Them - BBC Sessions and Live (1965-1966)

Them only existed as a band led by Van Morrison for a short time, 1964 to 1966. Unfortunately, as chance has it, very few recordings of what they played live has survived. I've cobbled together what little there is here. In doing so, I had to combine their BBC sessions and concert performances to get enough material for one album. Even then, it's only 35 minutes long. 

Furthermore, it includes three versions of "Gloria" and three versions of "Here Comes the Night." Normally, I'm against including multiple versions of the same song on one album. But I figure I'd put out everything, since there's so little of it. If you don't like the multiple versions, just delete one or more of them.

I've sorted the music here chronologically. It comes from five sources. Songs one to three and six to eight are apparently Them's only two brief BBC performances. It's nice to have these alternative versions with studio quality sound, but it's unfortunate that they played "Here Comes the Night" and "Gloria" both times. Note that these suffer from the typical problem of BBC DJs talking over the music. But I applied the usual X-Minus editing to wipe those vocals while keeping the underlying music.

The fourth and fifth songs come from the 1965 NME Pollwinners concert. I recently posted that concert in full, including the Them portion, but it's good to have it here with the other material by the band. This is probably the best glimpse of what they sounded like live. Instead of just playing short versions of their hits as expected, they stretched out with a six minute version of "Turn On Your Love Light." Apparently this was more typical of what they did when they played in small clubs, often stretched songs out with lots of soloing, and even sometimes improvising songs on the spot. ("Gloria" is said to have originated from one such on stage creation.)

Tracks nine and ten are from a live performance in Paris that was shown on TV. Too bad there isn't more of it.

The last three tracks are rather curious. A Belgian TV show filmed Them in concert in 1966, and you can still find this footage on YouTube. Unfortunately, they only showed parts of songs. Each of the three songs here range from about a minute to almost two minutes. Still, I figure this much is better than nothing. If you know the name of the instrumental, please let me know. If you watch the YouTube video of this, you'll see it's Van Morrison wailing on the saxophone during that song.

I made a couple of edits to the last song, "I Put a Spell on You." The first line was missing from the recording. So I found a spot later on in the song where he said the line and patched it in. Also, the song came to a very abrupt end. Rather than making the song even shorter by fading it out, I patched in a bit more from the solo, maybe five to ten seconds, and faded that out.

Note that the making of this album can be partially credited to the blogger Prof Stoned. He has collected everything Them ever did and put it on his blog, with the best sounding versions. So all I had to do was select from that. Unfortunately, there were some other recorded TV performances by the band, but they were lipsynced, so I didn't include those here.

01 Here Comes the Night (Them)
02 Gloria [Edit] (Them)
03 All for Myself [Edit] (Them)
04 Here Comes the Night (Them)
05 Turn On Your Love Light (Them)
06 Gloria [Edit] (Them)
07 One More Time (Them)
08 Here Comes the Night (Them)
09 Mystic Eyes (Them)
10 Gloria (Them)
11 Dimples [Incomplete] (Them)
12 Unknown Title [Instrumental] (Them)
13 I Put a Spell on You [Incomplete] [Edit] (Them)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700742/THM1965-1966_BBSessonsLve_atse.zip.html

The cover uses a promo photo of the band from 1965. The version I found had a really messed up color balance, with a kind of wash of orange over the whole thing. I used Photoshop to tweak it and hopefully make them have plausibly human skin tones.

Various Artists - NME Poll Winners' Concert, Empire Pool, London, Britain, 4-11-1965

I read an interesting article today (in January 2022) about how the sale of new music is continually falling to all time lows every year, while interest in older music continues to rise. It's a good article. I suggest you check it out:

https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/is-old-music-killing-new-music

As the article points out, there's still plenty of good new music, it's just that's not what gets promoted and makes it big, due to screwed-up record companies and other factors. Compare the artists on the top of the charts today to the quality of the mainstream artists at the time of this 1965 concert: the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Animals, Dusty Springfield, Them (with Van Morrison), the Moody Blues, Donovan, and many more, all sharing the same stage! Is it any wonder that lots of people (including me) are more interested in this kind of music than the generic, pre-packaged pop of today? The amount of sheer talent bursting up the charts in 1965 was staggering.

The reason so many big names played this one concert was because it was an awards show of sorts for NME - New Musical Express, a British music magazine. NME began giving out yearly poll winner awards in 1953, and continue to do it until this day (2022 as I write this). At least through 1971, there were annual concerts to celebrate the winners. But unlike most awards shows, this concert just focused on music instead of bogging things down with lots of speeches and award presentations (though there was a short section for that). 

I would love to hear the 1966, 1967, and 1968 shows in full, since music just got better and better as the 1960s went on, in my opinion, and all sorts of interesting artists played in those later shows, including Cream, the Small Faces, the Move, the Beach Boys, Cat Stevens, the Who, the Yardbirds, and lots more, including more appearances by big names in this concert, like the Beatles and Rolling Stones. It seems only the 1964, 1965 and 1966 shows are available on bootleg. I'm posting the 1965 one first as I think it's more interesting, with these mostly British Invasion acts more fully developed by then.

The sound quality is excellent throughout. This concert was professionally recorded in order to be broadcast on British TV a short time afterwards. The TV version was edited down, but somehow luckily a recording of the entire show has made its way to the public. You can watch the entire thing on YouTube, though it's only in black and white.

This concert took place before artists typically stretched out with lots of soloing and jamming and such. These songs don't differ that much from their studio versions (with a few exceptions, like Them and the Animals). But I still think this is a fascinating listen, as there aren't many quality concert recordings from this early in the 1960s. In particular, there were many artists who were pretty big back in the day but have little to no surviving audio or video of them in concert. Even for major names like the Animals and Dusty Springfield, there's very little from around this time period. And for the lesser known acts, this is often the only evidence of them in concert that seems to still exist.

I'm a big Kinks fan, so a minor disappointment for me is that the Kinks only played two songs. Even at this early stage in their career they were a big enough name to deserve more time. Apparently, this has to do with them being late to the show, as they had just got off a plane coming from another country. You can hear guitarist Dave Davies apologize about this between songs. According to some accounts, they actually played after the Beatles, as the very last act. However, the recording I used had them just before the Beatles, and that seems to fit in terms of the audience applause and announcement and such, so I'm keeping it that way.

As far as naming the artists for each song goes, technically I should have put the names of the emcee or emcees on many of the talk tracks. Some of those had band members talking, some had the emcees, and some where a mix. But rather than spend time dealing with all that, I just put the name of the act being introduced, for simplicity's sake. (Unfortunately, one of the emcees was DJ Jimmy Savile, who later was disgraced in a child molestation scandal. Thankfully, his role here is very minor.) I only put in the DJ names on the very first and last tracks, since those weren't linked to any particular artists.

A couple of the performers here are rather forgettable. I was tempted to cut out Freddie and the Dreamers and Sounds Incorporated in particular. But ultimately I decided it was best to present the entire thing unedited (although I cut out some annoying laughter by Freddie and the Dreamers between songs). Overall, I think the percentage of quality performers is quite high. 

The Beatles only got to do a 15 minute long set, but it's nice that you can actually hear them perform instead of being totally drowned out by screaming, as was typical of the time. Apparently, the arena (Empire Pool, later renamed Wembley Arena), held about 10,000 people. I'm sure that, by 1965, the Beatles could have filled up a much larger venue in London all on their own.

In case you're curious about who won the poll awards this year, there's a list at the NME website, which you can see here: 

https://www.nme.com/nme-awards/awards-history/1965-606223

It seems there were even more musical acts who performed but didn't make it to the recording for one reason or another. I'm not entirely sure if they actually performed, but these other names were included in the program given to the audience and were at least scheduled to perform: Tom Jones, the Bachelors, the Rockin' Berries, and Twinkle.  

This concert is two hours and 23 minutes long. I cut out some dead air between songs. But there was surprisingly little of that to begin with. Either this was already edited down, or this was a tightly run show.

01 talk (Keith Fordyce & Jimmy Savile)
02 Bo Diddley - Pretty Thing (Moody Blues)
03 Go Now (Moody Blues)
04 talk (Freddie & the Dreamers)
05 Little Bitty Pretty One (Freddie & the Dreamers)
06 talk (Freddie & the Dreamers)
07 A Little You (Freddie & the Dreamers)
08 talk (Georgie Fame & the Blue Flames)
09 Yeh Yeh (Georgie Fame & the Blue Flames)
10 talk (Georgie Fame & the Blue Flames)
11 Walking the Dog (Georgie Fame & the Blue Flames)
12 talk (Seekers)
13 I'll Never Find Another You (Seekers)
14 talk (Seekers)
15 A World of Our Own (Seekers)
16 talk (Herman's Hermits)
17 Wonderful World (Herman's Hermits)
18 talk (Herman's Hermits)
19 Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter (Herman's Hermits)
20 talk (Ivy League)
21 Funny How Love Can Be (Ivy League)
22 talk (Ivy League)
23 Sweet and Tender Romance (Ivy League)
24 talk (Ivy League)
25 That's Why I'm Crying (Ivy League)
26 talk (Sounds Incorporated)
27 Time for You [Instrumental] (Sounds Incorporated)
28 talk (Sounds Incorporated)
29 In the Hall of the Mountain King [Instrumental] (Sounds Incorporated)
30 talk (Wayne Fontana & the Mindbenders)
31 The Game of Love (Wayne Fontana & the Mindbenders)
32 talk (Wayne Fontana & the Mindbenders)
33 Just a Little Bit Too Late (Wayne Fontana & the Mindbenders)
34 talk (Rolling Stones)
35 Everybody Needs Somebody to Love (Rolling Stones)
36 Pain in My Heart (Rolling Stones)
37 Around and Around (Rolling Stones)
38 The Last Time (Rolling Stones)
39 talk (Cilla Black with Sounds Incorporated)
40 Zip-A-Dee Doo-Dah (Cilla Black with Sounds Incorporated)
41 talk (Cilla Black with Sounds Incorporated)
42 Going Out of My Head (Cilla Black with Sounds Incorporated)
43 talk (Donovan)
44 You're Gonna Need Somebody on Your Bond (Donovan)
45 talk (Donovan)
46 Catch the Wind (Donovan)
47 talk (Them)
48 Here Comes the Night (Them)
49 Turn on Your Love Light (Them)
50 talk (Searchers)
51 Bumble Bee (Searchers)
52 talk (Searchers)
53 Let the Good Times Roll (Searchers)
54 talk (Dusty Springfield)
55 Dancing in the Street (Dusty Springfield)
56 talk (Dusty Springfield)
57 Mockingbird (Dusty Springfield)
58 I Can't Hear You [No More] (Dusty Springfield)
59 talk (Animals)
60 Boom Boom (Animals)
61 Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood (Animals)
62 Talkin' 'bout You (Animals)
63 talk (Kinks)
64 You Really Got Me (Kinks)
65 Tired of Waiting for You (Kinks)
66 talk (Beatles)
67 I Feel Fine (Beatles)
68 talk (Beatles)
69 She's a Woman (Beatles)
70 talk (Beatles)
71 Baby's in Black (Beatles)
72 talk (Beatles)
73 Ticket to Ride (Beatles)
74 talk (Beatles)
75 Long Tall Sally (Beatles)
76 talk (Keith Fordyce)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/6niBfp48

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/RBH3ooSgczT5hrW/file

When I first posted this album in 2022, I used a black and white photo of the Beatles from the concert that I colorized. But looking at the cover again in 2026, I decided the photo wasn't very good. So I used a different photo of the Beatles from the concert that is zoomed in closer, and has more detail. This one also was black and white, and then colorized by me with the use of the Kolorize program.

I took most of the cover text from advertisements of the show, though I added in the list of some of the artists.

Them - Here Comes the Night - Non-Album Tracks (1964-1966)

Van Morrison is another great artist I plan on posting a lot of. But before getting to his long solo career, I'll first deal with his short career with Them.

Them put out two British albums, "The Angry Young Them," and "Them Again," plus a bunch of stray tracks. There's a compilation called "The Story of Them" that does a really great job of collecting all of Them's studio recordings. However, I have a few quibbles with it. One is that I'm not so interested in hearing alternate takes that are only slightly different, and that has some. Two, it's missing one key song, "Mighty like a Rose." But most importantly, I think Them is best heard in album-sized chunks of about 40 minutes each, instead of two CDs of about 70 minutes each.

So here are all the stray tracks, including the missing one. Plus, I found a couple of really nice live Them performances in soundboard quality, so I've added them on as bonus tracks at the end. The album is 47 minutes long, which would have been very long for that era, but possible. Of course, the bonus tracks make it even longer than that. ;)

01 Baby Please Don't Go (Them)
02 Don't Start Crying Now (Them)
03 One Two Brown Eyes (Them)
04 Here Comes the Night (Them)
05 All for Myself (Them)
06 One More Time (Them)
07 Story of Them [Parts 1 & 2] (Them)
08 Philosophy (Them)
09 Baby What You Want Me to Do (Them)
10 It Won't Hurt Half as Much (Them)
11 Times Gettin' Tougher than Tough (Them)
12 Call It Stormy Monday (Them)
13 Friday's Child (Them)
14 Richard Cory (Them)
15 Mighty like a Rose (Them)
16 Turn On Your Love Light [Live] (Them)
17 Mystic Eyes - Gloria [Live] (Them)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700740/THM1964-1966_HreCmestheNght_atse.zip.html

I made the cover using bits and pieces I found on the Internet.