The Bystanders started in Wales in 1962. From early on, they distinguished themselves from other similar bands by their vocal harmonies. They carefully studied the vocal techniques of the Beach Boys, the Four Freshmen, and doo wop. It took them until 1966 before they managed to get a record contract and release a single. Despite starting to write pretty good original material, that single and all subsequent singles flopped. So they never got popular enough to get an album released. (However, a good anthology was released decades later, called "Pattern People.")
They did have a couple of close calls though, and missed out mainly due to bad luck. For instance, in February 1968, they released the single "When Jezamine Goes," which they thought was sure to be a hit. But their record company was cheap and didn't promote it. The Casuals did the same song, shorted the title to "Jesamine," and had a Number Two hit with it in Britain a few months later.
The band wasn't that original, riding the popular music trends of the day. That meant moving from R&B to psychedelic music in 1967. They mostly excelled at "psychedelic pop," which was pretty similar to what was later called "sunshine pop." Most of the songs here are originals, though there are a few covers, like "Uptight (Everything's Alright)," "Yellow Balloon," "Somewhere They Can't Find Me," "I Am the Walrus," and "Renaissance Fair."
Because the band was versatile and excelled with vocal harmonies, they were very favored by the BBC. Apparently at their peak they often did multiple BBC sessions a week, because the BBC wanted bands who could do adept versions of popular hits of the day. Unfortunately, virtually all of these sessions seem to have been lost. The only ones that have survived are the BBC sessions they did for the "Top of the Pops" radio show. That's because that show was recorded on albums and sent to other countries in the British empire (or former British empire) each week, and good copies of nearly all of those albums have survived.
So every single song here is from the "Top of the Pops" show. Surprisingly, most of them have been officially released, as parts of some obscure various artists compilations of these Top of the Pops shows. For instance, the first five songs are from the album "British Beat Collection, Volume 2: Rare British Broadcasts - The Beat Era 1964-1968." Only tracks six through nine are still unreleased.
As usual, some of these had BBD DJ Brian Matthew talking over the beginnings and ends of songs. But I also did my usual thing, using UVR5 to wipe his voice while keeping the music. Those are the songs with "[Edit]" in their titles. For some reason, the Bystanders got off relatively easy, with only six such songs.
The band is so obscure that they currently don't even have a Wikipedia entry, as I write this in 2025. However, there's a few paragraphs about them in the entry for the band Man:
This album is 39 minutes long.
01 You're Gonna Hurt Yourself (Bystanders)
02 Have I Offended the Girl (Bystanders)
03 Uptight [Everything's Alright] [Edit] (Bystanders)
04 My Love Come Home (Bystanders)
05 If You Walk Away (Bystanders)
06 Royal Blue Summer Sunshine Day (Bystanders)
07 Yellow Balloon (Bystanders)
08 Wish You Would Make Up Your Mind [Edit] (Bystanders)
09 Pattern People [Edit] (Bystanders)
10 Get Down with It (Bystanders)
11 The First [Edit] (Bystanders)
12 Somewhere They Can't Find Me [Edit] (Bystanders)
13 I Am the Walrus (Bystanders)
14 Renaissance Fair [Edit] (Bystanders)
15 This World Is My World (Bystanders)
https://pixeldrain.com/u/FmH2pE5v
alternate:
https://bestfile.io/en/YB6gbccrt4S1Ey1/file
There are very few photos of this band, period. I found this one in the liner notes of the anthology album of the band: "Pattern People - The Pye Years." It was very, very badly colorized. I recolorized it, using some more plausible color combinations for the clothes. Then I ran it through the Krea AI program to improve the picture quality.
Thank you!
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