Saturday, June 17, 2017

Various Artists - BBC Live in Concert 1967-69 (Bootleg)

(Various Artists 1967-1969)
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During the late 60's, the BBC started to devote some of their prime time T.V to cash in on the quickly growing pop culture that was taking place in England and the US at the time.  This resulted in some wonderful audio and video archives of popular music artists at that time, recorded during the many Pop TV Shows that started to appear on the BBC. This bootleg is a sample of some of these recordings plus several one off documentary/ films, and features some classic names like Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, The Who and Cream. The quality of the recordings is pretty damn good considering most were made 50 years ago.
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All Of My Loving (A Film Of Pop Music 1968)
U.K. TV documentary. Oct-1-68. Excellent quality. 16:9 widescreen. A very interesting documentary about how pop music has changed the world and how the world has changed pop music. Drugs, the Beatles, sex, fashion, the media, love, war and financial profit are all examined. Fantastic vintage footage assembled in a collage form creates a TV program as "mod" and "pop" as the music it describes.

Cool footage includes: the Beatles in the studio, 60s London, Liverpool, psychedelic imagery, Cream, Hendrix, the Who, Pink Floyd and more. Terrific footage of the Who performing in Peoria, Illinois and smashing their equipment to bits! Interviews of Paul McCartney (in his "Yellow Submarine-look" period) discussing the meaning of Beatle lyrics and Ringo Starr talking about studio tricks.
[extract from beatlevid.blogspot.com]

The featured BBC recording of Pink Floyd, performing "Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun" in 1968, was filmed on the balcony of The Tabernacle, a community hall close to All Saints Church Hall, in Notting Hill, London, is part of a program called "All My Loving".

Other artists included are The Beatles, Frank Zappa, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, and many others, across a 55 minute film by Tony Palmer. First broadcast in November 1968 in black and white, the following year saw a colour broadcast, and one destined to put strain on the red guns of television tubes!

Anyone who is familiar with the three minute performance, knows that, with the exception of the very beginning, the recording was electronically treated to bathe the band in vivid red. A very interesting and effective trick, it complements the short but sweet performance well. [extract from brain-damage.co.uk]

Pop Goes The Sixties
Pop Go The 60s! was a one-off, 75-minute TV special originally broadcast in colour on 31 December 1969, to celebrate the major pop hits of the 1960s. The show was a co-production between the United

Kingdom's BBC and West Germany's ZDF broadcasters. It was shown on both stations on the same day, with other European stations broadcasting the programme either the same day or later. Although a co-production, it was primarily produced by the BBC and recorded at the BBC's Television Centre in London, in late 1969, featuring largely only British pop acts and hits.


The show (which went out at 10:35pm) was presented by Jimmy Saville and Elfi Von Kalckreuth. The two presenters introduced each act  but neither was present in the studio recording with the artists, their links being added later. Saville spoke English, whereas Elfi Von Kalckreuth speaks in German throughout.
The Rolling Stones song "Gimme Shelter" was the only track included in the show that had not been a hit single but instead an extremely popular album track.

Fleetwood Mac on Monster Music Mash
Monster Music Mash
BBC1 Monster Music Mash (1969) was a dedicated music series. "Pop. Blues, Folk and Whoopee!" - was introduced in front of a young-adult audience by ex-Animal Alan Price, supported by comedy jazz from Bob Kerr's Whoopee Band. Refreshingly, the weekly guests had the freedom to perform a few numbers and not just their latest hit. First up were Fleetwood Mac, playing "Oh Well", followed by, among others, Pentangle and the Moody Blues. There was also an early sighting of Slade playing their latest single "Martha My Dear". It was serious stuff to follow Wacky Races during children's hour but regrettably just one short series was produced. [extract from Rock & Pop On British TV by Jeff Evans]

Happening for Lulu Show
One common feature of all BBC shows was their strict rules on what artists could or could not do when performing live on BBC TV. Artists were told exactly what to play and for how long so improvisations were unheard of, well, that's until the Jimi Hendrix Experience were asked to perform on Lulu's popular evening show.
After a blistering performance of Voodoo Chile, on the Happening for Lulu show in January 1969, The Jimi Hendrix Experience stop midway through a half-hearted attempt at their first hit "Hey Joe". The trio break into Cream's "Sunshine of Your Love", in tribute to the recently disbanded group, until producers bring the song to a premature end.

According to the memoir of bassist Noel Redding, Lulu had been due to join Hendrix on stage to sing the final lines of Hey Joe, but the band wasn't too keen on the idea. The stunt (according to rock and roll legend) earned The Jimi Hendrix Experience a ban from performing on BBC television. Hendrix died the following year on 18th September 1970. [extract from www.bbc.co.uk]

Top Of The Pops
Top of the Pops, also known as TOTP, is a British music chart television program, made by the BBC and originally broadcast weekly between 1 January 1964 and 30 July 2006. It was traditionally shown every Thursday evening on BBC1, except for a short period on Fridays in mid-1973 before being again moved to Fridays in 1996, and then to Sundays on BBC Two in 2005.

Each weekly program consisted of performances from some of that week's best-selling popular music artists, with a rundown of that week's singles chart. Additionally, there was a special edition of the program on Christmas Day (and usually, until 1984, a second such edition a few days after Christmas), featuring some of the best-selling singles of the year. With its high viewing figures the show became a significant part of British popular culture.

The Cilla Show
Cilla was a BBC TV program hosted by British singer Cilla Black. It ran for eight series from 30 January 1968 to 17 April 1976.  The first series of the show started broadcasting on Tuesday, 30 January 1968, on the first show of which Black's guest was Tom Jones and the two music stars sang a duet together.
The UK's Eurovision Song Contest entry selection process was part of the Cilla show in both 1968 and 1973, when Black's close friend Cliff Richard was the featured artist performing all the songs shortlisted in the A Song For Europe segment

Cilla Black
Omnibus
Omnibus was an arts-based British documentary series, broadcast mainly on BBC1 in the United Kingdom. The program was the successor to the long-running arts-based series Monitor. It ran from 1967 until 2003, usually being transmitted on Sunday evenings.

Omnibus - Cream, Albert Hall on November 26,1961, Some 5,000 fans packed out each show, and Clapton expressed surprise when they received a warm and emotional ovation; "We hadn't played in England for over a year and had no idea we were so popular, I was amazed we played to such full houses. I didn't think anybody would remember us."
He was almost tempted to carry on with Cream when he realized the strength of feeling among their supporters. But the die was cast: He had to stand by his decision, Cream's farewell at the Royal Albert Hall was filmed for BBC TV by director Tony Palmer, who had first met Clapton and Cream on the recommendation of Jimmy Page. His documentary on the group was screened as part of the BBC Omnibus arts show on January 5,1969, The footage was later re-edited as a full-length film, An earlier Palmer documentary, 'All My Loving', had helped introduce the serious side of rock to a wider audience and paved the way for Cream to be so heavily featured on TV.  Palmer was music critic for the Observer Sunday newspaper and recalls that John Lennon had encouraged him to make All My Loving, "That film was essentially John Lennon's idea, I'd first met him while I was at University and met him again when I begin working at the BBC. He told me the problem with rock music on BBC TV was it was restricted to shows like Top of the Popa and Jukebox Jury.

"These were highly successful pop shows but only reflected what was in the Top Twenty and not the more serious side. John said it was terrible because he knew a lot of musicians who wouldn't appear on either of those programs because they didn't want to play three-minute pop songs behind gyrating nubile dancers. Much as we liked gyrating nubiles, this was understandable. Lennon said. It's your duty to get these people onto television. [taken from Clapton - Updated Edition: The Ultimate Illustrated History By Chris Welch]

The Moody Blues (Color Me Pop)
Color Me Pop
Colour Me Pop was a British music TV program broadcast on BBC2 from 1968–1969. It was a spin-off from the BBC 2 arts magazine show Late Night Line-Up. Designed to celebrate the new introduction of colour to British television, it was directed by Steve Turner, and showcased half-hour sets by pop and rock groups of the period. The program was a pioneering precursor to the better remembered BBC music program The Old Grey Whistle Test (1971–87). Unlike its successor, most of the editions of Colour Me Pop are lost.

Currently only the editions featuring The Small Faces, The Moody Blues, and The Move are held in the BBC archive, as well as the episode featuring The Chambers Brothers that was never broadcast. In addition, three songs from the Bonzo Dog Band edition survive. Most of the Small Faces edition was commercially released as part of the 'All Of Nothing 1965-1968 DVD' in 2009. The Moody Blues edition was released as part of their 'Timeless Flight' box set in 2013.

The Look Of The Week
Hans Keller was the resident music critic on 'The Look Of The Week', which was to all intents and purposes a spin-off from BBC2's proto-Parsons nightly critical chinwag Late Night Line-Up, aimed at bringing 'the arts' to an audience that might not normally have noticed them tucked away there. As such, Keller usually got to verbally joust with classical musicians, theatre impresarios and heavyweight jazzers, with The Look Of The Week's interactions with the pop scene - barely regarded even as a part of the 'arts' at that point - rarely venturing beyond the odd bit of opinionating from rent-a-viewpoint Russell Brand of his day Mick Jagger.
In an interview with a very early Pink Floyd, while holding a cigarette aloft, Keller presages their appearance on the show by saying:

“The Pink Floyd – you’re going to hear them in a minute and I do not want to prejudice you. Hear them and see them first and we’ll talk about them afterwards but four quick points I want to make before you hear them. The first is that what you heard at the beginning, that short bit, those few seconds, are really all I can hear in them, which is to say to my mind, there is continuous repetition and proportionally they are a bit boring. My second point is that they are terribly loud. You couldn’t quite hear because, of course, it isn’t as loud from your sets as it is here in the studio or as it was at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on Friday" -  "I will ask them about that when we come to talk" he adds as if asking them if they'd mind stepping outside for a moment - "my third point is that perhaps I am a little bit too much of a musician to appreciate them. And the reason why that – why I say that – is that four, they have an audience, and people who have an audience ought to be heard. Perhaps it is my fault that I don’t appreciate them”.

And with a tilt of his head in the direction of the other end of the studio, it's over to some blobby amorphous light patterns and a spaceman voice intoning obscure intergalactic facts, and Pink Floyd delivering an astonishing performance of celestial travelogue "Astonomy Domine", then still some months from making its first public appearance on their debut album; to early fans of the band, this must have been one of the all time magic moments of the sixties. It's also the best surviving indication of what the original line-up sounded like live, the most accurate record of their famed but ephemeral light show (and yes, Barrett is playing his mirror-disc Telecaster, adding to the visual cacophony), and above all that it's simply a thrilling performance of a terrific song. And that's not all.

Syd Barrett
As they finish, Syd Barrett and Roger Waters politely set down their guitars and walk slowly over to some of those taller-sitting-down-than-standing-up stools as favoured by the likes of Bernard Levin, for a bit of a natter with Hans Keller. He opens by confronting the band members asking them why it all has to be so 'terribly loud', pointing out that he 'grew up with the string quartet' and as a consequence finds this kind of volume unbearable.

Waters and Barrett - both visibly cracking up - can only meekly offer that they like it that way, that they didn't grow up with the string quartet, and that it doesn't sound terribly loud to them, with Keller obliterating the latter two arguments but accepting that they see it as important to their art; often mistaken for a bit of stuffy pomposity, this is actually the prelude to a much longer interview. [extract from timworthington.blogspot.com.au]

Joe Cocker on How It Is
How It is
How It Is was a youth-orientated music and discussion program transmitted on BBC1 TV in 1968, on which John Peel was a co-host. The original series ran from July to December 1968; a short-lived follow-up, entitled How Late It Is to reflect its changed time slot, ran for ten episodes in spring and early summer of 1969. Both series were produced by Tony Palmer, who was also responsible for the 1968 TV films All My Loving and Cream Farewell Concert, which were shown in BBC1's arts series Omnibus, the former in particular provoking a controversy by linking the aggression of rock music to the violent political upheavals of the 1960s. Joe Cocker and his Greaseband performed on the How It Is in 1968, debuting his smash hit "With A Little Help From My Friends"

The Who
Twice A Fortnight
In 1967 a revolutionary comedy sketch show called Twice a Fortnight was broadcast on the BBC. It had sketches written and performed by (amongst other), pre-Monty Python Terry Jones and Michael Palin.  But it also featured performances from whoever was plugging their singles at the time. For example The Who, recorded for the pilot show 15th October 1967, a rather dizzy version of "I Can See For Miles".
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This post consists of MP3's (320kps) mostly ripped from YouTube Clips. Basic custom artwork only.
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Track listing
01. Pink Floyd - Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun - "All My Loving" (1968)
02. Donovan - The Lullaby Of Spring - "All My Loving" (1968)
03. The Rolling Stones - Gimme Shelter - "Pop Go The Sixties" (1969)
04. Fleetwood Mac - Oh Well - "Monster Music Mash" (1969)
05. Jimi Hendrix - Hey Joe/Sunshine Of Your Love - "Happening For Lulu" (1969)
06. Cream - Sunshine Of Your Love - "Omnibus" (1968)
07. Joni Mitchell - Big Yellow Taxi - "BBC In Concert" (Jan 1970)

08. Jimi Hendrix - Voodoo Chile - "Happening For Lulu" (1969)
09. The Equals - Baby Come Back - "Top Of The Pops" Show (1968)
10. The Hollies - I'm Sorry Suzanne - "Top Of The Pops" Show (1969)
11. Sandie Shaw - Long Live Love - "Top Of The Pops" Show (1965)
12. Lulu - Loves Loves To Love Love - "Top Of The Pops" Show (1967)
13. Tom Jones - Delilah - "Top Of The Pops" Show (1968)
14. Cliff Richard - Congratulations - "Cilla" Show (1968)
15. The Who - I Can See For Miles - "Twice A Fortnight" (1967)
16. Pink Floyd - Astronomy Domine - "The Look Of The Week" (1967)
17. Joe Cocker & The Grease Band - With A Little Help From My Friends - "How It Is" (1968)
18. Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band - Canyons Of Your Mind - "Color Me Pop" (1968)
19. The Mothers Of Invention - Oh, In The Sky - "Color Me Pop" (1968)
20. The Small Faces - Song Of A Baker - "Color Me Pop" (1968)
21. The Kinks - Days - "Pop Goes The Sixties" (1969)
22. The Moody Blues - Ride My See-Saw - "Color Me Pop" (1968)
23. Jimi Hendrix - Wild Thing - "All My Loving" (1968)

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BBC Recordings 1967-69 Link (209Mb)  New Link 02/09/2023

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