Recorded On 23rd March,1972 At The Paris Theatre, Lower Regent Street, London, England.
First Transmitted By The BBC On 1st April,1972
Tracks 1-4 From "Judee Sill"
Tracks 5 & 6 From "Heart Food"
Label Details:
BBC Transcription Service Stereophonic Recording
130571-S Expiry Date 31.8.76
Duration 27' 15"
Stereo Pop Special - 14 I
Pop Spectacular
Featuring Judee Sill
In Concert
Stereophonic Recording
Cn 1531/S
(G) Guitar
(P) Piano
Introductions transcribed by Bob Young:
Alan Black: “This is Alan Black in London welcoming you to another of the BBC’s In Concert programmes. It’s my pleasure tonight to introduce American guest – Judee Sill.
1. JESUS WAS A CROSSMAKER (guitar) (3:07)
Judee: “Well, I thought I’d do this song, Lady-O, which is the first song I ever had on the radio
..and The Turtles did it, and I have to remember to talk slow because I know my accent is real thick. Is it hard to understand me? No? Ok, good.
So anyway this song, here I was, just writing songs and real poor, I had no-one interested in my songs yet or anything and I knew this one guy who was in The Turtles and one day he called me on the phone and said “Hey, how would you like us to do one of your songs and we’ll give you a lot of money and everything, we’ll give you sixty-five dollars a week and you’ll be a writer for our company”, and I said great, you know and I was living in a ’55 Cadillac with five people at the time, sleeping in shifts, in the flatlands of Hollywood, and it was in the summer, it wasn’t so bad, and it had air conditioning in the car, and so it was really a thrill for me as you can imagine.
So I just listened to the radio all the time with an earplug in my ear, day and night.
I took out an ad in all the trade papers and it said, the name of the song is Lady-O, and the ad said, “Lady-O, Lady-O, out of the radio, in to your hearts”, (chuckle)….and it sold anyway! Lady-O “.
2. LADY-O (guitar) (2:15)
Judee: “So I’m gonna do this last one on guitar, then I’ll go and do three on the piano. This song here is called, The Lamb Ran Away with the Crown, and actually I always wanted to write a song about good winning over evil, you know, and so I thought that’d be a good idea ‘cos it sounds like, The Dish Ran Away with the Spoon, you know? The Lamb Ran away with the Crown”.
3. THE LAMB RAN AWAY WITH THE CROWN (guitar) (2:42)
Judee: “I’d like to dedicate this song to these two fellas sitting right here in the front row, this is just for you.
So I thought I’d do this oldest one first. This is about three years old and it’s a religious song about flying saucers coming at the end of the world to take all the “sensitive, deserving” people away and bring ‘em back when the holocaust is over and start the new age, you know, and when I wrote this song I think I believed it more literally than I do now, although I still believe poetically that deserving people will be spared.
So I’ve added some notes that would make it sound more like a cartoon, it’s called Enchanted Sky Machines.
Has all of my gospel licks that I learned when I was the church organist in Reform School.
That’s the truth, I swear, it’s the only fun I had there, you know?”
4. ENCHANTED SKY MACHINES (piano) (3:34)
Judee: “Thankyou. Oh yes, I’ve been wanting to do this little song here that I just wrote seven days ago, eight days ago, and it’s called The Kiss, and it’s not on the first album ‘cos I just wrote it, but this guy was asking me today about romantic songs, you know, and I can’t decide if this is a romantic song or a holy song, but whatever it is, it stands for that brief communion of a kiss, you know, whether it’s actually a kiss or whether it’s just a moment that is locked in, you know?
I don’t know, I hope you like it.”
5. THE KISS (piano) (3:28)
Judee: “Ok, this last song’s in three parts, and I wrote this one right before I wrote The Kiss, and it’s about the place where romantic love and divine love meet and the holy fires begin to burn, you know, it’s kinda like a romantic gospel song.
One part sounds like rhythm’n’blues of the Fifties, ‘cos I really like the romantic feeling that the Fifties music got , you know?
Fifties music, rhythm’n’blues of the Fifties, you know, not Pop of the Fifties, but rhythm’n’blues like the Shirelles, Shandells, Chantels, all those, you know?
Songs like, So Fine, He’s So Fine, She’s So Fine, You’re So Fine, there’s a lot of those.
So, you know, so when I wrote this song I was thinking about writing a song about the holy fires burning and where these two kinds of love meet, so this song is called Down Where the Valleys are Low.”
6. DOWN WHERE THE VALLEYS ARE LOW (piano) (4:25)
Judee: “Thankyou”.