First off, note that this band was called "Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show" from its start in the late 1960s until 1975. But by the time this concert took place, they had shortened their name to just "Dr. Hook," so that's the name I'm using here.
Dr. Hook had a lot of success, mostly in the 1970s. Between 1972 and 1982, they had nine Top Forty songs in the U.S. But they don't seem to be that well remembered today. Perhaps that's because they covered a lot of musical ground, from jokey songs (mostly written by Shel Silverstein) to weepy ballads. Or perhaps it's because they were known for a wild and amusing stage show, which is hard to capture for posterity unless you were actually there to remember it. But in any case, they were an interesting band that always knew how to capture people's attention.
At the time of this concert, the band was best known for three songs: "The Cover of 'Rolling Stone,'" "Silvia's Mother," and "Only Sixteen." All three were Top Ten hits in the U.S. But strangely, neither of the first two were included here. In banter between songs, they hinted that the BBC didn't like "The Cover of 'Rolling Stone'" because it mentioned a specific product, which was against BBC policy at the time. (In 1970, the Kinks even had to rerecord "Lola" just to change the words "Coca Cola" to "cherry Cola" so it could get played by the BBC.) But the failure to include "Silvia's Mother" is even stranger, since it was their one and only British hit at the time, and a big one too, reaching Number Two in Britain in 1972.
Normally, the BBC TV show The Old Grey Whistle Test had several different musical acts perform on each episode. But sometimes they had one episode featuring just one act, and this was one such case. This remains officially unreleased.
Note that Dr. Hook did another BBC concert in 1980. I've found most of the songs for it on YouTube, but without any of the banter between songs, and very little applause. Also, I don't know the song order. So I'm not willing to post that one just yet. I hope a better version will emerge. (If you have one, please share!) If and when I do post that, this one will get renamed to "BBC Sessions, Volume 1."
This album is 39 minutes long.
01 talk (Dr. Hook)
02 The Millionaire (Dr. Hook)
03 talk (Dr. Hook)
04 The Yodel Song (Dr. Hook)
05 talk (Dr. Hook)
06 Get My Rocks Off (Dr. Hook)
07 talk (Dr. Hook)
08 Only Sixteen (Dr. Hook)
09 talk (Dr. Hook)
10 Rollin' in My Sweet Baby's Arms (Dr. Hook)
11 talk (Dr. Hook)
12 Everybody's Making It Big but Me (Dr. Hook)
13 Carry Me, Carrie (Dr. Hook)
14 Happy Trails (Dr. Hook)
https://pixeldrain.com/u/eH97jR4b
alternate:
https://bestfile.io/mhbzRLq9KHuGi8a/file
The cover photo is a screenshot from this exact concert. I used Krea AI to improve the picture quality.
Dr Hook issued a version of "The Cover of Rolling Stone" specially for BBC airplay, changing the lyric to "The Cover of Radio Times" (a BBC publication). Maybe that was done after this concert. It was only a promo disc, not for public release, but you can find it on YouTube. The comments there suggest that the record company had the chorus re-recorded and spliced the new version in without the band's involvement!
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