The BBC Collection is an allencompassing collection of the many recorded performances of Rory Gallagher at the BBC. Featuring eighteen CDs worth of radio concerts and sessions from 1971 to 1986, roughly 75 of this material has not been officially released before. Also included is two Blu Ray discs of BBC TV concerts and studio performances from 1973 to 1984, all of which has not been officially released previously.Amassed from the BBC archives and Rory Gallaghers own transcription discs and offair cassette recordings, the boxset spans 16 years of his career 19711986, taking in highlights such as the 1977 dual television and radio broadcast Sight amp Sound concert, Rorys headlining set at the Reading Festival in 1980 to the emotional At Midnight concert live from the Ulster Hall in Belfast, 1984.A best of from this collection will be available on 2CD and 3LP, titled The Best of Rory Gallagher at the BBCThese releases celebrate the importance of the artist Rory Gallagher, who was possibly the most recorded musician of the 1970s by the BBC.Tore Down That was the first song I ever heard playedIts a BBC recording of Rory Gallagher playing at the Paris Theatre in London in July 1972. And I was in the audience, aged 15, and those opening bars were enough to make me realise that this was something I wanted to do again and again Tore Down was my introduction to live, loud, amplified blues and when Gallagher had finished, my 15yearold self could not contain his excitement. He ran down to the front to shake Rorys handWhen the BBC did eventually broadcast the concert, I taped it by leaning the microphone from my clunky cassette recorder against the speaker of our old transistor radio and I listened to that tape over and over again Nick Hornby, Author