Buying the albums sampled on “You Can All Join In”.
I shall be returning to the bonus tracks on CD Two next time, but now we look at those on CD One.
The late BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel had, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, two weekend shows. On Sunday afternoon there was an hour long program called, imaginatively enough, “The Sunday Program”. This comprised two 30 minute live performances. However, on Saturday afternoon there was a two hour show called “Top Gear”, which featured records and pre-recorded “sessions”. CD One has songs from two such sessions, one recorded for Top Gear broadcast on 23 July 1968 and the other for one broadcast on 5 November 1968.
The July songs are “So Much Trouble”, “My Sunday Feeling”, “Serenade to A Cuckoo”, “Cat’s Squirrel” and “A Song For Jeffrey”. The November ones are “Love Story”, “Stormy Monday”, “Beggar’s Farm” and “Dharma For One”. The tracks from the album and the single track “Love Story” are all more or less faithful reproductions of the studio versions. “Stormy Monday” is a blues standard which the band makes uniquely its own, and delivers perfectly. “So Much Trouble” is a fantastic little meaty, beaty, driving country blues thing which should have been on the LP had there been room for it.
Next time we finish with this album by completing our study of those fascinating bonus tracks on CD Two.
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