The Blueprint For Something Truly Astounding
"If you’re not familiar with these events, they actually started as far back as 1976 which honestly, was a surprise to me when I discovered it."
October 14th, Sunday. Where did the week go? Well since it’s been pouring rain lately let’s move to a U.K. themed listening session just to make it all feel natural. Welcome to an extremely British “Live Vinyl Lovefest”. This morning I’m going to go back and grab a listen to some live recordings from “The Secret Policeman’s Ball”. If you’re not familiar with these events, they actually started as far back as 1976 which honestly, was a surprise to me when I discovered it. They were originated to raise funds for the human rights organization Amnesty International. There were essentially four “eras” of these shows all in the UK up until 2012 when the show made it’s first appearance in the United States. Originally these shows were primarily comedy events staged in the UK, but they began to add more and more musical talent as the show evolved. Clearly this was a time when artists were not chastised for speaking out or taking a stand politically which makes for some great and inspiring performances.
There have been recordings of all of these shows through the decades and many have been released on vinyl and even on film. I’ve slowly been collecting them over that time and it’s been amazing to see how they've increased in value, especially the vinyl versions. I’ve seen pristine unsealed copies of specific shows approaching $350.00
This release was the first performance I ever purchased and it has some stand-out performances on it by Pete Townsend; in particular a solo acoustic version of “Drowned” from Quadraphenia and a fantastic rendition of “Won’t Get Fooled Again” with John Williams. Amazing how that song just seems to gain more and more relevance with each passing decade — and no, I don’t mean as the theme song for a forensics drama series. (that really bummed me out by the way)
I would actually submit to you that these types of solo “acoustic” performances actually planted the seeds and laid the ground work for the MTV Unplugged era. Argue it if you see fit, but these acoustic performances in the early years of The Secret Policeman’s Ball were ground breaking and iconic.
Also a shout out to the audio production team for their work on these performances. Fantastic crowd recordings on these albums. Clearly British audiences if you actually care to recognize that sort of thing.
This release was recorded with Island Mobile and engineered by Howard Kilgour and then mixed at Berwick Street Recording by John Middleton. Love it.