Curved Air - Back Street Luv
Back Street Luv (1971)
Curved Air are a British progressive rock group formed in 1970 by musicians from mixed artistic backgrounds, including classic, folk, and electronic sound. The resulting sound of the band was a mixture of progressive rock, folk rock, and fusion with classical elements … (read more at Wikipedia)
Links To Peel[]
Peel became aware of Curved Air when they played at the Pop Proms at the Roadhouse on 21 April 1970. He found their performance to be one of the highlights of the evening and he invited them to do a session for his program. When the session aired, Peel's comments were very positive with him calling the band "tasty", "very, very good" and an "honourable group in every way" and stating on 25 July 1970 that he had been looking forward for a few weeks to rebroadcast it again. Similarly, when the band appeared on his 13 September 1970 Sunday Show he recalled how excited he was by their concert at the Pop Proms earlier that year.
Curved Air's session was also one of Maida Vale 4's earliest attempts to record one in stereo, with producer John Walters doing the usual mono recording in the studio and engineer Bob Conduct splitting the signal to another room where two other engineers (Bob Harrison and Pete Dauncey) simultaneously recorded it in stereo on a mobile desk. Problem arose when the band decided to do overdubs on one of the songs: the mono version could be bounced to another tape machine without problems but Dauncey and Harrison had to do it exactly in sync at the same time on the stereo desk while the band played their overdubs[1]. The session was eventually broadcast in mono.
As recounted by Sheila in Margrave Of The Marshes (page 297), Curved Air vocalist Sonja Kristina Linwood was among the "usual suspects" who took part in Peel's original Carol Concert, first broadcast on Top Gear on 26 December 1970, during which she sang lead vocals on "Silent Night" with the rest of the choir humming along.
Festive Fifty Entries[]
- None.
Sessions[]
One session only. No commercial release[2].
1. Recorded 1970-04-28. First broadcast: 09 May 1970. Repeated: 25 July 1970.
- Screw / Vivaldi / Hide And Seek
Live[]
- 13 September 1970: Setlist is unknown but it started with "Propositions"
- 14 March 1971: Recorded 1971-03-04, Paris Theatre - Officially released on the 2 CD edition of "Second Album " (Esoteric Recordings, 2018).
- Blind Man
- It Happened Today
- Propositions / What Happens When You Blow Yourself Up
- Thinking On The Floor
- Vivaldi
Other Shows Played[]
(The list below was compiled only from the database of this site and is likely to be incomplete. Please add more information if known.)
- 1970
- 24 October 1970: Vivaldi (LP - Airconditioning) Warner Bros WSX 3012
- 1971
- 18 September 1971: unknown
- 1972
- Radio Luxembourg Tracklistings 4: Not Quite The Same (LP - Phantasmagoria) Warner Bros.
- 04 April 1972: Ultra-Vivaldi (LP – Phantasmagoria) Warner Bros
- 05 May 1972: Not Quite The Same (LP - Phantasmagoria) Warner Brothers
- 30 May 1972: Melinda (More Or Less) (LP - Phantasmagoria) Warner Brothers
- 1973
- 26 April 1973: Armin (LP – Air Cut) Warner Bros
- 10 May 1973: UHF (LP – Air Cut) Warner Bros
See Also[]
External Links[]
- Footnotes
- ↑ Ken Garner - The Peel Sessions: A story of teenage dreams and one man's love of new music, p.71-72.
- ↑ A session with a different tracklist was released on "On Air" (Strange Fruit SFRSCD022, 1995) / "Live At The BBC" (Band Of Joy BOJCD 014, 1997) / "Air Waves" (Purple Pyramid CLP 9581, 2012) listed with this date but it was actually a later one recorded on 10 November 1970 and broadcast on Mike Harding's "Sounds of the Seventies" seven days later.