Tom Paxton - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: In Concert, London, Britain, 12-28-1970

Here's another early BBC "In Concert" TV show, this time featuring singer-songwriter Tom Paxton.

Paxton's popularity probably peaked in the 1960s, when he wrote some classic folk songs like "The Last Thing on My Mind," "Bottle of Wine," and "Ramblin' Boy" that were covered by dozens of other famous musical acts. But he kept on steadily writing and recording quality songs for decades after that, and apparently is still performing at the age of 84 as I write this in 2022. 

Here's the Wikipedia link if you want to know more about him:

Tom Paxton - Wikipedia

There's not much else to say here, except the songs played here tended to be ones from his most recent albums instead of his most famous ones. However, it's not surprising he ended the concert with probably his best known song, "The Last Thing on My Mind." 

Like most of the early 1970s BBC TV show recordings, this concert was short, at only 32 minutes.

01 Morning Again (Tom Paxton)
02 talk (Tom Paxton)
03 I Lost My Heart on a 747 (Tom Paxton)
04 talk (Tom Paxton)
05 Whose Garden Was This (Tom Paxton)
06 talk (Tom Paxton)
07 Forest Lawn (Tom Paxton)
08 Annie's Going to Sing Her Song (Tom Paxton)
09 talk (Tom Paxton)
10 Jennifer's Rabbit - I Give You the Morning (Tom Paxton)
11 talk (Tom Paxton)
12 Talking Vietnam Potluck Blues (Tom Paxton)
13 Jimmy Newman (Tom Paxton)
14 The Last Thing on My Mind (Tom Paxton) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/JYPcz81W

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Ets5EU3xkju0Z0D/file

The cover photo is a screenshot I took from the video of this concert, which I found on YouTube. Since the video included the opening credits, I used the same font and colors as those credits, except I added extra information with the extra bottom line in purple.

David Gates (Bread) - BBC in Concert, London, Britain, 7-1971

I'm continuing to prioritize posting BBC concerts from the early 1970s, so here's another one. This is rather odd, because it features David Gates, the main singer and songwriter for the soft rock band Bread, at a time when he hadn't started a solo career yet. In fact, Bread was just hitting it big when this was recorded. Apparently what happened was that the BBC TV show "In Concert" was focusing on songwriters at the time, so only Gates was invited to play, not all of Bread.

Whatever the reason, it's an interesting look at the songs of Bread being done in a different way. It's mostly a solo show, with Gates playing on guitar or piano depending on the song, but a full band joins in for a couple of songs, and there's some strings on other songs. 

This was broadcast in February 1972, but apparently it was recorded in July 1971. At that time, Bread had three hit singles, "If," "It Don't Matter to Me," and "Make It with You." He played those three here, plus "Baby I'm-a Want You" and "Diary," which would be hits later. The other songs come from Bread albums, except for "Change of Heart" which wouldn't appear on a Bread album until 1977.

This album is 32 minutes long.

01 It Don't Matter to Me (David Gates)
02 talk (David Gates)
03 Look at Me (David Gates)
04 talk (David Gates)
05 The Other Side of Life (David Gates)
06 talk (David Gates)
07 She Was My Lady (David Gates)
08 talk (David Gates)
09 He's a Good Lad (David Gates)
10 Change of Heart (David Gates)
11 talk (David Gates)
12 Make It with You (David Gates)
13 Diary (David Gates)
14 talk (David Gates)
15 Baby I'm-a Want You (David Gates)
16 talk (David Gates)
17 If (David Gates)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15275830/BreaGates_1971_BBConcertLondonBritain__7-1971_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is a screenshot taken from this exact concert.

Peter & Gordon - BBC Sessions (1964-1967)

Some 1960s musical acts have stayed popular over the decades, and others have faded away. Unfortunately, the British duo Peter and Gordon have pretty much faded away. But they released a surprising amount of good music, considering their low profile today.

I had to dig pretty deep to make this collection. I don't think anyone has put together a BBC sessions album of their music before. All of the songs here are officially unreleased, but they generally sound as good as released stuff, thanks to the high quality of the BBC transcription discs these come from.

I'd guess that what fame this duo has today is mainly due to Peter Asher (his partner being named Gordon Waller). For one thing, Asher became a very successful producer in the 1970s, as well as being the manager for singer Linda Ronstadt. He was lucky that Jane Asher was his sister, because she dated Paul McCartney from 1963 to 1968, and was even engaged to him at one point. So when the Beatles wrote songs that they didn't want to record themselves, they sometimes gave them to Peter and Gordon. Their first hit in 1964, "A World without Love," was written by the songwriting due of Lennon and McCartney, and hit number one in the US and Britain. Lennon and McCartney wrote other hits for them too: "Nobody I Know," "I Don't Want to See You Again," and "Woman."

While the Beatles written songs were key to making them stars, they went on to have some bit hits on their own, including "True Love Ways," "I Go to Pieces," and "Lady Godiva," each of which were million sellers.

Here's the Wikipedia entry for more info:

Peter and Gordon - Wikipedia

The vast majority of these songs come from BBC studio sessions. But there were a couple of big hits that either weren't done for the BBC, or those recordings haven't survived in the public domain. So for "A World without Love," "I Go to Pieces," and "I Don't Want to See You Again," I found live versions done for TV shows. "Nobody I Know" comes from a Swedish concert that was broadcast on the radio there. These don't sound quite as good as the rest, due to the crowd noise.

 I also found one song done for a TV show that wasn't a hit but sounded good enough to merit inclusion, the Simon and Garfunkel classic "Homeward Bound."

The sound of Peter and Gordon wasn't that far from Simon and Garfunkel, with both duos emphasizing folk rock with harmony vocals. But musical trends changed drastically around 1967. Simon and Garfunkel evolved and endured, while Peter and Gordon petered out (pardon the wordplay). Their last BBC session seems to have been in 1967, and they broke up in 1968.

As is usually the case with BBC recordings from this time period, the BBC DJs (especially Brian Matthew - sigh!) talked over the music sometimes. For all the songs with "[Edit]" in their names, I used the X-Minus audio editing program to wipe out that talking while keeping the underlying music.

A few of the songs here seem to have never been officially released by the band, all covers: "Midnight Special," "Maggie's Farm," "(Marie's the Name) His Latest Flame," and "He Will Break Your Heart."

This album is 54 minutes long. It would have been longer, but there were a few songs I thought were clunkers that I didn't include. 

By the way, another British duo, Chad & Jeremy, had a very similar career arc, having hits around the same time then also breaking up in 1968. I would have been interested to put together a BBC sessions album for them, but I can't find any BBC recordings by them at all.

01 A World without Love (Peter & Gordon)
02 Nobody I Know (Peter & Gordon)
03 I Go to Pieces (Peter & Gordon)
04 I Told You So [Edit] (Peter & Gordon)
05 True Love Ways (Peter & Gordon)
06 Midnight Special (Peter & Gordon)
07 To Know You Is to Love You [To Know Him Is to Love Him] (Peter & Gordon)
08 When the Black of Your Eyes Turns to Grey [Edit] (Peter & Gordon)
09 I Don't Want to See You Again (Peter & Gordon)
10 Baby, I'm Yours (Peter & Gordon)
11 Maggie's Farm [Edit] (Peter & Gordon)
12 Woman (Peter & Gordon)
13 Wrong from the Start [Edit] (Peter & Gordon)
14 A Boy with Nothing [Edit] (Peter & Gordon)
15 Morning's Calling [Edit] (Peter & Gordon)
16 Lucille (Peter & Gordon)
17 Homeward Bound (Peter & Gordon)
18 [Marie's the Name] His Latest Flame [Edit] (Peter & Gordon)
19 Knight in Rusty Armour (Peter & Gordon)
20 Lady Godiva [Edit] (Peter & Gordon)
21 He Will Break Your Heart [Edit] (Peter & Gordon)
22 Sunday for Tea (Peter & Gordon)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15267373/PeternG_1964-1967_BBSessions_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is from an appearance on the TV show "Hullabaloo" in March 1966.

Dexys Midnight Runners - Show Me - Non-Album Tracks (1979-1982)

If you live anywhere but in Britain, you probably know the British band Dexys Midnight Runners mainly for one song: "Come On Eileen." That was a number one hit in the US, Britain, and many other places in 1982, and continues to be played all over the place. In the US, the band is a true one-hit wonder. But in Britain, they had seven other top twenty hits, including another number one, "Geno," in 1980.

In my opinion, Dexys Midnight Runners (note that, weirdly, there's no apostrophe in "Dexys") is much more than a one-hit wonder.  The band has basically been Kevin Rowland, the lead singer and main songwriter, and a frequently changing bunch of supporting musicians. They put out a lot of good music from 1979 to 1982. At the end of that time, Rowland had trouble dealing with massive success, and got addicted to drugs, and suffered from depression. He didn't release much more for a long time after that, but eventually pulled himself together and has released some good records later in his career. But this is a stray tracks album that deals only with the band's years of peak popular success.

 During this time period, the band released two studio albums, "Searching for the Young Soul Rebels" in 1980, and "Too-Rye-Ay" in 1982. I've avoided including any songs on those albums, unless there are significantly different versions. It turns out the band was just as focused on releasing singles they didn't put on their albums as their albums. There are five A-sides included here, and eight B-sides.

Three of the A-sides were top forty hits in Britain: "Dance Stance," "Show Me," and "Let's Get This Straight (From the Heart)." "Dance Stance" is rather confusing, because that was its name when released as a single, but it later appeared on the "Searching for the Young Soul Rebels" album with the name "Burn It Down." It was a different version, but they're basically the same song, so I gave it the title "Dance Stance" but I put "Burn It Down" into the title as a second name as well.

In addition to all those A- and B-sides, there are a few rarities. "Hold On, I'm Coming" is a demo version of the classic Sam and Dave soul hit, done as a studio demo. It was eventually released as a bonus track. "Big Time Operator" is a cover of a song originally done by Zoot Money's Big Roll Band in the 1960s. This is unreleased, but it comes from a concert that was broadcast on the radio at the time, so the sound quality is a good as the rest. "Merry Xmas Everybody" is a cover of the Slade hit from the 1970s that was done for a Christmas-themed British TV show.

In my opinion, there's enough good material here for an album that would rival either of the band's two albums from this time period, though it probably would be improved by trimming one or more of the four instrumentals. 

I'm posting this album now because there are three BBC albums by the band that I want to post soon. I usually like to post stray tracks albums first.

This album is 48 minutes long.

01 Dance Stance [Burn It Down] (Dexys Midnight Runners)
02 Hold On, I'm Coming [Demo] (Dexys Midnight Runners)
03 The Horse [Instrumental] (Dexys Midnight Runners)
04 Breaking Down the Walls of Heartache (Dexys Midnight Runners)
05 Big Time Operator (Dexys Midnight Runners)
06 Keep It, Part Two [Inferiority, Part 1] (Dexys Midnight Runners)
07 One Way Love (Dexys Midnight Runners)
08 Plan B (Dexys Midnight Runners)
09 Soul Finger [Instrumental] (Dexys Midnight Runners)
10 Show Me (Dexys Midnight Runners)
11 Soon (Dexys Midnight Runners)
12 Love, Part 2 (Dexys Midnight Runners)
13 Dubious [Outlook] [Instrumental] (Dexys Midnight Runners)
14 Let's Get This Straight [From the Start] (Dexys Midnight Runners)
15 TSOP [The Sound of Philadelphia] [Instrumental] (Dexys Midnight Runners)
16 Merry Xmas Everybody (Dexys Midnight Runners)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15110162/DexysMR_1979-1982_ShwMe_atse.zip.html

The promo photo of the band is from 1982.

BBC Concerts

This is just a quick announcement that I've added another tag category: "BBC Concert." There already is a "BBC" tag. But I've been posting so many BBC concerts lately, with many more to come, I figure it would be helpful to have that tag too. There are about 50 BBC concerts so far, but I plan for that to double and then some. I went back and made sure this new tag was properly applied to all the albums on this blog.

I considered adding a BBC studio sessions tag as well, but I figure that's unnecessary. If an album has the "BBC" tag but not the "BBC Concert" one, that it's a given those are primarily studio tracks.

Pentangle - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: 1969-1970

This is the fourth of six volumes of the British folk band Pentangle at the BBC. Like the three previous ones, this is a collection of studio tracks.

Four of the seven performances here have been officially released. Three are from "The Lost Broadcasts," and one is from the box set "The Time Has Come." All but two of the songs are from BBC studio sessions, including two of the three unreleased songs. The sound quality is pretty good, overall.

One song not from the BBC is a live version of  the song "Pentangling." This song usually was the highlight of their concerts. I was surprised that there wasn't any version of it recorded for the BBC, at least no version that has survived. This version apparently was recorded at a concert in Scotland for a TV show. It's the one that appeared on the box set, and the sound quality for it is fantastic.

I included a version of "Light Flight" in Volume 3, but it's such a great song that I don't see a problem with having a second version here. 

This album is 42 minutes long.

01 Light Flight (Pentangle)
02 Pentangling (Pentangle)
03 Speak of the Devil (Pentangle)
04 A Maid That's Deep in Love (Pentangle)
05 Will the Circle Be Unbroken (Pentangle)
06 Wedding Dress (Pentangle)
07 Sally Free and Easy (Pentangle)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15267332/Pentgl_1969-1970_BBSessionsVolume4_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from an unknown TV show. Unfortunately, not all of the band members were included in the frame. (I couldn't find very many good color photos of the band from this era, period.)

Yes - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: John Peel's Sunday Show, Paris Theatre, London, Britain, 3-17-1970

I'm not a super Yes fan, but as far as I can tell, there are very few Yes concert recordings, official or bootleg, that have sound quality worth hearing, before 1972. With 1972, there's the official triple live album "Yessongs," as well as seven complete concerts, packaged together in the box set "Progeny." In terms of live concerts from the band's first two years, this is pretty much the only one. Once again, we have to thank the BBC for their bothering to record this band with their usual high quality control at a time when they had barely made a dent in the charts.

For Volume 1 in this series, which contains early BBC studio sessions recordings, I used the X-Minus audio editing program to improve the sound quality by boosting the lead vocals. I don't know why, but it seems having the vocals too low was a frequent problem with early Yes recordings, but I felt the need to do the exact same thing here. Every song has "[Edit]" in their titles because of that change and not the usual BBC problem of DJ's talking over the music. 

The one disappointment about this show is that it's relatively show. The concert mentioned in the title is only 28 minutes long. It appears to be complete, because the BBC only gave the band a half-hour spot. Those songs all come from the official BBC album "Something's Coming." Since it is rather short, I had two songs from later in 1970 taken from a Belgian TV show that was just about the only other recording from 1970 or earlier that has good sound quality. These versions were done in a TV studio with no audience, but they fit better here than on any other BBC volume because they're different songs than the others, so I stuck them at the end.

Three of the songs are covers: "Every Little Thing," "Everydays," and "No Opportunity Necessary, No Experience Needed." "For Everyone" is an original that never made it to any Yes album.

Including the two extra songs, this album is 37 minutes long.

01 Astral Traveler [Edit] (Yes)
02 Then [Edit] (Yes)
03 Every Little Thing [Edit] (Yes)
04 Everydays [Edit] (Yes)
05 For Everyone [Edit] (Yes)
06 No Opportunity Necessary, No Experience Needed [Edit] (Yes)
07 Sweet Dreams [Edit] (Yes)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15190976/Yess_1970_BBSessionsVolum2SundayShwParsTheatreLondnBritain__3-17-1970_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from a Yes concert in the Netherlands in January 1970.

Three Dog Night - BBC in Concert, London, Britain, 12-7-1972

Here's yet another BBC TV show concert bootleg from the early 1970s.

Generally speaking, the US band Three Dog Night has had a respect problem. From 1969 to 1974, they had 15 top twenty hits in the US (and two big hits in Britain), and that popularity led some people to criticize them for being too commercial. They also didn't write many songs on their own, and their hits were written by others. But I just listened to this concert for the first time the other day, and it struck me that they were a good, rocking band. Yeah, it would have been nice if they wrote all their own stuff, but all of these are excellent songs that might not have been hits otherwise. 

This concert took place at the end of 1972, at a time when the band still had all seven of its original members. They were in the middle of their run of chart hits, but they already had so many that virtually every song here was a hit, with the exception of "Midnight Runaway," and they had even more big hits they didn't have time to play, like "One," "Easy to Be Hard," "Liar," and "Never Been to Spain." 

I have to admit that up until now I'd only thought of this group for their singles. But they impressed me with their talent playing these songs in this concert.

This album is 43 minutes long.

01 One Man Band (Three Dog Night)
02 Mama Told Me Not to Come (Three Dog Night)
03 It's for You (Three Dog Night)
04 An Old Fashioned Love Song (Three Dog Night)
05 talk (Three Dog Night)
06 Midnight Runaway (Three Dog Night)
07 Try a Little Tenderness (Three Dog Night)
08 talk (Three Dog Night)
09 Black and White (Three Dog Night)
10 Eli's Coming (Three Dog Night)
11 Joy to the World (Three Dog Night)
12 Celebrate (Three Dog Night)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/4J8wSFFF

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/q61dzScbG1MkDek/file

A video of this concert is available on YouTube, at least when I checked. However, the video that I saw didn't have the band's name at the beginning, as that part was probably cut off. So I used the same font as the others from the same TV show, but I had to guess on the colors of the letters.

In April 2025, I improved the image with the use of the Krea AI program.

The Eagles - BBC In Concert, Golders Green Hippodrome, London, Britain, 3-20-1973

Here's yet another BBC TV show performance from the early 1970s. This time, it's the Eagles. (And, yes, I know that technically their name is just "Eagles," but I'll note that at the start of this TV show they were billed as "The Eagles.")

These days, it seems the Eagles are just a bunch of greatest hits that get played everywhere, all the time, especially "Hotel California." But at the time of this concert, the band was just starting out. They had released one album in 1972, simply called "Eagles," and were on the verge of releasing a second one, which came out a few weeks later. Most of those blockbuster hits were still in the future. In my opinion, it's rather refreshing that this has a number of songs on it that haven't been overplayed to death. 

The BBC concert is only 35 minutes long. I learned that when Neil Young played for this BBC TV show in 1971, he did a number of songs that weren't aired and so didn't get bootlegged. I figure it's the same here. The short length is a bummer, but in terms of concert recordings from the band's early years, I doubt there are any with a sound quality as good as this one.

As far as I can tell, this is the only worthwhile recording the Eagles did for the BBC in the 1970s. Since they're an American band, it's not that surprising that their BBC exposure was limited at the time. They did record "Hotel California" for the BBC TV show "Old Grey Whistle Test" in 1977, and I considered adding that as a bonus track, but there was way too much crowd noise to make it a good listen, in my opinion. But since the concert is relatively short, I added an extra song at the end from another TV appearance in 1973. 

This album is 40 minutes long, including the extra song at the end.

UPDATE: On February 14, 2024, I updated the mp3 download file. I removed a song at the end, "Already Gone," because it was from the 1974 "California Jam" concert, and I later posted the full set. So I didn't need to repeat one of those songs here. I also found out the exact location of the concert, the Golders Green Hippodrome, and added that to the title.

01 Train Leaves Here This Morning (Eagles)
02 [Whatever Happened To] Saturday Night (Eagles)
03 Peaceful Easy Feeling (Eagles)
04 talk (Eagles)
05 Certain Kind of Fool (Eagles)
06 Early Bird (Eagles)
07 talk (Eagles)
08 Witchy Woman (Eagles)
09 Silver Dagger (Eagles)
10 Take It Easy (Eagles)
11 Out of Control (Eagles)
12 Tequila Sunrise (Eagles)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/LHNSL7Rr

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/q9QGC6oudW2r7Xr/file

The video of this concert is (usually) available on YouTube. For the cover photo, I took a screenshot from the video. For the text, I used the same font type and colors as those presented at the start of the video. However, I made up the red line at the bottom since that information wasn't visually presented.

In February 2025, I upgraded the image with the help of the Krea AI program.

Chuck Berry - Sounds for Saturday, BBC Television Theatre, London, Britain, 3-29-1972

Here another album made from a BBC TV show, as I post a bunch of these from the early 1970s. This one features rock legend Chuck Berry. It's a bit different from most of the others I'm posting lately, in that those are from the TV show "In Concert" and generally ran a half an hour or so. This one comes from a show called "Sounds for Saturday," and is one minute short of being two hours long.

In addition to being a rock legend, Chuck Berry was a serious weird dude. If you look up his Wikipedia entry, you'll see he was accused of, and sometimes convicted of, some strange and troubling things. But he also was notorious for being cheap. One result of that was that he generally didn't keep a backing band whenever he went on tour. Instead, he assumed his songs were so famous and he was so well regarded that he'd use any local band that was willing, and pay them peanuts. As a result, his live performances were spotty, to say the least, especially because he usually didn't practice with these pick-up bands beforehand.

This concert is different, thankfully. All of Berry's hits were in the 1950s or early 1960s, or so it seemed. But in 1972 he had a fluke hit with the novelty song "My Ding-a-Ling." Released in July 1972, it went all the way to number one in the US charts, his only number one hit. (As an aside, what a sad commentary on the public's taste in music for this silly song to out-chart and out-sell all his other songs, including all-time classics like "Johnny B. Goode." Sigh!) Anyway, this concert took place months before that song was released, so the BBC must have booked him due to the high regard of his music career in general.

Anyway, my point is, Berry knew this concert would be shown on TV all over Britain, and maybe beyond, so this wasn't just another concert he could do with yet another pick-up band. Presumably, he put more effort into it than usual, and put on a good performance. There are a bunch of official live Chuck Berry albums, but most of them are short and/or lackluster. I would guess that if you want one definitive Berry live document, it's hard to top this one. (I don't count the "Hail! Hail! Rock and Roll" soundtrack because that's a collaboration with lots of big name guest stars.)

Because of this concert's length, Berry played most all of his big hits while also throwing in some lesser known songs for a change of pace. One change of pace was "My Ding-a-Ling." Apparently, even though it hadn't been released as a single yet, he'd been playing it in concert for years already. It goes on for over eight minutes, which is way too long for my tastes, but I left it in to present the full concert accurately. 

01 Roll Over Beethoven (Chuck Berry)
02 talk (Chuck Berry)
03 School Day (Chuck Berry)
04 talk (Chuck Berry)
05 Sweet Little Sixteen (Chuck Berry)
06 talk (Chuck Berry)
07 Memphis, Tennessee (Chuck Berry)
08 Too Much Monkey Business (Chuck Berry)
09 talk (Chuck Berry)
10 South of the Border (Chuck Berry)
11 Beer Drinkin' Woman (Chuck Berry)
12 Let It Rock (Chuck Berry)
13 talk (Chuck Berry)
14 Mean Old World (Chuck Berry)
15 talk (Chuck Berry)
16 Carol (Chuck Berry)
17 talk (Chuck Berry)
18 Rock and Roll Music (Chuck Berry)
19 talk (Chuck Berry)
20 Liverpool Drive (Chuck Berry)
21 Promised Land (Chuck Berry)
22 Reelin' and Rockin' (Chuck Berry)
23 talk (Chuck Berry)
24 Nadine (Chuck Berry)
25 talk (Chuck Berry)
26 My Ding-a-Ling (Chuck Berry)
27 Bye Bye Johnny (Chuck Berry)
28 Bonsoir Cherie (Chuck Berry)
29 Johnny B. Goode (Chuck Berry)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17362440/CHUCKBRY1972SoundsforSaturdayBBTelevisionTheatre__3-29-1972_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Ebuij6yS

The video of this concert is available on YouTube. So for the cover photo, I took a screenshot from the video. I also took a screenshot of the very start of the video when Berry's name was on screen, and used that for his name at the top.

The Beautiful South - Cover Songs, Volume 1 (1989-1995)

It's been a while, but every now and then I like post albums of rare or unreleased cover versions done by a musical artist. Here's a series of three albums of that from the British band the Beautiful South.

The Beautiful South are much better known in Britain than they are in the US. They never had a single top forty hit in the US, but they had lots of them in Britain from their start in 1989 to their end in 2007. I'm not a fan of all their stuff, but their hits are very good. It appears many people in Britain feel the same way, because their greatest hits album "Carry On Up the Charts" went platinum five times over in Britain. They've sold 15 millions records worldwide.

Here's their Wikipedia link if you want to know more:

The Beautiful South - Wikipedia

Although I think their albums are uneven, they liked doing covers, and they had good taste in them, often picking unusual ones to do. So this is an album for people who like excellent songs played well, even if you're not a big fan of the Beautiful South per se.

All but one of the songs here have been officially released. That one, "Get Down on It," is from a concert bootleg, but sounds as good as the other songs here. Most of the others are from the A- or B-sides of singles. Plus there's a song from the band's first album, from a BBC album, and from a various artists compilation.

The band shows a lot of variety on this album, going from a ballad made famous by the Mamas and the Papas to a funk song by Kool in the Gang. In particular, there's a lot of funky, danceable music here.

This album is 39 minutes long.

Here's a list of the original artists for each song:

01 Girlfriend - Pebbles
02 What You See Is What You Get - Pretty Purdie & the Playboys
03 Love Wars - Womack & Womack
04 I Started a Joke - Bee Gees
05 You Should Be Dancing - Bee Gees
06 Everybody's Talkin' - Fred Neil
07 Java - Allen Toussaint / Al Hirt
08 Get Down on It - Kool & the Gang
09 Use It Up and Wear It Out - Odyssey
10 Dream a Little Dream of Me - Ozzie Nelson / Mamas & the Papas

Here's the usual song list:

01 Girlfriend (Beautiful South)
02 What You See Is What You Get (Beautiful South)
03 Love Wars (Beautiful South)
04 I Started a Joke (Beautiful South)
05 You Should Be Dancing (Beautiful South)
06 Everybody's Talkin' (Beautiful South)
07 Java (Beautiful South)
08 Get Down on It (Beautiful South)
09 Use It Up and Wear It Out (Beautiful South)
10 Dream a Little Dream of Me (Beautiful South)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15124460/BeautifulSth_1989-1995_CverSongsVolume1_atse.zip.html

It's hard to find good color pictures of this band. I don't know when this is from exactly, but it includes their first female vocalist, Brianna Corrigan, who was only with the band from 1988 to 1992, so it must be from that early time period.

Stephen Stills & Manassas - BBC in Concert, London, Britain, 9-16-1972

I'm continuing to post some of the early 1970s BBC "In Concert" bootlegs I have. Here's a particularly good one, featuring Stephen Stills with his short-lived group Manassas.

I've posted another Manassas concert already, dating from March 1972. That one is much longer: two hours and 17 minutes, compared to 47 minutes for this one. But the sound quality of this one is probably even better, if only by a little, and there actually are a few songs here not on that other one. Although it was only six months later, the band was already turning their attention to the songs that would go on their 1973 album, and played a few here.

With BBC production standards high, as usual, there wasn't much for me to do. But I did make adjustments to three songs at the end of the concert (the ones with "[Edit]" in their names). There was a slight glitch in the middle of "Find the Cost of Freedom," probably from the way this was recorded, but I was able to fix it by patching in a different section of the song. And the lead vocals on the songs "Anyway" and "Daylight Again" were low, in my opinion, so I boosted them using the X-Minus audio editing program. 

"Daylight Again" was considered for the next Manassas album, but it wouldn't actually be released until the 1972 Crosby, Stills and Nash album, also called "Daylight Again." By then, the lyrics would change drastically, with only the first verse the same. My guess is that Stills wasn't happy with most of the words when he played this concert, because the first verse came through strongly but he sang the rest much quieter. Thanks to my edit, you can hear all of this interesting early version clearly.

01 Fallen Eagle (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
02 You're Still on My Mind (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
03 Sugar Babe (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
04 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
05 Pensamiento (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
06 Change Partners (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
07 talk (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
08 Know You Got to Run (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
09 Word Game (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
10 Both of Us [Bound to Lose] (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
11 Love the One You're With (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
12 Right Now (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
13 Anyway [Edit] (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
14 Daylight Again [Edit] (Stephen Stills & Manassas)
15 Find the Cost of Freedom [Edit] (Stephen Stills & Manassas)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/uNrDbYNM

I wasn't able to find the video of this concert on YouTube. But I got lucky and found a nice color photo of this exact concert anyway, and used it here.

Neil Young - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: In Concert, London, Britain, 2-23-1971

These days, as I write this in 2022, there's a lot of excellent officially released Neil Young concert material from the late 1970 and early 1971 time period. If you're a casual fan and have one or more of those, you probably don't need this. The sound quality here is excellent, as is the performance. But it's only 28 minutes long, and all the songs are on most of those official albums. But if you're a serious Neil Young fan, there are very few bootlegs that sound as good as this one does. 

I'm posting it because, like the Carole King one I just posted, I want to get all the "In Concert" albums I have out there, so I can ask help for the ones I still don't have.

There's a website called "Sugar Mountain" (https://www.sugarmtn.org) that aspires to have all the information about the set lists for all of Young's concerts. I looked up this show and discovered that there were some songs that didn't get broadcast. Specifically, he also played:

Cowgirl in the Sand
I Am a Child
There's a Word
The Needle and the Damage Done
Tell Me Why

I suspect that if he played those extra songs, other artists who performed for the "In Concert" TV show around this time also did extra songs. Unfortunately, in Young's case, and most or all of those other cases, the extra songs seem to be lost.

What I find interesting is that, of the songs that were chosen for broadcast, the vast majority would have been unfamiliar at the time. Of course, in 1972, "Heart of Gold" would be a number one song in the US, and his album "Harvest" would sell millions. But that was 1972, and this was still early 1971. "Harvest" wound up getting delayed due to Young getting injured and some other issues. So even if the actual broadcast of this didn't take place until months later, the audience still wouldn't have known most of the songs. Plus, "Journey through the Past," "Love in Mind," and "Dance, Dance, Dance" wouldn't come out until even later. So probably "Don't Let It Bring You Down" would have been the only familiar song! 

UPDATE: On February 10, 2025, I upgraded the mp3 download file. The music is the same, but I changed the album title to "Volume One" after finding another BBC concert he did decades later.

01 Out on the Weekend (Neil Young)
02 talk (Neil Young)
03 Old Man (Neil Young)
04 Heart of Gold (Neil Young)
05 Don't Let It Bring You Down (Neil Young)
06 talk (Neil Young)
07 Journey through the Past (Neil Young)
08 talk (Neil Young)
09 A Man Needs a Maid (Neil Young)
10 Love in Mind (Neil Young)
11 talk (Neil Young)
12 Dance, Dance, Dance (Neil Young)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/5gSEaP9f

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/ZsZv3lny6DjW2Py/file

For this cover, I did pretty much exactly what I did for the cover of the Carole King concert I just posted. This concert also can be found on YouTube. So I took a screenshot from that video for the cover art. For the text, I used the same font and colors as the opening screen of that video, though I added in the red line at the bottom.

In February 2025, I upgraded the picture somewhat with the help of the Krea AI program.

Carole King - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: In Concert, BBC Televison Centre, London, Britain, 2-10-1971

Normally, I wouldn't post this Carole King concert. It's a fine one, with excellent sound and performance. But the snag is that King performance four months later that was eventually released as "The Carnegie Hall Concert," and that one is very similar but has a handful more songs. But I'm posting all my BBC "In Concert" bootlegs from this time period. But if you don't have the Carnegie Hall show, this is a great one in every way.

Perhaps one thing this has going for it over the Carnegie Hall one is that it's more historic. I looked it up, and it turns out King's classic "Tapestry" album was released on the exact same day this concert was broadcast. It could have been taped some days earlier, I'm not sure. But either way, the audience was unfamiliar with most of the songs here. By the time of that Carnegie Hall show just four months later, the situation would change drastically, as King would have a new number one hit, and a number one album that would go on to sell 25 million copies! She didn't tour much, and I think she only did a handful of concerts ever prior to this one.

James Taylor plays on all but the first two songs on this album. It turns out that's not a big deal, because he acted as a true band member, just strumming rhythm guitar in a low key way. I don't think he did any backing vocals either. I believe Taylor and King dated for a while around this time period, and she was famously shy about public performance, so he was probably there for moral support more than anything else.

This album is just 34 minutes long.

UPDATE: On February 12, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. I didn't change any of the music. However, I changed the album title to "Volume 1" since she did another BBC concert decades later. And I upgraded the cover art some.

01 I Feel the Earth Move (Carole King)
02 [You Make Me Feel Like] A Natural Woman (Carole King)
03 talk (Carole King)
04 So Far Away (Carole King)
05 talk (Carole King)
06 It's Too Late (Carole King)
07 talk (Carole King)
08 Smackwater Jack (Carole King)
09 talk (Carole King)
10 Way Over Yonder (Carole King)
11 Will You Love Me Tomorrow (Carole King)
12 Up on the Roof (Carole King)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/YKs2gQ1X

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/iZya2I5HM7Qjuxy/file

This concert can be found on YouTube. I took a screenshot from that video for the cover art. For the text, I used the same font and colors as the opening screen of that video, though I added in the red line at the bottom. In February 2025, I upgraded the cover art with the help of the Krea AI program.

The Carpenters (with Tony Joe White) - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: In Concert, London, Britain, 9-25-1971

Back in 2018, I jumped deep into the depths of the uncool pool by posting an album by the Carpenters. (Technically, their name is just "Carpenters," but nobody calls them that.) Now I'm jumping back into that pool by posting another album by them. Yes, their music is super sappy and cheesy, but damn, Karen Carpenter had one of the most amazing voices ever. I swear I can hear her smiling most of the time when she's singing.

This concert was done for the BBC's "In Concert" TV series. You can find the video of it on YouTube. But there are a couple of odd aspects about it. One is that singer-songwriter Tony Joe White sang two of his songs in between Carpenters songs. The other is that two of the songs shown on the TV show were actually the studio versions ("Help" and a Burt Bacharach medley), so I didn't include those. 

I must say I'm really impressed with Karen Carpenter in this unreleased show. Not only does her voice sound flawless, but she played the drums the entire time, as you can see on the video. That must have been really hard to do.

This concert is 39 minutes long. 

UPDATE: On June 25, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. The music is the same, but I changed the album title to "Volume 1" after finding material for a "Volume 2".

01 Love Is Surrender (Carpenters)
02 Superstar [Groupie] (Carpenters)
03 talk (Carpenters)
04 And When He Smiles (Carpenters)
05 Rainy Days and Mondays (Carpenters)
06 talk (Carpenters)
07 That on the Road Look (Tony Joe White)
08 I Fell in Love with You (Carpenters & Doug Strawn)
09 For All We Know (Carpenters)
10 Lust for Earl and the Married Woman (Tony Joe White)
11 Sometimes (Carpenters)
12 [They Long to Be] Close to You (Carpenters)
13 talk (Carpenters)
14 We've Only Just Begun (Carpenters)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/QJWBjz9W

alternate:

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

For the cover photo, I took a screenshot of the exact concert featured here. Since I was so impressed with Karen Carpenter's drumming, I selected one of her drumming and singing. I used the Krea AI program to upgrade the image.

Billy Joel - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: From a Piano Man... to an Innocent Man, Wembley Arena, London, Britain, 6-8-1984

As I delve deeper into the mountain of BBC recordings out there, I'm discovering that practically every famous musical act played for the BBC at one point or another. Okay, that's an exaggeration, but you'd be surprised. I know I've been.

A case in point is Billy Joel. As an American, he's an unlikely subject for the BBC. But it turns out he did a 1984 concert in London that was broadcast on BBC TV at the time. I really like when concerts are broadcast by the BBC, because it's a virtual guarantee that the sound quality will be excellent. That's the case here with this unreleased show.

But the timing of this concert is also great. If I had to pick one year for a Billy Joel concert, it would be 1984. His 1983 album "An Innocent Man" finished a long run of commercially successful and critically acclaimed albums. He would release three more studio albums after that, but they're not as good as the rest. If you look at the crowd-sourced ratings of his albums at rateyourmusic.com, all of his prior albums got better ratings than his last three. So that means this is "all killer, no filler," with nearly every song a hit.

There aren't any surprises here, but it's a well played bunch of lively, classic songs. Personally, I think this is better than any of his five official live albums, again mainly due to the timing. (Three of those live albums were recorded in the 2000s.)

There were a couple of sonic problems, but I fixed them. The song "Scenes from an Itallian Restaurant" had multiple digital glitches, probably something going wrong with file copying. I found a different version of the same performance (on YouTube) and patched it in. "Tell Her about It" had multiple drop-outs, where the sound got quiet for a few seconds each time. I fixed those issues by boosting the volume the right amount each time. Another issue was that one of the stereo channels was much louder than the other one, but I fixed that, song by song.

You can watch this entire concert on YouTube. If you do, you'll notice that its official title is shown at the start of the show: "From a Piano Man... to an Innocent Man." So I've included that in the title.

The video footage of this is is sold in DVD format under various names, but I've checked on Wikipedia and none of those appear to be official, authorized releases.

This concert is an hour and 51 minutes long.

01 Prelude - Angry Young Man (Billy Joel)
02 My Life (Billy Joel)
03 talk (Billy Joel)
04 Piano Man (Billy Joel)
05 talk (Billy Joel)
06 Don't Ask Me Why (Billy Joel)
07 Allentown (Billy Joel)
08 Goodnight Saigon (Billy Joel)
09 Pressure (Billy Joel)
10 talk (Billy Joel)
11 Leave a Tender Moment Alone (Billy Joel)
12 An Innocent Man (Billy Joel)
13 talk (Billy Joel)
14 What's Your Name (Billy Joel)
15 The Longest Time (Billy Joel)
16 talk (Billy Joel)
17 This Night (Billy Joel)
18 Just the Way You Are (Billy Joel)
19 Scenes from an Italian Restaurant [Edit] (Billy Joel)
20 talk (Billy Joel)
21 Sometimes a Fantasy (Billy Joel)
22 It's Still Rock and Roll to Me (Billy Joel)
23 Uptown Girl (Billy Joel)
24 Big Shot (Billy Joel)
25 Tell Her about It [Edit] (Billy Joel)
26 You May Be Right (Billy Joel)
27 Only the Good Die Young (Billy Joel)  

https://pixeldrain.com/u/pSVsXzZY

The cover photo may not be the best, due to his facial expression. But I used it because it comes from the exact concert featured here.

Eclection - BBC Sessions (1968-1969)

Since I just posted something by the band Fotheringay yesterday, I suppose now is as good a time as any to post this BBC sessions album by the British folk-rock group Eclection. Chances are you've never heard of them, since they never made it big. But I'm not going to post anything on my blog if it's bad, and believe me, this band was good. 

If you like early Fairport Convention, this is VERY similar. Just like Fairport for their first couple of albums, this group was heavily influenced by American folk rock like the Byrds, the Mamas and the Papas, and Gordon Lightfoot. Also like Fairport, there was an appealing mixture of female and male lead vocals.

Eclection only put out one album, in 1968, also called "Eclection." I'm sure the band would have gone on to be one of the top bands in their genre, along with Fairport Convention and Pentangle, except they fell apart after their first album. But if you like this, definitely get the band's sole album as well. It's very good. I considered posting it here to get more people to notice it, but I ultimately decided against it since I assume it's still in print. Although most people call the band British, that's a stretch. They were based in Britain, true, but only one band member was actually British, and the rest were from various countries around the world.

Here's the Wikipedia link for the band if you want to know more:

Eclection - Wikipedia

As for the Fotheringay connection, Australian singer-songwriter Trevor Lucas was in both bands (and in 1970s versions of Fairport Convention as well). But he didn't make much of an impact on Eclection, since apparently he hadn't developed his songwriting talent yet. Instead, the vast majority of the band's songs were written by a Norwegian named Georg Kajanus. He would have a VERY unexpected music career after Eclection. After a few years in obscurity, he reemerged in the mid-1970s as the lead singer and songwriter for the pop band Sailor, which had a couple hits with their songs that pretty much were exclusively focused on the lifestyles of sailors!

This album is a particularly important one because this band left behind such a small recorded legacy. As far as I can tell, their sole album (plus some extra singles and such added as bonus tracks to the album) and these BBC recordings is all there is. There aren't even lousy audience bootlegs of any concerts. 

The band tried to put together a second album, but fell apart before they recorded songs in the studio for it. However, a bunch of songs here presumably were intended for that second album. The first four songs appeared on their 1968 album, and "Please" was an A-side that has been included as a bonus track to that album. But all the rest only were done for the BBC. That's 34 minutes, enough for a studio album at the time. So it could be argued this is their de facto second album, with most of those songs recorded in 1969. Of those extra songs, "Both Sides Now" of course is a cover of the famous Joni Mitchell song, but I believe the rest are originals.

Sound quality has been an issue with these recordings. These BBC versions of first four songs plus "Please" were included as more bonus tracks to their sole album, and those all sound great. The rest were more of a mixed bag. But I discovered that if I used the X-Minus audio editing program to boost the lead vocals relative to the instruments, they sounded a lot better. So I did that for most of the songs. Then there were other songs were BBC DJs talked over the music (I used X-Minus to fix that too), and some had both problems. So the "[Edit]" in the titles could refer to either or both of those problems. 

Despite those problems, I think the songs sound much better now. A couple near the end are still a bit rough, but overall, I think the sound quality is pretty good, certainly good enough for official release.

This album is 51 minutes long.

01 Morning of Yesterday [Edit] (Eclection)
02 Nevertheless (Eclection)
03 Will Tomorrow Be the Same [Edit] (Eclection)
04 Violet Dew [Edit] (Eclection)
05 Days Left Behind [Edit] (Eclection)
06 Time for Love [Edit] (Eclection)
07 Please [Edit] (Eclection)
08 Earth [Edit] (Eclection)
09 Put Your Face On [Edit] (Eclection)
10 Both Sides Now [Edit] (Eclection)
11 Restitution [Edit] (Eclection)
12 Charity [Instrumental] (Eclection)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/x4zVC2cz

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/EQFqNzunkPpB4Ke/file

Since the band is so obscure, there are very few photos of them, period. Luckily, there was one good color one, used here, that was included as part of the artwork for a later release of the band's 1968 album. The band made kind of a logo out of the name, so I added that to the upper left corner.

In February 2025, I improved the image with the help of the Krea AI program.

Mary Chapin Carpenter - Home Concerts 6, Afton, VA, 1-10-2021 to 3-21-2021

Sometimes I forget things, but I do tend to get around to them eventually. It just might take a while. In this case, I posted five volumes of Mary Chapin Carpenter's home concerts from 2020 to 2021, and then I forgot to post the sixth and last one. I happened to notice that oversight while looking through my music collection today, so here it is.

This volume is very similar to the others in the series. As usual, she had some comments before each song, but also as usual, I cut out a lot of inconsequential talk (often about the current states of her dog and cat), and kept it just to the talk relevant to the music. 

Also as was the case with the last couple of volumes, there were issues with squeaky toys for the dog. Luckily, that was pretty minimal this time, and it didn't get in the way of any of the songs. But you'll hear some squeaky noises in the into talk for a couple of the songs.

Carpenter decided to end the series, and gives her reasons in the comments before the last song. That's a bummer, but then again it's pretty impressive that she kept this going on a weekly basis for a full year.

This album is 51 minutes long.

01 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
02 Farther Along and Further In (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
03 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
04 A Keeper for Every Flame (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
05 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
06 What You Look For (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
07 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
08 Come On Come On (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
09 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
10 The Ending (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
11 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
12 The End of My Pirate Days (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
13 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
14 Traveler's Prayer (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
15 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
16 Here I Am (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
17 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
18 Livingston (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
19 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
20 Sometimes Just the Sky (Mary Chapin Carpenter)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/otLse4WW

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/ifqAVPhCnjWt2C7/file

The cover photo is a screenshot I took from one of the videos of these songs. In February 2025, I upgraded the cover image with the use of the Krea AI program.

Yes - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1969

Do you like prog rock, a.k.a. progressive rock? If so, you're in luck, because I'm going to be posting a lot of that in the near future as part of my big BBC project. Quite a few British prog rock bands played lots of sessions for the BBC in the early 1970s especially. I still have a bunch of late-1960s based artists to deal with as part of this project. But I figure I'll get started on some of that 1970s stuff at the same time.

Yes is one of the most famous of all the prog rock bands, up there with Pink Floyd and Genesis, I'd guess. Yes was formed in 1968, but they didn't have much commercial success at first. Their first album, 1969's "Yes," didn't make the charts in the US or Britain. Their second one, "Time and a Word," only made it to 46 in the British charts and not at all in the US charts. None of their singles made the charts anywhere. 

During these years they were struggling, they played for the BBC a fair amount. But once they made it really big, after the "Fragile" album was released in late 1971, they dropped the BBC like a hot potato, and almost never played for the BBC again. So the first three BBC albums I'll be posting all focus on those early years. (They played one concert for the BBC in the late 1970s, so I'll be posting that one too.)

All the songs here are from 1969. All but the last three are from proper BBC studio sessions. Of the last three, two were played for the "Beat Club" TV show in Germany, and one was done for a French TV show. All but one of these songs were included on an official BBC compilation album called "Something's Coming, The BBC Recordings 1969-1970." Note that means that even two of those non-BBC TV show appearances were included. The only unreleased song is "Survival" from the "Beat Club."

While putting this collection together, I read a bunch of reviews of the official BBC album, and I saw lots of complaints about the sound quality. Multiple people said it didn't sound as good as other BBC albums by other artists from the time period. I had to agree the sound was often just okay, not great. Normally, there isn't much I can do about that - the saying about polishing a turd comes to mind. 

But in this case, there is something I could do that I think helped a lot. I noticed that probably the main problem with most of the songs on this album was that lead singer Jon Anderson's vocals were too low in the mix, for whatever reason. So I used the audio editing program X-Minus to boost them relative to the instruments. I did that for all the songs here, except for one from the Beat Club that didn't need it. So for once, the "Edit" mentions in the titles refer to that edit instead of the usual BBC DJ banter problem. (There were no cases of that here.) 

I think this simple lead vocals fix helped a lot. A couple of songs, like the last one, still sound a bit rough, but overall it's much more listenable.

Most of the songs here are originals from the band's first two albums. But "Something's Coming" was originally from the "West Side Story" musical and only appeared as a B-side. "Everydays" was first done by Buffalo Springfield, "Every Little Thing" by the Beatles, and "No Opportunity Necessary, No Experience Needed" by Richie Havens.

This album is 49 minutes long.

01 Something’s Coming [Edit] (Yes)
02 Everydays [Edit] (Yes)
03 Sweetness [Edit] (Yes)
04 Dear Father [Edit] (Yes)
05 Every Little Thing [Edit] (Yes)
06 Looking Around [Edit] (Yes)
07 Beyond and Before [Edit] (Yes)
08 Survival (Yes)
09 No Opportunity Necessary, No Experience Needed [Edit] (Yes)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15190983/Yess_1969_BBSessionsVolum1_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is from a promo photo session in 1969.

Sandy Denny & Fotheringay - Kralingen Pop Festival, Rotterdam, Netherlands, 6-28-1970

Here's something I just discovered for the first time to other day, so it goes to the top of my list of albums to post. Technically, it's a concert by the band Fotheringay. But since more people know the band's main singer Sandy Denny, I'm billing it in the post title to "Sandy Denny and Fotheringay."

Sandy Denny is arguably the most famous, and the best, of all British folk singers in the modern era. She was a member of Fairport Convention in the late 1960s, then had a second stint in the 1970s. But she released more music as a solo artist, until her death in 1978 at only the age of 31. She was a part of the band Fotheringay for just the year of 1970, and just one studio album. 

I like Denny's music with Fotheringay over most of her solo work. The reason is, while her voice sounds great on any given song, the songs often are too similar to each other for my tastes. with a lot of midtempo ballads. But with Fotheringay, she shared lead vocal and songwriting duties with her husband Trevor Lucas, leading to more variety, and they did more uptempo material that she usually did on her own, leading to even more variety. The fact that they covered a Chuck Berry song in this concert, "Memphis, Tennessee," shows they weren't afraid to rock.

This entire concert has been officially released on the compilation album "Nothing More: The Collected Fotheringay." There's another officially released concert by the band, "Fotheringay Essen 1970," but the set list is almost the same, and this has better sound quality.

The sound is really good, and the performance is too, except for one problem. For some bizarre reason, the "Nothing More" album had the applause fade out after each song, then they put in a couple of seconds of silence before fading in the next song. Happily, this was something I was able to fix. There was enough dead time between songs for me to get rid of the fade-ins, fade-outs, and silences, and keep the applause going continuously between songs so it sounds more like the concert that it was. I also generally boosted the applause, since it was quite low.

One disappointment is that the concert is rather short, at just 43 minutes long. But it seems to have been the whole concert. I'm guessing Fortheringay was an opening act, so they didn't get to play for over an hour like headlining acts typically did (and still do).

The reason this concert came to my attention is because I was digging around for material to make BBC albums for Sandy Denny and/or Fotheringay. So that'll be coming before long as well.

01 The Way I Feel (Fotheringay)
02 The Sea (Fotheringay)
03 Too Much of Nothing (Fotheringay)
04 Nothing More (Fotheringay)
05 I’m Troubled (Fotheringay)
06 Two Weeks Last Summer (Fotheringay)
07 talk (Fotheringay)
08 The Ballad of Ned Kelly (Fotheringay)
09 The Banks of The Nile (Fotheringay)
10 talk (Fotheringay)
11 Memphis, Tennessee (Fotheringay)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/552uMFW9

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/cf6iKD1WhU2Uznw/file

There are a good number of color photos of Sandy Denny, but far fewer of her as part of the Fotheringay band. To make the cover, I ultimately chose to take a couple of screenshots of the band during an appearance on the German TV show "Beat Club." I couldn't find a single screenshot that clearly showed the faces of both Sandy Denny and Trevor Lucas. So I combined two screenshots in Photoshop. There's another band member directly behind Denny, but you can't see much of him other than the neck of his guitar.

In February 2025, I improved the cover with the help of the Krea AI program.

Pentangle - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: 1969

Here's the third of six albums of Pentangle playing for the BBC. Like the first two, this consists entirely of studio tracks.

Like the other albums in this series, this comes from a mix of the two official BBC albums for the band, "On Air" and "The Lost Broadcasts," and unreleased songs. Tracks 1, 2, 5, and 6 are the unreleased ones. But I doubt you'll notice a difference in sound quality between them and the rest.

The band had a fluke hit, "Light Flight," probably due to it being used as the theme to a TV show. It's a great, catchy song, and the BBC studio version can be found here. The song "Name of the Game" is also here. I added this exact version to my Pentangle stray tracks album, because it's a very rare case of an original (as opposed to a cover) that they didn't put on any of their studio albums.

The album suffers from the problem of BBC DJs talking over the music, but in this case it only happened to four songs (the ones with "[Edit]" in their names). As I do, I wiped out the talking but kept the music, thanks to the X-Minus audio editing program.

This album is 42 minutes long.

01 Cold Mountain [Edit] (Pentangle)
02 I Am Lonely [Edit] (Pentangle)
03 The Cuckoo (Pentangle)
04 Light Flight (Pentangle)
05 Moondog [Edit] (Pentangle)
06 House Carpenter [Edit] (Pentangle)
07 Name of the Game (Pentangle)
08 Train Song (Pentangle)
09 Springtime Promises (Pentangle)
10 Country Blues (Pentangle)
11 The Trees They Do Grow High [Young but Growing] (Pentangle)
12 Lyke Wake Dirge (Pentangle)
13 Reynardine (Pentangle)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15267340/Pentgl_1969_BBSessionsVolume3_atse.zip.html

The cover art comes from a 1969 publicity photo shoot.

Jimmy Webb - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: In Concert, London, Britain, 12-11-1971

Today, I was searching the Internet for a 1971 James Taylor BBC concert. While doing that, I stumbled across a mention of a 1971 BBC concert by singer-songwriter Jimmy Webb. That sounded interesting, so I went looking for more, but found almost no mentions of it whatsoever. I couldn't even find a list of the songs played at this concert. But I did find one person on YouTube who had videos of most of the songs from the concert. So I put this together from those videos. Then, to make a long story short, I posted the album that way, but within hours a kind commenter named "cgm" came forward with the full version, in the correct running order. So I used that.

Before I say more about this concert, here's some info on Jimmy Webb. In the late 1960s, he became famous due to his songs being hits for others, including "Up, Up and Away" by the 5th Dimension, "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," "Wichita Lineman," and "Galveston" all by Glen Campbell, "MacArthur Park" by Richard Harris, "Worst That Could Happen" by the Brooklyn Bridge, and "All I Know" by Art Garfunkel.

He's put out over 15 albums since the 1960s until today, yet they've sold very poorly compared to when others have sung his songs. Some blame his voice, but I think he has a fine voice. (It certainly is a better voice than that of Richard Harris, an actor who could barely sing yet had a number one hit with Webb's "MacArthur Park" in 1968.) I suspect it's more that he wasn't particularly interested in success as a solo artist. His studio albums have often been experimental, with a wide range of styles and production techniques, while he often didn't record his own versions of the hit songs he wrote until years after the hit, if at all. He also rarely played concerts or did any promotional work. I'm guessing he felt he didn't have to do all that drudge work, since he made millions from his songwriting.

Given all that, this concert is a real find, with very good sound quality. There are barely any Jimmy Webb bootlegs, and only two official live albums. One is from 2007, and the other is from 1972 ("Live at the Royal Albert Hall"), but is only available as part of a box set. Furthermore, that 1972 concert was done with a full band and orchestra, whereas this recording is just Webb's voice and his piano. In 1996, Webb released the album "Ten Easy Pieces," in which he (finally!) played his most famous songs, and with just his voice and piano. It's probably his most successful and acclaimed album. This is very much like that, except from 1971 when he was still writing his most famous songs, instead of decades later.

You're probably familiar with many of Webb's songs done by others. But odds are you've never delved into his versions of his own songs, since not many have. If that's the case, you should check this out. His voice isn't great, but it's better than many singer-songwriters who made it big on their own. And frankly, I'm not a fan of that 1972 live album and his other albums because I'm not interested in the orchestration. But he's a very good piano player, and the stripped down format allows the songs to shine.

The eighth song here has apparently never been officially released by Webb. At least I couldn't find any mention of it. I made a logical guess at the song title, coming up with "Hollywood Cross," but I have no idea if that's correct.

Although the official 1972 live album mostly uses a full band and orchestra, I noticed the version of "Galveston" on it features just his voice and guitar. Since that's an all-time classic, I decided to throw that on as a quasi bonus track. True, it's voice and guitar instead of voice and piano, but at least it's solo acoustic.

But wait, there's more! ;) While I was looking around for other Webb videos from that time period, I found a YouTube video of Webb playing the song "One of the Nicer Things" in 1968 for the TV show "Playboy After Dark." It's the only other live recording of any type I can find from the time period, and it was done with just his voice and piano, so I added that in as another quasi bonus track.

The BBC concert is 45 minutes long. But this album is 52 minutes total, adding in the two extra songs at the end.

UPDATE: On February 26, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. The music is exactly the same, but I changed the album title after discovering another BBC concert he did. That meant changing the cover art and mp3 tags too.

01 All My Love's Laughter (Jimmy Webb)
02 By the Time I Get to Phoenix (Jimmy Webb)
03 P. F. Sloan (Jimmy Webb)
04 Wichita Lineman (Jimmy Webb)
05 When Can Brown Begin (Jimmy Webb)
06 Didn't We (Jimmy Webb)
07 Whistletown (Jimmy Webb)
08 Hollywood Cross (Jimmy Webb)
09 MacArthur Park (Jimmy Webb)
10 Pocketful of Keys (Jimmy Webb)
11 Galveston (Jimmy Webb)
12 One of the Nicer Things (Jimmy Webb)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/uqCPBiJV

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/bjdh8bKBKZW4hD2/file

The cover photo is a screenshot I took from the exact concert in question. In February 2025, I upgraded the image thanks to the Krea AI program.

Beverley Knight - Soul Covers, Volume 4 (2014-2021)

This is the fourth and last of my compilations of Beverley Knight singing covers of classic soul songs. If you missed the previous three volumes, this is your last chance. She has a "diva" voice that can hit any note and she knows how to use it (and not overuse it), and she has great taste in which songs to cover. So what's not to like?

I call these "Soul Covers" because she always sings with lots of soul. But some of the songs she does fall out of the soul/R&B genre. For this volume, she ranges from the classic 1930s torch song "Stormy Weather" to Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" to "Touch Me," a huge house music hit in the early 2000s.

All but one song here is unreleased. That one, "Baby I'm a Star," comes from a relatively obscure various artists compilation of Prince songs done in reggae style called "Purple Reggae." As for the rest, the sound quality varies. Most sound great, but a few come from audience bootlegs. For instance, she did a tour in 2018 in which she played mostly Stevie Wonder covers. I would have loved to include more, but I could only find two that sounded good enough for my standards, and those just barely made it. 

Another one, You Are the Sunshine of My Life," was a contender, but I ultimately dropped that to bonus track status to keep my standards high.

Let's hope that Knight keeps going strong with her career so that someday I'll be able to post a "Volume 5." But for now, this is it.

Here's a list of the original artists for each song:

01 Baby I'm a Star -  Prince
02 I Will Always Love You - Dolly Parton / Whitney Houston
03 Stormy Weather - Ethel Waters
04 Master Blaster - Stevie Wonder
05 Ribbon in the Sky - Stevie Wonder
06 Touch Me - Rui da Silva with Cassandra Fox
07 [I Can't Get No] Satisfaction - Rolling Stones
08 Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) - Darlene Love
09 Memory - Elaine Page
10 I Wanna Be Your Lover - Prince
11 Stand by Me - Ben E. King
12 Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd
13 Don't Leave Me This Way - Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes / Thelma Houston
You Are the Sunshine of My Life - Stevie Wonder

And here's the usual song list:

01 Baby I'm a Star (Radio Riddler with Beverley Knight)
02 I Will Always Love You (Beverley Knight)
03 Stormy Weather (Beverley Knight)
04 Master Blaster (Beverley Knight)
05 Ribbon in the Sky (Beverley Knight)
06 Touch Me (Beverley Knight)
07 [I Can't Get No] Satisfaction (Beverley Knight)
08 Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) (Beverley Knight)
09 Memory (Beverley Knight)
10 I Wanna Be Your Lover (Beverley Knight)
11 Stand by Me (Beverley Knight)
12 Wish You Were Here (Beverley Knight)
13 Don't Leave Me This Way (Sophie Ellis-Bextor & Beverley Knight)

You Are the Sunshine of My Life (Beverley Knight)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15423680/BeverlyKn_2014-2021_SoulCovrsVolume4_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from 2016 concert in London.

The Seekers - BBC Sessions (1965-1967)

The Seekers are an unlikely musical act to have a BBC sessions album, because they're an Australian band and the vast majority of artists with enough BBC material are British. But, like the Easybeats, they spent a lot of time in Britain in the hopes of "making it" outside their home country. They were even more successful than the Easybeats, selling over 50 million records worldwide!

The Seekers (who are still going as I write this in 2022) were unlikely to make it big in the mid-1960s, because they pretty much ignored the folk rock boom happening then and stayed hard-core folkies, though with a pop sense. The key to their success was their songwriting. Four of their original songs sold over a million copies worldwide, which was hard to do at the time even for one song. This has a mix of those catchy originals like "Georgie Girl" and traditional folk songs like "This Land Is Your Land" and "We Shall Not Be Moved."

As far as I can tell, four BBC studio sessions by the group survived, and are included here. None of that has been officially released, and I had to dig pretty deep to find them. A couple of songs were played in more than on session, but I've only included one version of each.

All the BBC songs combined make for only 24 minutes of music. That's rather short, plus a couple of key songs were missing, so I've added four more songs from other TV shows at the time. Two of them, "Red Rubber Ball" and "When the Stars Begin to Fall," are the only officially released songs here, coming from a rarities album called "Hidden Treasures, Volume 2."

Note that band member Bruce Woodley co-wrote three songs with Paul Simon, including "Cloudy," "Red Rubber Ball," and "I Wish You Could Be Here." A version of "Red Rubber Ball" is here, along with "Someday, One Day," a Simon song that he wrote for the Seekers and never recorded himself.

All the songs here sound very good. Despite the obscurity of these versions, they're on BBC transcription reels, which almost always have excellent sound quality. Many of the BBC sessions songs suffered from the usual problem of BBC DJs (and, as usual, specifically Brian Matthew) talking over some of the music. For all the songs with "[Edit]" in their names, I did the usual thing of applying the X-Minus audio editing program to wipe the talking while keeping the music.

The Seekers broke up in early 1968, so there's nothing here after 1967.

This album is 34 minutes long. If you ask me, I think this makes for a great "best of" collection. They brought their best songs to the BBC, and played them well, without strings and other unnecessary production touches sometimes heard on their albums.

01 A World of Our Own [Edit] (Seekers)
02 You Can Tell the World [Edit] (Seekers)
03 I'll Never Find Another You (Seekers)
04 Morningtown Ride [Edit] (Seekers)
05 This Land Is Your Land [Edit] (Seekers)
06 The Carnival Is Over (Seekers)
07 What Have They Done to the Rain [Edit] (Seekers)
08 We Shall Not Be Moved (Seekers)
09 Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen (Seekers)
10 Someday, One Day (Seekers)
11 Red Rubber Ball (Seekers)
12 When the Stars Begin to Fall (Seekers)
13 Georgie Girl [Edit] (Seekers)
14 Come the Day [Edit] (Seekers)
15 Mable Leaf Rag (Seekers)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15271427/TSeekrs_1965-1967_BBSessions_atse.zip.html

The cover photo dates to February 1965.

Plastic Penny - BBC Sessions (1968-1969)

Here's another BBC sessions album by a late 1960s British band that you've probably never heard of, Plastic Penny.

This band has a strange story, because they started out a fake band but quickly turned into a real one that was very different from the fake origins. The story began when record producer Larry Page heard a B-side by the US band the Box Tops called "Everything I Am." He thought it should have been the A-side and a big hit, so he set about making that happen. He knew of a little-known singer named Brian Keith who he thought had the ideal voice for that type of song. Using Keith and some session musicians, the song was recorded and release in late 1967, and reached number six on the British charts.

That was such a success that an actual band was needed to capitalize on it. Keith had been singing with a band called "The Universals," and they became the core of this new band. But since the hit single had been released by the "Plastic Penny," they had to change their name to fit.

However, it turned out the rest of the band was much more than just backing musicians to support Keith. When the band released an album in early 1968 called "Two Sides of a Penny," Keith sang about half of the songs, but other band members sang the rest, and they wrote most of the material. Then, shortly after that album was released, Keith left the group to go solo. It turned out he was more of a cabaret singer and the rest of the band wanted to rock and roll.

Even though the original reason the band existed and was successful was Keith's voice, the band was actually better off without him. They did a second album in 1969 called "Currency." This is generally regarded as the stronger album today, with strong original material and more of a unified sound than the first album, which was split between Keith's musical vision and that of the rest of the band.

Unfortunately, the band didn't have much commercial success after their initial hit, so they broke up in 1969 not long after their second came out, due to dwindling future prospects. 

The band's recorded legacy is pretty small, just the two albums... plus some BBC recordings they did. Luckily, most of their BBC sessions were saved for posterity, and were included on an archival compilation called "Everything I Am: The Complete Plastic Penny." All the songs here are from that source. I looked for other TV show, radio, or concert recordings, but couldn't find anything.

If you're into late 1960s British classic rock and haven't heard of this band, this is worth checking out. I believe the first seven songs are with Keith, and the remaining six are without him. Most of the songs are originals, or at least originally done by this band, but "Killing Floor" and "Strawberry Fields Forever" are two well-known covers.

It's too bad there isn't more from the 1969 era of the band, because they were getting better and better when they broke up. If you like this, I also recommend their album "Currency," which is solid.

This album is rather short, just 34 minutes long.

01 Turning Night into Day (Plastic Penny)
02 Everything I Am (Plastic Penny)
03 Take Me Back (Plastic Penny)
04 No Pleasure Without Pain My Love (Plastic Penny)
05 It's a Good Thing (Plastic Penny)
06 Nobody Knows It (Plastic Penny)
07 So Much Older Now (Plastic Penny)
08 Your Way to Tell Me Go (Plastic Penny)
09 The Shelter of Your Arms (Plastic Penny)
10 Give Me Money (Plastic Penny)
11 Killing Floor (Plastic Penny)
12 Strawberry Fields Forever (Plastic Penny)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15267496/PlasticP_1968-1969_BBSessions_atse.zip.html

This band is so obscure that it's hard to find any color photos of them. I did find one, so I've used it for the cover.  I made a couple adjustments in Photoshop, lowering a couple of the band members relative to the others, so there would be room for the band name at the top.