because they could capably perform cover songs in almost any style. So whenever the BBC wanted versions of popular songs where they couldn't get the original artists to play them, they could rely on Orange Bicycle. 

Thus, even though the band wrote many good original songs, the vast majority of the songs here are covers. I think the only originals are "New Girl in School" and "Jenskadajka."

In a better world, since they did over a 100 BBC studio sessions, with probably an average of three songs each, I would have hours and hours of BBC material to turn into albums. But unfortunately, the BBC didn't have a habit of keeping recordings of their own broadcasts, and because this band didn't develop a cult following, it seems nobody kept any recordings taken from the radio. The only reason we have these is because some songs were put on albums to send to BBC stations overseas for the "Top of the Pops" radio show, and copies of those albums have survived. The silver lining with that is that all the songs that did survive sound great, just like studio versions.

During this time period, Brian Matthew was the DJ for the "Top of the Pops" show, and he had an awful habit of talking over the music. Indeed, that was the case here, for ten out of the 14 songs (the ones with "[Edit]" in their titles. But, as usual, I used the UVR5 audio editing program to wipe the banter and keep the music.

Admittedly, Orange Bicycle was not a top-tier band for its era. Furthermore, most of their good original songs like "Hyacinth Threads" aren't included here. But they had good taste in covers, and performed them well. Plus, I really like the whole sound and spirit of the late 1960s, and they fit right into that.

This album is 38 minutes long.

01 Here Today [Edit] (Orange Bicycle)
02 Papa Oom Mow Mow (Orange Bicycle)
03 New Girl in School (Orange Bicycle)
04 Carpet Man [Edit] (Orange Bicycle)
05 Jenskadajka [Edit] (Orange Bicycle)
06 Meet on the Ledge [Edit] (Orange Bicycle)
07 Sing This All Together [Edit] (Orange Bicycle)
08 A Hazy Shade of Winter [Edit] (Orange Bicycle)
09 Tonight I'll Be Staying Here with You [Edit] (Orange Bicycle)
10 Carry That Weight [Edit] (Orange Bicycle)
11 Well... Alright [Edit] (Orange Bicycle)
12 She Belongs to Me (Orange Bicycle)
13 Take Me to the Pilot (Orange Bicycle)
14 She's a Rainbow [Edit] (Orange Bicycle)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16300780/ORANGBICYCL1966-1970BBSessons_atse.zip.html

Because this band is so obscure, I couldn't find one color photo of them, and precious few black and white photos. So I took the best black and white photo I could find, then used the Palette and Photoshop programs to colorize it.