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Tramcar to Tomorrow

retrospective collection  - 31 August 1998

Be Bop Deluxe

Tramcar to Tomorrow cover
Tramcar to Tomorrow alt cover

TRACKS:

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01)  Third Floor Heaven

02)  Adventures In A Yorkshire Landscape

03)  Mill Street Junction

04)  15th Of July (Invisibles)

05)  Maid In Heaven

06)  Stage Whispers

07)  Sister Seagull

08)  Blazing Apostles

09)  Crying To The Sky

10)  Peace Of Mind

11)  Panic In The World

12)  Love In Flames

NOTES:

Tramcar to Tomorrow was a natural follow up to Radioland issued four years previously, in that gave the first official release to a selection of Be Bop Deluxe BBC studio session recordings made for The John Peel Show. It wasn't a definitive collection by any means, but it was a start for those fans who had spent part of their youth recording this material onto cassettes either from the original Peel programmes or from various re-broadcasts on the Alan Freeman show or the Friday Rock Show presented by Tommy Vance.

 

Sourced from 4 different sessions and giving the first release to the lost song "15th of July" (recorded for a 1974 Peel session), Tramcar to Tomorrow provided a decent overview of the band's BBC recordings made to promote the albums Axe Victim, Futurama, Sunburst Finish, and Drastic Plastic. The omission of the three tracks from a 1973 Peel session ("Axe Victim", "Bluesy Ruby" and "Tomorrow The World"), plus one track from the 1975 session ("Lights") and two tracks from the 1978 session ("Superenigmatix" and "Love in Flames") was disappointing to those looking at least for complete sessions, if not a complete anthology of such recordings.   
 

The subsequent release of At the BBC 1974-1978 (2013), with the inclusion of the previously omitted tracks from the 1975 and 1978 sessions, was a huge step in the right direction, but frustratingly three tracks found on Tramcar were omitted from the 2013 box set release.

 

The Peel session from November 1973 wouldn't see an official release until the Cherry Red/Esoteric Recordings reissue of Axe Victim in 2020.


PAST RELEASES:

 

None of this material was previously available on official releases.

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CURRENT AVAILABILITY:
 

This compilation is now out of print.

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