BBC Sessions

Pretty Things - BBC Sessions

BBC Sessions
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CD Details

Artist: Pretty Things
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Import, Live
CD Release Date: 2002-08-19
Music Label: Repertoire
Soundtracks:
  1. Big Boss Man
  2. Dont Bring Me Down
  3. Mma Keep Your Big Mouth Shut
  4. Roadrunner
  5. Big City
  6. Midnight To Six Man
  7. Sitting All Alone
  8. Midnight To Six Man
  9. Buzz The Jerk
  10. E S D
  11. Defecting Grey
  12. Turn My Head
  13. Walking Through My Dreams
  14. Balloon Burning
  15. S F Sorrow Is Born
  16. She Says Good Morning
  17. Send You With Loving
  18. Spring
  19. Sickle Clowns
  20. Shes A Lover
  21. Cries From The Midnight Circus
  22. Stone Hearted Mama
  23. Cold Stone
  24. Summer Time
  25. Rosalyn
  26. All Night Sailor
  27. Religions Dead
  28. Havana Bound
  29. Love Is Good
  30. Route 66
  31. Onion Soup / Another Bowl
  32. Route 66
  33. Peter / Rip Off Train
  34. Atlanta
  35. Bridge Of God
  36. Singapore Silk Torpedo
  37. Come Home Momma
  38. Dream / Joey
  39. Not Only But Also
  40. Big City
  41. Belfast Cowboys / Bruise In The Sky

Music reviews of BBC Sessions

Music Review: The Pretties' BBC Legacy
Rating: 4 Stars

The Pretty Things were no strangers to the various converted theatres, cinemas and hotels that made up the suite of studios in which the BBC recorded radio light entertainment shows, gardening forums, dance hall orchestras and rock bands.

In fact the earliest session here dates from October 1964, which coincides with the release of only their second single, Don't Bring Me Down. The five track session is included in full and includes Don't Bring Me Down, Big Boss Man (which had been the B-side of the first single) and R&B selections from their future first album, Pretty Things, including two by Bo Diddley, from whose song Pretty Thing the band took their name. On the two singles session drummers had been employed, so here is a chance to hear the tunes performed exclusively by the band.

It isn't clear how many sessions and concert appearances the band made between 1964 and 1976 when the band were mothballed for quite a while, but sixteen are drawn from on these two discs. In the sixties these were taken from Saturday Club and John Peel's Top Gear programme, but in the seventies they are drawn from various presenters' shows, including David Symonds, Alan Black, Mike Harding and John Peel. Broadcast dates are given, but further details such as recording dates, line-ups and studio locations are skimpy at best.

There are two recordings of their minor 1966 hit Midnight To Six Man, one for a TV show (in very poor sound), the other far better performance from Saturday Club, and, like the single, featuring the tinkling ivories of session pianist Nicky Hopkins. After this came a swift change of direction, when like a lot of bands, they temporarily ditched soul and R&B and fully embraced psychedelia. In the case of the Pretties this included sitar-soaked pieces such as Defecting Grey and Turn My Head (a song that never got a commercial release), and then the full blown and highly influential mini-opera S.F. Sorrow, from which all of their 1968 session for Top Gear was drawn.

The Pretty Things were in a constant state of flux with frequent changes in line-up and neither of the two songs included from their 1969 session made it onto a record either. By 1970 even founder-guitarist Dick Taylor had left the band leaving only original vocalist and songwriter Phil May from the line-up that had recorded Rosalyn, their first single from 1964, though Dick Taylor did make a guest appearance on their 1972 re-visit to the song for Top Gear. Nevertheless, the Parachute album material and the various tracks from singles that make up what they recorded for the BBC on the rest of the first disc show a lively, focused, inventive band very much on top of their live performances, with the new members clearly being allowed full creative input.

Disc One's final track and the first four songs on Disc Two all come from the same concert, recorded in stereo on 9 August 1973 at the Golders Green Hippodrome, for the In Concert programme, introduced by Pete Drummond. Indeed, at a approximately half-an-hour it probably represents the full segment of the Pretty Thing's part of the hour long show, and includes an uncredited performance of Onion Soup/Another Bowl. Most of this featured on their album Freeway Madness, though also included is their cover of Route 66, a song also covered by the Rolling Stones, a group with which the Pretties were often compared in the early days, especially since Dick Taylor had been a member of an early version of that band before they were signed. Onion Soup and Route 66 also featured on a studio session for Bob Harris's Sounds Of The Seventies recorded a fortnight later, and on which they previewed Atlanta, which was to figure on their album Silk Torpedo in 1975.

Two sessions for John Peel recorded at Maida Vale (and not for In Concert or in front of an audience as stated in the booklet notes) in December 1974 and July 1975 conclude the second disc. They mainly again draw from Silk Torpedo, though there are two surprises. The first is an unlikely version of Dudley Moore's instrumental theme tune for the series Not Only But Also, probably led by recent keyboard recruit Gordon Edwards, and the other is a stomping return to Big City, a song written by their manager Jimmy Duncan from their eponymous first album of a decade earlier, Pretty Things.

It is fascinating to retrace the rocky road travelled by the band over this eventful decade in these unique and valuable recordings. Some of them come from transcription discs made for World Service broadcasts, without which many of these and other priceless sessions by other bands and artists would not have survived at all. How much more of their BBC work has survived isn't known though there are hints in the booklet that there may be more to come on further releases, which I for one will be keen to explore.
More BBC Sessions free music reviews:
1

Description of BBC Sessions

German compilation featuring 41 tracks plus a 12-page full color booklet with liner notes & photos. Packaged in double gatefold digipak format. Repertoire. 2003.

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