Arrival - BBC Sessions (1969-1973)

I have to admit that I'd never heard of the British band Arrival in my life. But when an anonymous musical friend let me access his very rare collection of "Top of the Pops" BBC studio sessions, I saw a band named Arrival had lots of sessions, enough to make an album. So I looked into their music and discovered they're actually pretty good. So here's another album that's not only completely unreleased, it's been unavailable to the public until now.

Arrival got its start in Liverpool in the early 1960s, when Beatlemania made bands from Liverpool highly prized. However, they were just starting out and couldn't get a record contract. But they persisted, despite a name change and personnel changes. By 1969, they had developed into a talented band with three lead singers, two female and one male. Once they finally got a record contract, their record company gave them a new song written by singer-songwriter Terry Reid, "Friends." It was a hit, though only it Britain, where it made the Top Ten. 

A solid album followed, consisting almost entirely of their own songs. Dusty Springfield praised the band, and even wrote a positive blurb that was included on the back of their album. She meant it too, because years later she commented that if she ever was in a proper band instead of being a solo artist, she would want it to be something like Arrival. A second single followed, "I Will Survive," which was an original. It also was a hit in Britain, though it didn't quite reach the Top Ten.

The future looked bright for the band. But then things started to fall apart, due to the pressures of success. Three of the six band members left, and were replaced. They had a lot of trouble with their record company and changed companies. Momentum was lost, and it took two years until a second album was released. That album got very good reviews, just like the first one, but it contained no hits and didn't sell well. The band was discouraged and broke up. 

However, all was not lost, because three of the band members formed a new band with some other musicians called Kokomo. This band had some success in the 1975, and even got to back up Bob Dylan for a couple of songs during the recording of his 1976 album "Desire."

Here's the Wikipedia entry, although it says very little:

Arrival (band) - Wikipedia

Every song on this album is from unreleased Top of the Pops BBC sessions. (Thanks again to the anonymous person who sent the music to me!) As with all Top of the Pops recordings from this time period, the sound quality is excellent. The only snag was the usual one, namely that BBC DJ Brian Matthew talked over the beginnings and ends of songs. In fact, this time he did that for all but three of the songs, forcing me to clean them up with the UVR5 audio editing program. So that's why you'll see "[Edit]" in most of the song titles. 

Most of the songs are originals, but there are a few covers, like "Light My Fire" by the Doors, "(Let My Life Be Your) Love Song" by Jimmy Webb, "He's Missta Know-It-All" by Stevie Wonder, and "Yes We Can Can" by Allen Toussaint. The original song "Family Tree" appears in two very different versions, the first recorded in 1969 and the second in 1971. It finally made it onto their second album in 1972.

I must say, I was pretty impressed with this band. They're a lot more than a two-hit wonder. They combined soul with pop, and had strong group vocals, with a mix of female and male lead vocals. They were sadly forgotten though, with their music out of print until a retrospective was released in 2012. Hopefully this post will give them some attention again.

This album is 58 minutes long.

01 I Never Knew What You Were Up To [Edit] (Arrival)
02 Family Tree [Early Version] [Edit] (Arrival)
03 World of Darkness [Edit] (Arrival)
04 Light My Fire [Edit] (Arrival)
05 Friends [Edit] (Arrival)
06 Don't Turn His Love Away (Arrival)
07 Sit Down, Float [Edit] (Arrival)
08 Take Me [Edit] (Arrival)
09 It's a Hard Road [Edit] (Arrival)
10 I Will Survive [Edit] (Arrival)
11 Not Right Now [Edit] (Arrival)
12 [Let My Life Be Your] Love Song [Edit] (Arrival)
13 Out of Desperation [Edit] (Arrival)
14 Family Tree [Edit] (Arrival)
15 Sun in the Heaven [Edit] (Arrival)
16 He's Missta Know-It-All [Edit] (Arrival)
17 You're Still a Friend of Mine (Arrival)
18 Yes We Can Can (Arrival)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/6teEo3ho

alternate

https://bestfile.io/mdCJaVtccrZwK54/file

There are very few color photos of this band, it seems. It's especially hard to find good photos because the name "Arrival" is so generic. So I resorted to using the cover photo of the official album "The Complete Recordings of Arrival." However, this had some text over the lower portion of the picture. I used some Photoshop tricks to get rid of that. Then I used the Krea AI program to sharpen what had been a pretty low-res image.