One area of focus I've had for this blog is posting BBC studio sessions from the 1960s and 70s, even if it's from obscure musical acts. In fact, especially from obscure musical acts, if they were good. Here's BBC sessions from a band that definitely was good: the Action.
In the late 1960s, there were a lot of great British bands that should have had a lot of success, but the lucky breaks didn't go their way. The Action were one of those bands. The started out in the early 1960s like most British bands at the time, specializing in covers of American R&B music. They were very good at it, and developed a following and critical acclaim. But they failed to get the all important hit single.
Then, 1967, musical tastes drastically changed in Britain, from R&B covers to original psychedelic music. Not many bands had the talent to make that transition, but the Action did. They wrote enough songs for what should have been a classic album, to be called "Rolled Gold." But their record company had lost faith in them by that point, and wouldn't approve the recording and release of it. At least fairly fleshed out demos of those songs were released in the 1990s, suggesting what might have been. But after that failure, the band broke up, though most of the band went on to slightly more success for a few years under the name "Mighty Baby."
Here's their Wikipedia page, if you want to know more:
The Action - Wikipedia
Up until mere days ago, I didn't know they had enough songs for a decent-length BBC album. But it turns out their BBC performances were compiled on a 2004 archival release called "Uptight and Outasight." These are the exact songs released on that album, since this is everything that could be found from the BBC by the band.
However, this is different than that album, because I edited most of the songs. Four of the songs suffered the usual problem of the era of BBC DJs talking over the music. So I did my usual thing, using the MVSEP program to wipe out the talking while keeping the underlying music. Those songs are marked with "[Edit]" in their titles. Additionally, the vocals were low for most of the songs, so I boosted them relative to the instruments with the use of the UVR5 program. Finally, the first two songs aren't from BBC studio sessions at all, but were from an appearance on the "Ready, Steady, Go!" TV show in 1966. There was an audience, so I also used the MVSEP program to get rid of the cheering. I did the same to tracks 7 and 8, which were from a BBC radio show, "Pop North," that had a cheering audience too.
Even though this album is short, it shows the musical transition I described above. The first eight songs are from 1966 or early 1967, and are mainly R&B covers. By the last four songs are from a July 1967 session that already show the band transitioning to more of a psychedelic style. That includes a cover of "I See You," a band making a similar transition at the same time.
The Action performed for the BBC a few more times. Unfortunately, this is all that seems to have survived. Interestingly, some of the music here survived because Phil Collins (yes, that Phil Collins), who was a young teenager at the time, was a huge Action fan and recorded some of their music off the radio, then passed the recording to a record company decades later.
This album is 30 minutes long.
01 I'll Keep On Holding On (Action)
02 Land of a 1000 Dances - Uptight [Everything's Alright] (Action)
03 Mine Exclusively (Action)
05 Baby You Got It (Action)
06 Take Me in Your Arms [Rock Me a Little While] [Edit] (Action)
07 Going to a Go-Go (Action)
08 Never Ever (Action)
09 Love Is All [Edit] (Action)
10 I See You [Edit] (Action)
11 India [Instrumental] (Action)
12 Shadows and Reflections [Edit] (Action)
https://pixeldrain.com/u/uS22byyX
alternate:
https://bestfile.io/en/Zy0oDKSv7MqMyJi/file
The cover photo of the band was taken in March 1967. The band name at the top was taken from an album cover, and then stretched horizontally.
