To be honest, I'm shockingly ignorant about Rea, given how much I know of other music done by similar musicians. I guess that's mainly because I'm American. Rea only had one hit in the U.S., "Fool (If You Think It's Over)" in 1978. By contrast, he was a big star in Britain and the rest of Europe. For instance, looking at his discography, I count 47 Top 100 hit singles he had in Britain, with 13 of those reaching the Top Forty. He sold over 30 million records worldwide.
And until now, I've been oblivious to nearly all of that. I literally only know him for "Fool (If You Think It's Over)." So I'm fast tracking some BBC albums by him, which will help me learn his music. It also happens that he only released one official live album ("The Road to Hell and Back," released in 2006), so posting some BBC concerts will help flesh out his live career.
Rea found success right away. He was in a few bands for a few years as he developed his skills. But his first single release on a major record label was "Fool (If You Think It's Over)," which would become one of his best known songs. Weirdly though, it seems he didn't actually like the song very much, since it wasn't done in a style he preferred. He later said, "It's the only track I never played guitar on, which tells you something about the spirit of it. On top of that, it was just a huge hit. So there was nothing I could do. It was like: 'This is not me!'" Perhaps because of that, I haven't seen it on any of the BBC concerts he performed, and I found a handful of those. But I wanted to have at least one version of it on one album, so I found a good, live, non-BBC version, and I've included that at the end of this album as a kind of quasi-bonus track. It's from a concert in Newcastle, Britain, in December 1978.
Although "Fool" was a hit in the U.S., it only did okay in Britain. He kept plugging away, releasing new albums in 1979 and 1980. He didn't have any more hit songs or albums during that time, but he made enough of a name for himself to finally get a short BBC concert in 1980. The first seven tracks here come from that.
Note that I've found different versions of this BBC concert floating around the Internet. Most of them are poorly labelled as only being from 1980, or August 1980. I was able to dig a little deeper and found a version with a specific date. This one also has an introduction by BBC DJ Bob Killby from the actual concert, whereas other versions had an introduction by BBC DJ Brian Matthew that was added later. That version also has the same songs, but the last song was cut short by about two minutes. So this is the superior version.
Tracks 8 and 9 are from a 1978 episode of the BBC TV show "Old Grey Whistle Test." I didn't have any better place to put those, so I've stuck them here are more quasi-bonus tracks. They were done in the studio without any crowd noise, while all the rest of the songs have crowd noise.
This album is 43 minutes long. The main BBC show makes up 32 minutes of that.
01 talk by Bob Killby (Chris Rea)
02 Letter from Amsterdam (Chris Rea)
03 [Doing] The Things Lovers Should Do (Chris Rea)
04 Good News (Chris Rea)
05 Dancing Girls (Chris Rea)
06 Every Time I See Your Smile (Chris Rea)
07 Sweet Kiss (Chris Rea)
08 Whatever Happened to Benny Santini (Chris Rea)
09 Fires of Spring (Chris Rea)
10 Fool [If You Think It's Over] (Chris Rea)
NOTE: I'm banned from using PixelDrain for a week, so it's just one link for now. I'll add the second link when I'm able.
https://bestfile.io/en/488Wtxi14iLWUeC/file
The cover photo is from a concert in Fernsehen, Germany, at some point in 1978.
Thanks for this Chris Rea BBC In Concert. I have another 30 min BBC concert if you want it. Also please note that BBC Sounds have a 1 hour in concert of his recorded in Glasgow available for another 21 days.
ReplyDeleteThanks, but what other 30 minute BBC concert do you mean? And by the Glasgow one, do you mean the one in Aberdeen in 1993? I have that one.
DeleteHi Paul. Yes sorry I meant Aberdeen in 1993 and not Glasgow. I don't know the date of my other in cincert tape but I think it's after 1980. The track list is Nothings Happening by the Sea, Don't Look Back, Midnight Blue, Let it Loose, Put it Down, I Can Hear Your Heartbeat and From Love to Love. He must have been sharing the bill with someone else as it's only 30 mins.
DeleteAh, yes. Not only do I have that one, I plan on posting it today as Volume 2. It's from 1983. But thanks anyway.
DeleteBrilliant. Thanks for that. I finally found out that it was 1983 as well. It's listed in the Dutch Chris Rea site. Chris Rea.nl
DeleteThankyou. I saw him live at Wembley Arena and Brighton Centre, a great artist.
ReplyDeleteVery thankful for the Chris Rea. One of my all time favourite artists.
ReplyDeleteChris would be perfect for your non album albums, he has a lot of non album tracks.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if I like him enough for that. We'll see. I'm just starting to get to know his music.
DeleteOn a different note, I've heard about his dozen or so album-sized blues album from 2005, "Blue Guitars." If anyone wants to make a "best of" of that, I would be very interested in posting it. That's way too big for most people, and I hear the short version that was officially released for it had a disappointing, almost random, song selection.