BBC John Peel's Sunday Concert (Playhouse Theatre)
Sunday, 27 September 1970
Recording for John Peel's Sunday Concert at the Playhouse Theatre — broadcast 4 October 1970. Set: 'Good News, Bad News' · 'Drowned In Wine' · 'Wheels' · 'Processions/No Mule's Fool' · 'Holding the Compass' · 'Lives and Ladies' · 'Strange Band' · 'The Weaver's Answer' · 'Blow By Blow'. The full performance was officially released on BBC Radio Volume 3 – 1970 (with Peel's introductions removed) and on the At The BBC box set.
Peel caught the new Family authority on-page the day before broadcast in his 26 September Disc and Music Echo column, having just heard the recording: 'Last week Family recorded for the Sunday Show and, although they've always been one of those groups that I try to hear as often as possible, nevertheless I was astonished at the new authority that the band is displaying. Often in the past they seemed to be in danger of functioning as a backing group for Roger Chapman and their instrumental solos seemed to serve only as incidental music for orgies of crazed tambourine battering, microphone destruction and other Chapmanesque excesses. No longer is there any suggestion of that. Family really sound like a band now — which may read like heresy but isn't — and there is a certainty and power that you won't have noticed before.'
Setlist: Good News Bad News; Drowned in Wine; Wheels; Processions; No Mule's Fool; Holding the Compass; Lives and Ladies; Strange Band; The Weaver's Answer; Blow by Blow (Jam)
