Belle & Sebastian - BBC Sessions, Volume 14: 2017-2022

Finally, here is the last album of Belle and Sebastian performing for the BBC. Or at least it's the last for now, as I'm all caught up to 2023. I read that the band's main lead singer Stuart Murdoch is having some health issues, but is planning on having the band tour again in 2024.

It's almost false advertising to call this a BBC album though. Only the first two songs actually come from a BBC session. But the rest all come from radio station sessions that sound just like BBC sessions. It would be more accurate to call this a collection of radio stations in general, but I figure I can take a little creative license after so many BBC albums in this series.

More specifically, the first two songs are from a 2017 BBC concert. I only posted two unique songs (including a fun cover of "Christmas Wrapping" by the Waitresses) because most of the concert is similar to the 2017 BBC concert I posted as "Volume 13" in this series. Tracks 3 through 7 are from a 2018 concert in Germany that was broadcast on the radio there. Then there's a big chronological gap, due to the Covid pandemic. Tracks 8 through 12 are from a Seattle radio station, and tracks 13 to 16 are from an NPR "Tiny Desk" concert in Washington, DC.

This album is 53 minutes long.

01 Are You Coming Over for Christmas (Belle & Sebastian)
02 Christmas Wrapping (Belle & Sebastian)
03 Show Me the Sun (Belle & Sebastian)
04 If She Wants Me (Belle & Sebastian)
05 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
06 Piazza, New York Catcher (Belle & Sebastian)
07 Poor Boy (Belle & Sebastian)
08 String Bean Jean (Belle & Sebastian)
09 If They're Shooting at You (Belle & Sebastian)
10 She's Losing It (Belle & Sebastian)
11 Unnecessary Drama (Belle & Sebastian)
12 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
13 Working Boy in New York City (Belle & Sebastian)
14 Reclaim the Night (Belle & Sebastian)
15 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
16 Judy and the Dream of Horses (Belle & Sebastian)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15208526/BellenS_2017-2022_BBSessionsVolum14_atse.zip.html

I found the cover photo with a 2023 Rolling Stone article. I assume it's from 2023 or at least 2022.

Belle & Sebastian - BBC Sessions, Volume 13: BBC Radio 6 Music Festival, O2 Academy Glasgow, Glasgow, 3-26-2017

I'm getting close to the end of the band Belle and Sebastian BBC albums I've made. There's just one more after this, until they perform more, hopefully. This is a full concert, about an hour and a half long.

This was kind of an odd time for a BBC concert, because the band hadn't released any new music in two years. They would release an album a year later, but this doesn't have any songs from it. Instead, this is a good overview of their entire career so far. Only four of the 17 songs come from their last album "Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance."

The sound quality is excellent. There were no problems to be fixed.

This concert is one hour and 27 minutes long.

01 Nobody's Empire (Belle & Sebastian)
02 I'm a Cuckoo (Belle & Sebastian)
03 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
04 The Party Line (Belle & Sebastian)
05 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
06 The State I Am In (Belle & Sebastian)
07 I Want the World to Stop (Belle & Sebastian)
08 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
09 Perfect Couples (Belle & Sebastian)
10 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
11 Sukie in the Graveyard (Belle & Sebastian)
12 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
13 The Fox in the Snow (Belle & Sebastian)
14 If You're Feeling Sinister (Belle & Sebastian)
15 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
16 The Power of Three (Belle & Sebastian)
17 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
18 Wrapped Up in Books (Belle & Sebastian)
19 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
20 Jonathan David (Belle & Sebastian)
21 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
22 Dog on Wheels (Belle & Sebastian)
23 The Boy with the Arab Strap (Belle & Sebastian)
24 I Didn't See It Coming (Belle & Sebastian)
25 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
26 Legal Man (Belle & Sebastian)
27 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
28 Judy and the Dream of Horses (Belle & Sebastian)
29 talk (Belle & Sebastian)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15124193/BellenS_2017_BBSessionsVolume13_Radio6MusicFestivlGlasgow__3-26-2017_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is a screenshot from this exact concert.

Belle & Sebastian - BBC Sessions, Volume 12: 2015-2017

Here's Belle and Sebastian at the BBC yet again... kind of. I say "kind of" because I included a lot of non-BBC stuff. Only the last four songs actually come from BBC performances. But the others are from other radio appearances with excellent sound quality and no audience noise, so just imagine those are BBC performances too. :)

Belle and Sebastian were on recording hiatus for about five years, until the 2015 album "Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance." So there are some songs from that album, but lots of older songs too. Everything here is unreleased. The first eight songs are from an appearance on the "Morning Becomes Eclectic" radio show. The next three are from a Minnesota Public Radio appearance. The last four are from two different BBC appearances.

I have two more BBC volumes planned that more or less get us to the present day of 2023.

This album is an hour and five minutes long.

01 The Party Line (Belle & Sebastian)
02 Le Pastie de la Bourgeoisie (Belle & Sebastian)
03 The Power of Three (Belle & Sebastian)
04 My Wandering Days Are Over (Belle & Sebastian)
05 Perfect Couples (Belle & Sebastian)
06 The Fox in the Snow (Belle & Sebastian)
07 Nobody's Empire (Belle & Sebastian)
08 Sleep the Clock Around (Belle & Sebastian)
09 Sukie in the Graveyard (Belle & Sebastian)
10 I'm a Cuckoo (Belle & Sebastian)
11 Like Dylan in the Movies (Belle & Sebastian)
12 We Were Beautiful (Belle & Sebastian)
13 I'll Be Your Pilot (Belle & Sebastian)
14 The Boy Done Wrong Again (Belle & Sebastian)
15 Frosty the Snowman (Belle & Sebastian)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15901542/BellenS_2015-2017_BBSessionsVolume12_atse.zip.html

The cover photo was taken at an album signing at Amoeba Music on January 20, 2015, in Hollywood, California.

Belle & Sebastian - BBC Sessions, Volume 11: In Concert, Glastonbury Festival, Worthy Farm, Pilton, Britain, 6-28-2015

Here's yet another in a long series of Belle and Sebastian performing for the BBC. It's a full concert from the yearly Glastonbury Festival in Britain.

Belle and Sebastian weren't very active for much of the 2010s. They put out an album in 2010, but didn't put out another one until 2015. That's why there's a five-year gap between this and previous volumes I've posted.

The Glastonbury Festival is massive, with a couple hundred thousand people in attendance. So I presume the band tried to be at their best, playing well known songs mixed with some from their latest album, 2015's "Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance." Other that, there's not much to say. It's an excellent recording with no problems, and there were no big surprises with the setlist or performance.

This concert is 58 minutes long.

01 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
02 Nobody's Empire (Belle & Sebastian)
03 I'm a Cuckoo (Belle & Sebastian)
04 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
05 The Party Line (Belle & Sebastian)
06 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
07 Another Sunny Day (Belle & Sebastian)
08 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
09 Allie (Belle & Sebastian)
10 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
11 Perfect Couples (Belle & Sebastian)
12 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
13 Lord Anthony (Belle & Sebastian)
14 Dear Catastrophe Waitress (Belle & Sebastian)
15 If You Find Yourself Caught in Love (Belle & Sebastian)
16 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
17 The Boy with the Arab Strap (Belle & Sebastian)
18 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
19 I Didn't See It Coming (Belle & Sebastian)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15832864/BellenS_2015_BBSessionsVolume11InConcertGlastonbury__6-28-2015_atse.zip.html

The cover photo shows band leader Stuart Murdoch posing dramatically at a similarly massive festival. But that one was Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, in Indio, California, in April, 2015.

Belle and Sebastian - God Help the Girl- BBC Sessions, Volume 10: 2009

Just what is "God Help the Girl?" I've posted a stray tracks album by this group, but I'll explain again anyway. This was a side project of the main singer and songwriter of Belle and Sebastian, Stuart Murdoch. In 2009, instead of putting out another Belle and Sebastian album, he wrote a bunch of songs from a female point of view meant to be sung by women. The band put out an album in 2009, as well as an EP. They didn't do anything else as a band after that, but the project continued as a movie by the same title, written and directed by Murdoch, which was released in 2014.

You can read more here:

God Help the Girl (film) - Wikipedia

Anyway, since this wasn't a "real" band, but a Murdoch side project, it seems they didn't do much touring. However, at least one short concert took place, which was recorded and broadcast by the BBC. That makes up all but the last three songs here. Murdoch was there and talked some, but left all the lead vocals to the female singers. Neil Hannon of the bands Divine Comedy and the Duckworth Lewis Method joined in for one song at the end of the concert. 

The last three songs come from a proper BBC studio session. Two of those three songs were also done in the concert, but I've included both versions of them anyway.

In my opinion, God Help the Girl was basically Belle and Sebastian but with different lead vocalists. So I'm including this in the long series of Belle and Sebastian BBC albums.

This album is 35 minutes long.

01 talk (God Help the Girl)
02 Act of the Apostle (God Help the Girl)
03 God Help the Girl (God Help the Girl)
04 talk (God Help the Girl)
05 I'm in Love with the City (God Help the Girl)
06 Baby's Just Waiting (God Help the Girl)
07 talk (God Help the Girl)
08 Come Monday (God Help the Girl)
09 talk (God Help the Girl)
10 Musician, Please Take Heed (God Help the Girl)
11 talk (God Help the Girl)
12 Perfection as a Hipster (God Help the Girl with Neil Hannon)
13 Baby's Just Waiting (God Help the Girl)
14 God Help the Girl (God Help the Girl)
15 The Psychiatrist Is In (God Help the Girl)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15901518/BellenS_2009_GodHlptheGirlBBSessionsVolume10_atse.zip.html

On the cover, Murdoch is the sole male, pictured with three God Help the Girl singers. I don't know their names, but perhaps someone can help identify them.

Belle & Sebastian - BBC Sessions, Volume 9: 2006-2010

Here's yet another album of Belle and Sebastian performing for the BBC

This is an album of studio sessions. Most of them were done for the BBC, but a few were not. Specifically, tracks 6, 7, and 8 come from a Seattle radio station session, and tracks 9, 10, and 11 come from a "Morning Becomes Eclectic" radio show. The rest come from four different BBC sessions.

All but the last three songs date to 2006. At that time, the band was promoting their 2006 album "The Life Pursuit." The next album was in 2010, "Write about Love," so that's why there are three songs from that year.

Between 2006 and 2010, the band's main singer and songwriter Stuart Murdoch was heavily involved in a different music group he created called "God Help the Girl." The next BBC volume will deal with material related to that band.

This album is 48 minutes long.

01 Mr. Richard (Belle & Sebastian)
02 The Blues Will Still Be Blue (Belle & Sebastian)
03 To Be Myself Completely (Belle & Sebastian)
04 Dress Up in You (Belle & Sebastian)
05 Funny Little Frog (Belle & Sebastian)
06 A Century of Fakers (Belle & Sebastian)
07 She's Losing It (Belle & Sebastian)
08 No Matter What (Belle & Sebastian)
09 Expectations (Belle & Sebastian)
10 Another Sunny Day (Belle & Sebastian)
11 White Collar Boy (Belle & Sebastian)
12 I Didn't See It Coming (Belle & Sebastian)
13 Piazza, New York Catcher (Belle & Sebastian)
14 Sukie in the Graveyard (Belle & Sebastian)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15832463/BellenS_2006-2010_BBSessionsVolume9_atse.zip.html

The cover actually dates to 2003. I should have used it for an earlier volume, but oh well. The woman at the front and center is actress Shanta Roberts, who is not part of the band. But this was from the photo shoot for the cover of the "Dear Catastrophe Waitress," and she was featured with all the band members on that.

Belle & Sebastian - Sessions, Volume 8: John Peel Show, Glastonbury Festival, Worthy Farm, Pilton, Britain, 6-27-2004

Here's yet another Belle and Sebastian BBC album. This is a full concert bootleg.

There's not much to say for this one. The sound quality is excellent, as you'd expect from the BBC. I believe it's the full concert, and there were no problems to fix. The performance was solid as well.

Oh, video footage for part of this can be seen on YouTube.

This concert is an hour and 11 minutes long.

01 I Fought in a War (Belle & Sebastian)
02 Step unto My Office, Baby (Belle & Sebastian)
03 Wrapped Up in Books (Belle & Sebastian)
04 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
05 The Model (Belle & Sebastian)
06 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
07 Judy and the Dream of Horses (Belle & Sebastian)
08 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
09 Jonathan David (Belle & Sebastian)
10 You Don't Send Me (Belle & Sebastian)
11 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
12 Dog on Wheels (Belle & Sebastian)
13 The Boy with the Arab Strap (Belle & Sebastian)
14 I'm a Cuckoo (Belle & Sebastian)
15 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
16 She's Losing It (Belle & Sebastian)
17 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
18 Stay Loose (Belle & Sebastian)
19 Roy Walker (Belle & Sebastian)
20 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
21 Legal Man (Belle & Sebastian)
22 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
23 Time of the Season (Belle & Sebastian)
24 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
25 Sleep the Clock Around (Belle & Sebastian)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15602440/BellenS_2004_BBSessionsVolume8JhnPeelShowGlstonbury_Festival__6-27-2004_atse.zip.html

The cover photo does come from this exact concert. Unfortunately, I could only find a good picture showing two of the band members: Stuart Murdoch (in a green T-shirt) and Stevie Jackson (in the big brown jacket). I used Photoshop to move them closer together.

Belle & Sebastian - BBC Sessions, Volume 7: 2003-2004

Here's Volume 7 of Belle and Sebastian at the BBC. This one is just composed on BBC studio sessions.

To call this an album of BBC sessions is a bit of a stretch. Only the last four songs were actually done for the BBC. The rest were done for other radio shows. Most notably, the first five songs are from a session on the US radio show "Morning Becomes Eclectic."

Everything here is officially unreleased. But the sound quality is uniformly very good, because all the songs were done in the studio for radio sessions.

There were problems with three songs (the ones with "[Edit]" in their names. Each of these had strange glitches in them. I'm not sure what caused them, and I've rarely come across this exact problem before, but they sounded annoying. So I patched them up as well as I could, usually using material from other versions of the songs to fix trouble spots that were only a couple of seconds long. The problem was especially severe with "Get Me Away from Here, I'm Dying," which had a bunch of trouble spots. I fixed most of them, but there are a couple minor glitches in instrumental sections that I couldn't fix due to other versions sounding too different during those sections.

This album is 46 minutes long.

01 Step into My Office, Baby [Edit] (Belle & Sebastian)
02 Scooby Driver (Belle & Sebastian)
03 [I Believe In] Travellin' Light (Belle & Sebastian)
04 Judy and the Dream of Horses [Edit] (Belle & Sebastian)
05 The State I Am In (Belle & Sebastian)
06 Stay Loose (Belle & Sebastian)
07 Ransomed by Tuesday (Belle & Sebastian)
08 Your Secrets (Belle & Sebastian)
09 Get Me Away from Here, I'm Dying [Edit] (Belle & Sebastian)
10 Meat and Potatoes (Belle & Sebastian)
11 Frog in My Throat (Belle & Sebastian)
12 I Took a Long Hard Look (Belle & Sebastian)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15832465/BellenS_2003-2004_BBSessionsVolume7_atse.zip.html

The cover photo was taken at a concert held in Wembley Arena, in November 2004. I was only able to include three of the band members, due to them being spread out on stage. Even then, I used Photoshop to move them closer together.

Belle & Sebastian - BBC Sessions, Volume 6: John Peel Show, Maida Vale Studios, London, Britain, 12-18-2002

I'm lucky with this post, almost. I've been steadily moving through the BBC sessions of Belle and Sebastian in chronological order, and this is the sixth album. It also happens to be a Christmas-themed one. So I'm lucky this is getting posted so close to Christmas, 2022. But I'm only "almost" lucky, because I'm posting this two days after Christmas. I should have been more on the ball and posted it earlier. But hopefully you'll still be in the Christmas spirit for a little longer.

This is an unusual album, because it's a single BBC studio session, but long enough for a whole album. Plus, it has a Christmas theme. BBC DJ John Peel was a very big fan of Belle and Sebastian (he died in 2004), and this was done for John Peel's BBC show. I gather it went down much like a party, with lots of talking and joking between songs, but all I have here is the music.

It's a pretty fun album as Christmas albums/shows go. There are three kinds of songs here. One are some of Belle and Sebastian's best known songs, which seem to have no Christmas connection, such as "Step into My Office, Baby" or "The Boy with the Arab Strap." Another batch are traditional, well known Christmas songs, such as "Christmas Time Is Here," "O Little Town of Bethlehem," and "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel." The third kind of songs are Christmas-themed, but very little known. For instance, "Santa Claus, Go Straight to the Ghetto" is a funky song originally done by James Brown. "Santa, Bring My Baby Back to Me" was done by Elvis Presley, and sounds like his style. As another example, "Santa Claus" was done by the Sonics and sounds like 1960s garage rock. "I Took Some Time for Christmas" is especially interesting, because it's a Belle and Sebastian original that apparently was only performed for this show. (Note that I also put this on the stray tracks album I made called "Ransomed by Tuesday," as well as "Santa Claus" and "Santa Claus, Go Straight to the Ghetto.")

There are three songs performed for this show that I didn't include: "O Come All Ye Faithful," "Silent Night" and "The Twelve Days of Christmas." These are well known Christmas songs that the band did in a typical way. There was nothing particularly special or interesting about their versions. Sometimes, less is more, and I felt this was a better album without them. In particular, "The Twelve Days of Christmas" is a song that gets old fast, so it doesn't stand up to many repeat listenings.

This album is 42 minutes long.

01 Christmas Time Is Here (Belle & Sebastian)
02 Santa Claus (Belle & Sebastian)
03 Step into My Office, Baby (Belle & Sebastian)
04 Jonathan David (Belle & Sebastian)
05 Santa Claus, Go Straight to the Ghetto (Belle & Sebastian)
06 Photo Jenny (Belle & Sebastian)
07 O Little Town of Bethlehem (Belle & Sebastian)
08 Santa, Bring My Baby Back to Me (Belle & Sebastian)
09 If You Find Yourself Caught in Love (Belle & Sebastian)
10 The Boy with the Arab Strap (Belle & Sebastian)
11 O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (Belle & Sebastian)
12 Get Me Away from Here, I'm Dying (Belle & Sebastian)
13 I Took Some Time for Christmas (Belle & Sebastian)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15602301/BellenS_2002_BBSessionsVolume6JhnPeelShow__12-18-2002_atse.zip.html

I don't know what the deal is with the cover photo I've included here. I found it on the Internet by searching for Belle and Sebastian and Christmas. It was a black and white photo with color Santa hats and a color Christmas tree added. I don't know if it was made by a fan, or if it was something the band did for some reason. Either way, I think it fits better than anything else I could come up with. I tinted the whole thing green, since I usually don't like black and white covers.

Belle & Sebastian - BBC Sessions, Volume 5: Mandela Hall, Queens University, Belfast, Ireland, 12-21-2001

Here's the fifth of many Belle and Sebastian BBC albums. This one is another full concert.

Out of all of the Belle and Sebastian BBC albums I've posted or plan on posting, this is the only one that is fully released material. But I'm posting it for the sake of completeness. This makes up one of two discs of the album "The BBC Sessions." As such, the sound quality is excellent.

There's not much else to say. There were no problems or complexities. However, one interesting tidbit concerns the cover of "I'm Waiting for the Man," originally by the Velvet Underground. As you'll hear from the talking before the crowd, the band invited a random person from the crowd to come up and sing a song. That person suggested a Velvet Underground, and then did a good job singing that song. That might sound staged, but it's a real thing that happened. I know because I listened to a lot of covers by this band while putting together my covers albums by them, and there are a whole bunch of them that were sung by audience members. Apparently, this was a thing they sometimes did around this time period, though they seem to have stopped doing that a short time after this. The audience member was a guy named Barry Bartholomew. There was an article or two about him in the news after he heard himself singing once the official BBC album was released.

In addition to "I'm Waiting for the Man," "Here Comes the Sun" and "The Boys Are Back in Town" are also cover versions.

This album is 50 minutes long.

01 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
02 Here Comes the Sun (Belle & Sebastian)
03 There's Too Much Love (Belle & Sebastian)
04 The Magic of a Kind Word (Belle & Sebastian)
05 Me and the Major (Belle & Sebastian)
06 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
07 Wondering Alone (Belle & Sebastian)
08 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
09 The Model (Belle & Sebastian)
10 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
11 I'm Waiting for the Man (Belle & Sebastian with Barry Bartholomew)
12 The Boy with the Arab Strap (Belle & Sebastian)
13 The Wrong Girl (Belle & Sebastian)
14 Dirty Dream No. 2 (Belle & Sebastian)
15 The Boys Are Back in Town (Belle & Sebastian)
16 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
17 Legal Man (Belle & Sebastian)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15602317/BellenS_2001c_BBSessionsVolume5MandlaHall__12-21-2001_atse.zip.html

The cover photo of band leader Stuart Murdoch was taken in San Francisco in September 2001. The background was originally red, but I changed that to make it differ more from the red lettering (which I'm keeping consistent for all the albums in this series).

Belle & Sebastian - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: 2001-2003

Here's the fourth of many volumes of Belle and Sebastian at the BBC.

This volume is composed of studio sessions. The first four songs are the only officially released ones, from the album "The BBC Sessions."  The fifth song was played on a BBC TV show. The next five songs are from another BBC session. The last two aren't from the BBC at all, but come from a KCRW radio session instead.

The next two BBC sessions are still within this time frame, with a live show from 2001 and a long BBC session in 2002.

This album is 44 minutes long.

01 Shoot the Sexual Athlete (Belle & Sebastian)
02 The Magic of a Kind Word (Belle & Sebastian)
03 Nothing in the Silence (Belle & Sebastian)
04 [My Girl's Got] Miraculous Technique (Belle & Sebastian)
05 I'm Waking Up to Us (Belle & Sebastian)
06 You Don't Send Me (Belle & Sebastian)
07 Roy Walker (Belle & Sebastian)
08 Love on the March (Belle & Sebastian)
09 Slap on a Sunbeam (Belle & Sebastian)
10 Desperation Made a Fool of Me (Belle & Sebastian)
11 Lord Anthony (Belle & Sebastian)
12 Women's Realm (Belle & Sebastian)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15602182/BellenS_2001b-2003_BBSessionsVolume4_atse.zip.html

The cover photo shows the band at an awards show in 2004. I didn't like the back wall, which had a bunch of advertisements on it. So I replaced it with a blank wall in Photoshop.

Belle & Sebastian - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: Steve Lamacq Show, Bowlie Weekender, Pontins Camber Sands Holiday Park, Rye, Britain, 4-25-1999

Here's the third volume of Belle and Sebastian playing for the BBC. Unlike the first two, this one consists of a full concert. 

Well, most of a concert, anyway. It seems a few songs were cut out due to time constraints. The missing songs are: "A Century of Fakers," "I Know Where the Summer Goes," and "Simple Things." Additionally, the last song performed, a cover of the Who song "The Kids Are Alright," wasn't actually broadcast by the BBC. Instead, it appeared in a documentary film about the band. I already included it on a Belle and Sebastian covers album, but I've included it here too. For the covers album I removed the applause at the end, but for this version I've kept it in.

 This was no ordinary concert for the band. They put together an entire music festival for the first time, with a couple dozen other bands and themselves as the headliners. There's a Wikipedia article about it here:

Bowlie Weekender - Wikipedia

The sound quality is up to the usual high standards you'd expect of the BBC. I did edit "If You're Feeling Sinister" though to fix some minor flaws.

This album is 49 minutes long.

01 Slow Graffiti (Belle & Sebastian)
02 Seeing Other People (Belle & Sebastian)
03 Dog on Wheels (Belle & Sebastian)
04 The Wrong Girl (Belle & Sebastian)
05 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
06 Winter Wooskie (Belle & Sebastian)
07 If You're Feeling Sinister [Edit] (Belle & Sebastian)
08 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
09 I Don't Love Anyone (Belle & Sebastian)
10 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
11 Paper Boat (Belle & Sebastian)
12 The Boy with the Arab Strap (Belle & Sebastian)
13 Photo Jenny (Belle & Sebastian)
14 Lazy Line Painter Jane (Belle & Sebastian with Monica Queen)
15 The Kids Are Alright [Edit] (Belle & Sebastian)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17175666/BELLENS1999BBSessonsVolum3StveLamcqShw__4-25-1999.zip.html

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/k4jfBpnT

I couldn't find any good photos of this exact concert. However, there's some rough video footage of it, included in that documentary mentioned above. So I took a screenshot from that.

UPDATE: On September 29, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Belle & Sebastian - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: 1997-1998

Here's the next in my long series of albums featuring Belle and Sebastian at the BBC.

This one is fairly short, at only 37 minutes. But the band didn't return to the BBC studios until 2001, so this is all that fits. (They did have one concert broadcast by the BBC in 1999, and that'll be the subject of the next volume.)

The first five songs come from the same BBC session in 1997, and are all included on the official album "The BBC Sessions." The remaining four are actually from a studio session in front of an audience for Radio France in 1998. They're officially unreleased. But they're BBC tracks too, because these four were broadcast on the BBC as well. The rest of the session was not, but it can be found on a bootleg called "The Black Session."

01 Seymour Stein (Belle & Sebastian)
02 Lazy Line Painter Jane (Belle & Sebastian)
03 Sleep the Clock Around (Belle & Sebastian)
04 Slow Graffiti (Belle & Sebastian)
05 Wrong Love [The Wrong Girl] (Belle & Sebastian)
06 The Boy Done Wrong Again (Belle & Sebastian)
07 Dog on Wheels (Belle & Sebastian)
08 Seeing Other People (Belle & Sebastian)
09 A Century of Fakers (Belle & Sebastian)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15602009/BellenS_1997-1998_BBSessionsVolume2_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from a concert in New York City in September 1997. I would have liked to include more band members, but good photos of that are typically few and far between since there are lots of band members apart from each other on stage. This one has Stuart Murdoch in the foreground and Isobell Campbell in the background. Campbell was much smaller and more distant, so I used Photoshop to increase her size and move her closer to Murdoch.

Belle & Sebastian - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1996

Good grief, Belle and Sebastian has a lot of BBC material! As part of my larger BBC project, I decided to turn my attention to them. I've made nearly 20 albums so far, and I could end up with even more. Admittedly, that includes some non-BBC radio shows, but the vast majority is from the BBC. Here's Volume 1, from the year the band put out their first two studio albums, "Tigermilk" and "If You're Feeling Sinister."

Belle and Sebastian has released an official BBC album called "The BBC Sessions." But it only consists of two albums, so it's woefully incomplete. It includes all of their first BBC session, the first four songs here. But of their second session, tracks six through nine, it only includes track 6. Between those two sessions, I've included an acoustic "Fox in the Snow" done for a different London radio station.

This album is 39 minutes long.

01 The State I Am In (Belle & Sebastian)
02 Like Dylan in the Movies (Belle & Sebastian)
03 Judy and the Dream of Horses (Belle & Sebastian)
04 The Stars of Track and Field (Belle & Sebastian)
05 Fox in the Snow (Belle & Sebastian)
06 I Could Be Dreaming (Belle & Sebastian)
07 Seeing Other People [Slow Version] (Belle & Sebastian)
08 This Is Just a Modern Rock Song (Belle & Sebastian)
09 We Rule the School (Belle & Sebastian)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15602022/BellenS_1996_BBSessionsVolume1_atse.zip.html

I couldn't find a good photo of the band from 1996. So instead here's the band's main singer and songwriter Stuart Murdoch in concert in 1997.

Belle & Sebastian - Live Cover Versions, Volume 1: 1999-2001

In the early 2000s especially, the band Belle and Sebastian did many cover songs in concert, often just performing each song a single time. There are many dozens of these on bootlegs, but most don't sound very good because they're taken from rough audience bootlegs. However, I found enough that had quality sound to fill up two normal-sized albums.

Unfortunately, not many of these songs come from really great sounding sources. Only the last three songs here are officially released, from a compilation of BBC performances. Some of the others come from soundboard boots, but most come from audience boots. But I used my audio editing skills to improve the sound quality enough to make these sound acceptable for inclusion. As you can see, the first six songs have "[Edit]" in their titles. For all of those, I made significant edits to improve the sound quality with audio editing programs like X-Minus. For instance, I often removed crowd noise from songs, especially loud shouts or coughs, and I frequently fixed the balance because the lead vocals were often too low in the mix.

Here are the original artists for each song:

01 The Kids Are Alright - Who
02 Time of the Season - Zombies
03 Alone Again Or - Love
04 Creeque Alley - Mamas and the Papas
05 Everyday People - Sly and the Family Stone
06 Don't Fear the Reaper - Blue Oyster Cult
07 A Minha Menina - Os Mutantes
08 In a Nutshell - Orange Juice
09 Here Comes the Sun - Beatles
10 I'm Waiting for the Man - Velvet Underground
11 The Boys Are Back in Town - Thin Lizzy

And here's the usual song list:

01 The Kids Are Alright [Edit] (Belle & Sebastian)
02 Time of the Season [Edit] (Belle & Sebastian)
03 Alone Again Or [Edit] (Belle & Sebastian)
04 Creeque Alley [Edit] (Belle & Sebastian)
05 Everyday People [Edit] (Belle & Sebastian)
06 Don't Fear the Reaper [Edit] (Belle & Sebastian)
07 A Minha Menina (Belle & Sebastian)
08 In a Nutshell (Belle & Sebastian)
09 Here Comes the Sun (Belle & Sebastian)
10 I'm Waiting for the Man (Belle & Sebastian)
11 The Boys Are Back in Town (Belle & Sebastian)

This album is 40 minutes long.

https://www.upload.ee/files/15602205/BellenS_1999-2001_LivCoverVersionsVolume__atse.zip.html

I wanted to use a photo of the entire Belle and Sebastian band playing in concert in the time period of this album. Unfortunately, there are so many band members spread across the stage that I couldn't find any good ones. But I did find a good one of band leader Stuart Murdoch (from Rotterdam in 2002), so I used that.

Belle and Sebastian - Acoustic Versions, 2004-2006

If you've been following this blog for a while, you've probably noticed that I really like acoustic music. In my opinion, if a song is really good, it almost always will still be impressive being stripped way back to reveal what's there at the core.

This is my one and only Belle and Sebastian acoustic album. For a band that generally does mellow, acoustic-y music, there are surprisingly few recordings of them going all the way acoustic. Perhaps that's because they're a fairly large band, with seven members. But I've found next to no recordings of band leader Stuart Murdoch just playing his songs on an acoustic guitar. That's strange, because i think they'd sound great that way. If I've missed something, please let me know.

Anyway, they have done some acoustic performances, but almost all of them are from 2004 to 2006. (Two songs here are from 2016 and 2017.) I'm not sure why only those years, but something is better than nothing. Maybe some of it was just luck, because in one case they were scheduled to do a radio show and they mentioned they played acoustic that time because the drummer failed to show up!

Generally speaking, these are the original songs the band is best known for. At one point, they do a cover of "Teenage Kicks" by the Undertones, but it's just a lark that only lasts a minute. Since Belle and Sebastian is a band, these generally are band performances, but with acoustic instruments and usually no drums.

In terms of sound quality, everything here sounds fantastic. The vast majority come from in-person radio appearances, and those nearly always sound like studio recordings. Three of the songs come from concerts, but very small ones in cafes, and the sound on those are just the same as the rest.

This album is 41 minutes long.

01 If She Wants Me (Belle & Sebastian)
02 Step into My Office, Baby (Belle & Sebastian)
03 Teenage Kicks (Belle & Sebastian)
04 Get Me Away from Here, I'm Dying (Belle & Sebastian)
05 Like Dylan in the Movies (Belle & Sebastian)
06 Belle and Sebastian (Belle & Sebastian)
07 Sukie in the Graveyard (Belle & Sebastian)
08 Funny Little Frog (Belle & Sebastian)
09 The Blues Are Still Blue (Belle & Sebastian)
10 Get Me Away from Here, I'm Dying (Belle & Sebastian)
11 The State I Am In (Stuart Murdoch & C. Duncan)
12 I'm a Cuckoo (Belle & Sebastian)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15602427/BellenS_2004-2006_AcoustcVersions_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I wanted to use a photo of the band playing acoustically. But I couldn't find any good ones from the time period of most of the songs here. So I went with using the art from one of the band's concert posters instead. That seems more in keeping with the band's cover art style anyway. I believe this particular poster comes from their 2015 tour.

Belle & Sebastian - Live Cover Versions, Volume 2: 2002-2004

Belle and Sebastian had a neat habit of playing cover versions in concert back in the early 2000s. (They don't do that so much anymore, since they have so many originals to play instead.) But there are two things they did that were unusual. One, they picked some really interesting and unexpected songs to cover. Two, they typically only played them once.

This second thing is a big problem here, because only three of the songs here have been officially released. (All three of them are from a BBC album.) So if a song only gets played once in concert, the chances of it getting recorded well on a bootleg are small. It's a lucky thing if it gets bootlegged at all. I've found compilations of dozens and dozens of cover versions played in concert by Belle and Sebastian. The problem is, the vast majority of them have unacceptably poor sound quality to my ears. So this is my collection of just the ones that sounded good enough to me.

Even then, I had to make a couple of drastic edits. Note that for the song "Good Vibrations," most of the first verses and chorus was missing on the bootleg source that I found. So I edited it to start cleanly with the beginning of the second verse. I think that's much better than not including the song at all.

It's too bad so many songs didn't make it for sound quality reasons. I hope the band made their own recordings and will release some of them one day. But what's left on this album is still a lot of fun. Look at the rest of the song list - everything from Burt Bacharach to the Supremes to Sly and the Family Stone to Kraftwerk. They even did great versions of songs in Portuguese and French!

I explained more in the write-up for Volume 1 how it is that I found more songs that I'd previously missed. But note that all the songs with "[Edit]" in their titles are ones that I'd missed due to sound quality issues. However, I was able to use audio editing programs like X-Minus to fix most of the flaws, making them acceptable to my ears. As an example, the lead vocals to "Stayin' Alive" were too quiet compared to the instrumentation, so I boosted them.

Here are the original artists for each song:

01 Oliver's Army [Edit] - Elvis Costello
02 So You Want to Be a Rock 'N' Roll Star - Byrds
03 Darlin' [Edit] - Beach Boys
04 Stayin' Alive [Edit] - Bee Gees
05 Baby Love - Supremes
06 The Model [Das Modell] - Kraftwerk
07 Lucifer Sam - Pink Floyd
08 Runnin' Away - Sly and the Family Stone
09 My Little Red Book - Burt Bacharach / Love
10 The Train from Kansas City - Shangri-Las
11 This Guy's in Love with You - Burt Bacharach / Herb Alpert
12 Good Vibrations - Beach Boys
13 Comment te Dire Adieu - Francoise Hardy
14 The Boy with the Thorn in His Side - Smiths

And here's the usual song list:

01 Oliver's Army [Edit] (Belle & Sebastian)
02 So You Want to Be a Rock 'N' Roll Star (Belle & Sebastian)
03 Darlin' [Edit] (Belle & Sebastian)
04 Stayin' Alive [Edit] (Belle & Sebastian)
05 Baby Love (Belle & Sebastian)
06 The Model [Das Modell] (Belle & Sebastian)
07 Lucifer Sam (Belle & Sebastian)
08 Runnin' Away (Belle & Sebastian)
09 My Little Red Book (Belle & Sebastian)
10 The Train from Kansas City [Edit] (Belle & Sebastian)
11 This Guy's in Love with You [Edit] (Belle & Sebastian)
12 Good Vibrations [Edit] (Belle & Sebastian)
13 Comment te Dire Adieu (Belle & Sebastian)
14 The Boy with the Thorn in His Side (Belle & Sebastian)

This album is 40 minutes long.

https://www.upload.ee/files/15602300/BellenS_2002-2004_LivCoverVersionsVolume2_atse.zip.html

I wanted to use a photo of the entire Belle and Sebastian band playing in concert in the time period of this album. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any good ones. But I did find a good one of band leader Stuart Murdoch singing as part of the band at Wembley Arena in 2004, so I used that.

Belle & Sebastian - Bird's Eye View - Non-Album Tracks (2011-2015)

This is the last of my Belle and Sebastian stray studio tracks albums. This only goes to 2015, but I haven't come across much at all in the way of stray studio tracks from them in the years since.

(I consider their three EPs called "How to Solve Our Human Problems" released in 2017 and 2018 as a de facto album and thus not eligible for this series. By the way, I suggest pretending the first EP doesn't exist and enjoy the other two. The first one is disco/dance music and is a failed experiment, in my opinion.)

Anyway, back to the music here. Belle and Sebastian had their heyday in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when they put out about an album a year (or the equivalent in EPs and singles and such). They've gradually slowed down since then, and lately only put out a new album about every four years or so. Partially, this is due to them spending more creative energies on solo projects. (That's reflected here, with eight of the 13 tracks not being credited to the band.) But they still put out very good music when they put their mind to it, either solo or as a band.

Surprisingly, a good portion of this album stars Stevie Jackson. He generally has only written and sung the occasional song. But this time period includes the release of his one and only solo album so far, and it's a very good one. So I've included a few songs from it, but also a couple of songs he performed around that time but strangely didn't include on the album.

Unfortunately, the amount of Isobel Campbell I've included has gone way down. From 2007 to 2013, most of her recorded music has been in the form of duets with Mark Lanegan. While interesting, I find it's vocally dominated by Lanegan, and too far from the Belle and Sebastian sound to merit inclusion, aside from the occasional track without Lanegan. Since 2013, she apparently ended her musical collaboration with Lanegan, but hasn't really released any new music at all.

Belle and Sebastian leader Stuart Murdoch has much less of a presence on this album than on previous compilations. He only sings lead on five of the songs here.

By the way, I do have more material from the band to post, in the form of live music and other things. That'll come later.

01 Pure of Heart (Stevie Jackson)
02 Richie Now (Stevie Jackson)
03 Bird's Eye View (Stevie Jackson)
04 Crash (Belle & Sebastian)
05 Try Me (Stevie Jackson)
06 Walk Away (Isobel Campbell)
07 Don't Hang That Picture on Me (Stevie Jackson)
08 Paper Laced with Gold (Stevie Jackson)
09 Invisible [Instrumental] (Stuart Murdoch & Isobel Campbell)
10 Born to Act (Belle & Sebastian)
11 Two Birds (Belle & Sebastian)
12 Piggy in the Middle (Belle & Sebastian)
13 A Politician’s Silence (Belle & Sebastian)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15602489/BellenS_2011-2015_BrdsEyeView_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I used a poster from Belle and Sebastian's 2015 tour. Since the poster is rectangular, I shortened the height of the flowers.

(Belle & Sebastian) God Help the Girl - Stills - Non-Album Tracks (2009-2014)

Before I continue posting more Belle and Sebastian, I have to make this minor detour. I put both Belle and Sebastian and God Help the Girl in the post title, because God Help the Girl is Belle and Sebastian in all but name. Band leader Stuart Murdoch came up with the idea, wrote all the songs, and picked various female singers to sing the songs. The rest of Belle and Sebastian play all the instruments. The only difference from their usual work is that outside female singers do most of the singing.

God Help the Girl released a self-titled album in 2009. But they easily could have put out a second album, since they released a five song EP, "Stills," and some other songs on singles around the same time. Then, in 2014, a movie also called "God Help the Girl" was released, directed by Murdoch, with three more new songs. Compiling all the songs together results in an album that's 37 minutes long. (Note though that one of the songs, "A Down and Dusky Blonde" appears here as well as on the "God Help the Girl" album, but in different versions.)

Murdoch's hand is all over this. He even sings lead on two of the songs, "Mary's Market" and "He's a Loving Kind of Boy." He picked relatively unknown singers to sing the other songs, including Catherine Irton, who sings most of them, as well as Kim Moore, Alex Klobouk, Celia Garcia, and Dina Bankole.

In my opinion, this is a Belle and Sebastian album, just with a bunch of female vocalists, and it's as good as most of their other albums. Ditto with the released "God Help the Girl" album. If you don't have it, you should get it.

By the way, there was a soundtrack album released in time with the movie's release in 2014. It mostly contains remakes of songs from this album and the official album, except sung by the actors and actresses in the movie. I may post my version of that eventually.

01 Mary's Market (God Help the Girl)
02 Howard Jones Is My Mozart (God Help the Girl)
03 I'm in Love with the City (God Help the Girl)
04 He's a Loving Kind of Boy (God Help the Girl)
05 Stills (God Help the Girl)
06 Baby's Just Waiting (God Help the Girl)
07 The Psychiatrist Is In (God Help the Girl)
08 Baby, You're Blind (God Help the Girl)
09 A Down and Dusky Blonde [Single Version] (God Help the Girl)
10 I Dumped You First (God Help the Girl)
11 I'm Not Rich (God Help the Girl)
12 Pretty When the Wind Blows (God Help the Girl)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15602425/BellenS_2009-2014_GodHlptheGirlStills_atse.zip.html

I named this album "Stills" in part so I could use the cover of the "Stills" EP. This is that cover, except I removed some text that listed all the song titles.

Belle & Sebastian - Heaven in the Afternoon - Non-Album Tracks (2006-2010)

This is the seventh Belle and Sebastian stray tracks album I've posted. I have one more to post after this. Oh, and band leader Stuart Murdoch had a side project called God Help the Girl in 2009 and 2010. I've got an album coming that's just the stray tracks from that.

So clearly, this is a group where almost half of their recorded output hasn't come out on album. And, as usual with this album, I think their non-album stuff is consistently good.

As I've done with past albums by them, I'm including the best songs from solo projects. This time around, that's six of the 14 songs, mostly by either Isobel Campbell or Murdoch. Most of the non-solo stuff are B-sides or bonus tracks connected to the Belle and Sebastian albums released in 2006 and 2010.

UPDATE: On February 4, 2021, I updated the mp3 download file. I found one song I'd missed, a cover of the Badfinger hit "No Matter What," from an unreleased radio station appearance.

01 Heaven in the Afternoon (Belle & Sebastian)
02 Long Black Scarf (Belle & Sebastian)
03 I Took a Long Hard Look (Belle & Sebastian)
04 Are You Going to Leave Me (Isobel Campbell)
05 No Matter What (Belle & Sebastian)
06 Cassaco Marron (Belle & Sebastian)
07 Are You Coming Over for Christmas (Belle & Sebastian)
08 Eyes of Love (Future Pilot AKA with Stuart Murdoch & Sarah Martin)
09 Florence's Sad Song (Stuart Murdoch)
10 Another Saturday [Wild Mountain Thyme] (Stuart Murdoch)
11 Suicide Girl (Belle & Sebastian)
12 Last Trip (Belle & Sebastian)
13 Sunrise (Isobel Campbell)
14 Blue Eyes of a Millionaire (Belle & Sebastian)
15 Fly (Stuart Murdoch)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15832824/BellenS_2006-2010_HeavnintheAfternoon_atse.zip.html

The cover art comes from a 2015 concert poster. Unfortunately, as usual, such posters are rectangular and album covers are square. So I squished things vertically below the woman's waist to make it fit. I also removed some text at the bottom and added in the album title.