Randy Newman - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: Old Grey Whistle Test, BBC Television Theatre, London, Britain, 6-6-1978 | Albums That Should Exist

 

Randy Newman - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: Old Grey Whistle Test, BBC Television Theatre, London, Britain, 6-6-1978

Paul says: Here's a short BBC concert by American singer-songwriter Randy Newman, from 1978. He performed this with a small band.

The Old Grey Whistle Test (OGWT) was a BBC TV show that ran from 1971 until 1987. It featured a lot of live music, especially rock and roll. Usually, each episode featured a couple of songs from several musical acts, but sometimes an entire episode would be devoted to a single act, like this concert I'm presenting here. I've previously posted some OGWT concerts here. I've just created a new label for OGWT, and I count 12 episode-length concerts, plus other songs from the show here and there. I've wanted to post more, but many of the ones I had been looking for I was unable to find.

However, a couple of days ago, I found a person on SoulseekQT who is sharing virtually all the available OGWT episodes from 1971 to 1980. (A small number appear to be lost, and even the official website for the show doesn't know the details for those.) I'm pretty happy about this. Expect me to celebrate by posting a bunch of OGWT-sourced albums in the coming days. The only snag is that these come as a single video file, so I have to concert them to audio and then cut them into mp3s, as I did with this one.

I'm starting posting these recently discovered OGWT concerts with this one, because it's one that I had been looking for for a long time. Randy Newman had been critically acclaimed since he released his first album in 1968. But his first wider commercial success happened in 1977, with the song "Short People." It went all the way to Number Two in the U.S. singles chart, held back from the top spot only by the mega-hit "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees. Curiously, the song didn't chart in Britain whatsoever. But it seems it still gave him enough fame to merit his first BBC concert. 

(And by the way, note that "Short People" was supposed to make fun of people making fun of short people, but a lot of people didn't understand his sarcasm. He has a lot of other sarcastic songs, such as "Political Science," performed here, which basically advocates global nuclear war.)

The music is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent.  

This album is 39 minutes long. 

01 intro by Bob Harris 
02 Birmingham 
03 talk 
04 Leave Your Hat On 
05 Texas Girl at the Funeral of Her Father 
06 talk
07 Short People 
08 Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear 
09 talk 
10 In Germany Before the War 
11 talk 
12 Political Science 
13 talk 
14 Rider in the Rain 
15 I Think It's Gonna Rain Today 
16 Rednecks 
17 Guilty 
18 Sail Away 
19 It's Lonely at the Top