BBC Sessions

If you've been inclined to dismiss the Tremeloes as a late-'60s British pop group with one or two memorable hits who offered little else of note, this surprisingly extensive two-CD set of 1967-1969 BBC recordings won't change your mind. If you belong to that relatively small audience (particularly in the U.S., where only a couple of these songs will be familiar) who feel the Tremeloes were a fine and critically underrated late-'60s British pop group, you'll probably appreciate the versatility on show here. In common with many BBC collections, however, this doesn't so much shed some different light on a band's work as flesh out the archives for the sake of completeness, as the Tremeloes don't sound too different here than they did on their records from the period. For those dedicated enough to collect their late-'60s work, though, this does offer a number of items of interest. First there are, as you'd expect, BBC versions of all ten of their British chart singles, though only a few of these songs -- "Here Comes My Baby" (in a version noticeably less dynamic than the one on the 45), their cover of the Four Seasons' "Silence Is Golden," and perhaps "Even the Bad Times Are Good" -- will be recognized by American ears. More interesting to aficionados will be the presence of a bunch of songs that didn't make it onto their regular releases, all of them covers: the Drifters' "I'll Take You Where the Music's Playing," Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell's "It Takes Two," the Left Banke's "Walk Away Renee," Brenton Wood's "Gimme Little Sign," Elvis Presley-by-way-of-Arthur Crudup's "My Baby Left Me," P.P. Arnold's "(If You Think You're) Groovy," and Otis Redding's "Can't Turn You Loose." Further trainspotting oddities might include an arrangement of the "My Little Lady" single minus the brass, and a 1969 cover of Paul Simon's "Blessed," performed three years subsequent to the Tremeloes' initial release of it on a flop 1966 single. Few of the covers on this anthology, however, bring anything of interest to the interpretations -- the raucous version of the Easybeats' "Good Times" might be the best of these -- and you sometimes feel as if you're listening to a very competent, middle-of-the-road-leaning cover band of the time rolling out the chart hits at a club, interrupted by actual Tremeloes hits. The sound and packaging are excellent, however, and 15 brief interview segments with bandmembers from the original programs are interspersed throughout the set. ~ Richie Unterberger|