All you do is treat me bad - break my heart and leave me sad

Continuing my trip back through the 1968 album charts.

19/05/68 : Live At London's Talk Of The Town - The Supremes

Somewhat surprisingly, this is the third live album we've met this year from this venue - looking at the tracklist, it looks like one that would sneak through even under normal times because it's got a load of medleys on it so it should be a bit different.  And I also do like a bit of that 60s Motown girl sound, so I'm looking forward to it.

Yeah - it's not exactly earth-shattering, but it's pretty enjoyable.  It's got a good "big band" sound on it, which wasn't necessarily what I was expecting - it also has some very corny chat from Diana on it between songs (but it's quite cute corn).  It's interesting to compare the sound quality with our recent Otis experience - it's way better on this one, which maybe suggests why so many people chose to release albums recorded here.  This is the third album in a row to feature a McCartney-penned track - The Supremes, like Otis, chose to do some Lennon & McCartney tracks.  Maybe this was an easy way to get the UK audience on their side, but either way they make a good job of "Yesterday".  All in all, I enjoyed this and it also rattles through at quite the rate - with all the medleys, you get 22 songs in 37 minutes so there's absolutely no chance to get bored.

We're at #13 in the charts this week on their ninth week of an eighteen week run, with it having peaked at #6 in its seventh week.  The top five this week were Bob, an Otis best-of, Scott, Fleetwood Mac (I had no idea they were quite so popular at this time) and TSOM and there were neither any new entries or women in the chart this week,

Wikipedia has very little on the album - it was the first time they'd performed with Cindy Birdsong (who was brought in to replace Florence Ballard), Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney were allegedly in the audience and there were some interesting songs left off the album (I'd quite like to have heard the Sam Cooke medley).

"Customers also listened to" - this is another one I had to resort to YouTube for, so I'm afraid I can't help you.  I enjoyed this though - it's a slice of the time, but it's a very charming slice of the time featuring some (OK, a lot of) fine songs sung well and we're presented with a pretty decent quality recording of it all.  What's not to like about all of that, eh?!?

12/05/68 - Enjoyably bonkers
26/05/68 - Fun, but surprisingly terrible

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