Curved Air,
Aeolian Hall Studio 2,
Bond Street,
London,
27 January 1971

Another interesting missing piece from Curved Air's BBC sessions. This was aired on "Folk On 1" on 20 February 1971, hosted by Frances Line. The complete tracklist of the session was "Thinking On The Floor", "Situations", "Blind Man", "Melinda", "Stretch", "It Happened Today", "Young Mother In Style". I have received a transfer of some of this broadcast generously shared from Colin H., from a reel he inherited. The reel included "Thinking on the Floor", "Situations", "Melinda" and "It Happened Today". The first two songs matched with the versions released on "Live at the BBC" (later re-released as "Airwaves"), so they have been excluded from here.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, the research made by whoever compiled the Curved Air BBC sets is spotty to say the least, and "Situations" is listed as coming from a session recorded a few days earlier (05 January 1971, broadcast 18 January on Bob Harris' show) which had almost the same setlist ("Thinking on the Floor", "Situations", "Stretch", "Young Mother in Style"). However, whoever wrote the liner notes may have a point this time (although, as usual, they listed every single session as coming from John Peel's Top Gear): the songs as officially released come from the Pick of the Pops #325 transcription disc, where they are listed as coming from the Bob Harris session, and it was produced 27 January 1971: the same day this session was released. Therefore, I now suspect that the "Folk On 1" session was actually a repeat of the Bob Harris session, with some newly recorded extra tracks.

"Melinda" is an interesting early version of the song Curved Air would record later on "Phantasmagoria", here presented in a sparser arrangement featuring only Sonja Kristina on acoustic guitar and vocals. The other track is a short but rousing version of their stage classic "It Happened Today", driven by Ian Eyre's thumping bass. "Blind Man" was absent from Colin's reel and it would have been interesting to hear had it been included, because the version released on "Live at the BBC" is actually an edited version from the John Peel Sunday Show one (recorded 04 March 1971 and broadcast ten days later, officially released on the deluxe edition of "Second Album").

The sound quality of this recording is pretty good: not exactly hi-fi but perfectly listenable and a nice companion to the official releases. All I did was speed correcting it, slightly changing the eq and removing some clicks and thumps. If the file size looks too small, it's because these are mono files.

01 Melinda (More or Less) [02:28]
02 It Happened Today [03:07]
- Total time: 05:36

Sonja Kristina: lead vocals, acoustic guitar
Darryl Way: violin, bg. vocals
Francis Monkman: guitar, keyboards
Ian Eyre: bass
Florian Pilkington-Miksa: drums

Original broadcasts recorded by: unknown
Reels acquired and transferred by: Colin H. (thanks!!)
Edited, speed corrected and eq-ed by: JacoZappa

Lineage: reel to reels of original broadcasts -> wav -> SF10 (speed corrected, edited, eq) -> flac

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