PROCOL HARUM

Procol Harum's third album, 1969's A Salty Dog, proved that the brilliance of the prior year's Shine on Brightly (which I gave five stars) was no fluke. If anything, this album is even more focused and powerful, and certainly more broad in what it attempts to achieve. Only two slightly mediocre songs drag this one down; otherwise, it's pretty close to perfect.

The title track opens the album - a somewhat risky move, as it's clearly a ballad, and a pretty lengthy one at that. With watery sound effects,seagulls chirping, a melodramatic string arrangement (keyboard players Gary Brooker and Matthew Fisher composed all their own orchestral arrangements, by the way), and a simple yet vivid lyrical portrait (Keith Reid, the band's lyricist, is one of the finest lyric writers in rock history, in my opinion) of a sea captain, Procol Harum produce a stunning masterpiece with this song. Even better is the less obvious "Milk of Human Kindness" which follows it -- on the surface a pretty basic blues song, but arranged brilliantly with piano and lead guitar bouncing off each other, and BJ Wilson providing a novel, dramatic start/stop drum part. "Too Much Between Us" is a bit low-key and one of the album's weaker tracks, but "The Devil Came From Kansas" turns a folky melody into a full-blown loud doom number, with Robin Trower's lead guitar pushing it even further over the edge. "Boredom" ends side one, a Matthew Fisher piece with acoustic guitar, gentle hand percussion, and a nagging recorder melody -- about as far from "Kansas" as you can get. Keith Reid's lyrics about ennui and boredom almost feel cheerful in this context.

A big shocker opens side two -- the stark country blues of "Juicy John Pink" (by Trower, with lyrics by Reid), with little other than Trower's Hendrix-inspired guitar and Gary Brooker's vocal to carry it along. And to go from that into the symphonic drama of Fisher's "Wreck of the Hesperus" is even more shocking. Probably the most elaborately produced piece here, "Hesperus" seems to be of a piece with "A Salty Dog" in its maritime theme. "All This and More" is a pretty uneventful ballad, a disappointment in the midst of an impressive streak. Next is "Crucifixion Lane", a tough, soulful blues number sung by Robin Trower (unfortunately) in a raspy croak of a voice. It's a bit jarring after hearing Brooker and Fisher's superior voices for the rest of the album, but overall it's still a good track, further adding to the album's stunning diversity. Last but not least, we have a third Fisher composition, the excellent "Pilgrim's Progress" - an organ-based ballad seemingly similar to "Whiter Shade of Pale", but about halfway through, the song shifts into an elongated coda led by an upbeat piano riff that ends the album on a happy note.

Though this is often considered Procol Harum's masterpiece, I still prefer Shine on Brightly, but this album is still essential for those wishing to get into the band, and the title track, "The Devil Came From Kansas", and "Wreck of the Hesperus" are all key songs in the development of progressive rock. The album is confident and focused, even as it tackles an impressively diverse array of musical styles.

So, for all who would like to fill some possible gaps in the seventies output (for example I have never listened to Home, Broken Barricades or Exotic Birds and Fruit in their entirety) and who don't give a damn about their later phases will feel frustration with this compilation. The 70- page booklet is also very uncomfortable in that aim. I always expect to see clearly from which album each track is. Trying to find that information from the long texts dealing the band's history and the albums is too time-consuming. [By the way, the beginning of the essay is totally ridiculous, as it goes on and on for pages about the fame of 'A Whiter Shade of Pale'.]

Of course there are many great tracks, even the magnificent 'In Held Twas in I'! But one could expect much more lightening contents from this size of a set.

Probably the song is familiar to 95% of PA community so it doesn't really need an introduction. Did you know the excellent orchestration was by Gary Brooker himself? (Hopefully the 4-cd compilation "All This and More..." doesn't give false information.) The lyrics of Keith Reid are very cinematic and relatively straight-forward without his usual surrealism, about an unfortunate sea voyage. The grandious oceanic atmosphere is present right from the start. The song is in extremely slow tempo and the emotional build-up is strong. Of course it comes quite near to being pathetic, but it does keep its credibility and seriousness. One could compare it to a slow movement of a romantic era symphony.

B-side includes 'Long Gone Geek'. I don't remember was it just a b-side track, but it seems to be included on several compilations and CD editions of A Salty Dog album. Probably it was hard and bluesy because I have skipped it like many of their early songs of the rougher style.

Indeed, even the "lesser" tracks only seem that way because they're sillier than others - even then, though, they provide a nice sense of diversity to the album, one that helps diffuse the general "monotony" of the band's sound. "She Wandered Through the Garden Fence" could seem out of place thanks to the moodier (and more serious) pieces that bookend it, but it has one of the best "silly" melodies ever penned by somebody not named Paul McCartney, and even Brooker's voice helps here, only because it's humorous to hear him sing the lines "she threw me down upon my back and strapped me to a torture rack" with a seemingly straight face. "Mabel" could also be dismissed as a relative throwaway, but it's so over-the-top drunkenly goofy, with all sorts of random slide whistles and drunken revelry taking place in the background while Brooker sings for Mabel to "please get off the kitchen table" that it's simply irresistable (in the context of the album, anyway).

"Lesser" track number three is an attempt at a vaguely "psychedelic" rocker (with standard PH instrumentation, of course), "Kaleidoscope." It's essentially a groove piece, based around a few measures of somewhat less-than-stellar melody line led by the keyboards, so it doesn't quite measure up to everything else... on the other hand, though, it has a cool instrumental break in the middle, first led by a really energetic keyboard solo and then a nice, brief, slightly frantic Trower guitar solo, so I'm not gonna dismiss it completely. And finally, the penultimate track of the original album, "Good Captain Clack," probably could have stayed in the outtakes box without hurting the album, were it not for the goofy group harmonies in the middle without which I can't imagine this album.

So that's it for the lesser stuff, and seeing as that's all good, that should give you an idea about the rest. "Conquistador" is simply brilliant, with a terrific juxtaposition of Robin's riffage with Brooker's amazing vocal melody (especially in the "chorus"), all with a MASSIVE keyboard part before the ending verse. (Incidentally, I'd like to say that my weirdest music experience back when I had my part-time job working for Meijer (a Midwest regional store similar to Walmart where I worked part-time in college) was when, over the loudspeaker, I could a hear a muzak version of this very tune. The funny thing is, everything was mellowed and cheesed over ... except for the keyboard solo which was done exactly like on this album). And man, there are some incredible lyrics in this song.

Later, "Something Following Me" is an eerily mellow ballad (apparently about seeing your own tombstone, among other things, not that I noticed before reading the lyrics online), with yet another excellent piano melody, and another great (though unfortunately short) Trower solo, making this moody as hell. And finally, there's the side-one closer, the INCREDIBLE "Cerdes (Outside the Gates of)," with one of the cleverest riffs Brooker ever came up with (with the bass seamlessly sharing its duty with Fisher's organ) and another amazing vocal melody and more great Trower work ... all this on only one side!!! Throwaway filler, I DON'T THINK SO.

Side two is a little weaker (three of the "lesser" tracks are here), but it's also bookended by two more *insert positive adjective here* tracks that leave no doubt in my mind of this album's greatness. "A Christmas Camel" is an exceptionally well-done Ray Charles ripoff - great vocal melody, great keyboard interplay, great Trower solo, etc etc etc. The instrumental "Repent Walpurgis," though, basically annihilates it in quality - the lone Fisher composition on the album, it functioned as the band's stage closer for many years, and it's not hard to see why. Aside from having one of the best melodies of any classical/rock fusion ever, it gives every member a chance to shine (without delving into self-indulgence); Trower stands out when given opportunity, giving out his best solo of the album, but there's also a brief interlude where Brooker's piano is given a moment by itself, and the rest has the band working as an absolute musical monster, before ending with one of the most (justifiably so) bombastic, crashing finales ever to grace a rock album.

In short, this album ranges from good to absolutely stunning (I forgot to mention another song with an absolutely lovely melody, "Salad Days (Are Here Again)," which also helps buoy up side two), and I can't see how any self-respecting art-rock lover could dislike this. And besides, the re- release has some cool bonus tracks - "Lime Street Blues" is a generic (but good) mid-60's r&b piece, and "Monsieur Armand" is a lesser track (that would be reworked for the '74 album Exotic Birds and Fruit), but "Homburg" is a quite lovely piece in the same vein as "Whiter Shade," while "Seem to Have the Blues All the Time" is a quite interesting "heavy" blues piece that sounds like little else on the album but that is quite good nonetheless. How's THAT for a run-on sentence??

Normally, I don't pay a lot of attention to song lyrics, but in this case I feel Keith Reid's lyrics are so striking (and in some cases, shocking) that they can't help but guide my review. The album cover shows a tacky (those colors!), wacky little board game featuring the band members' smiling heads. The first song (written by Trower/Reid) is an uptempo 12 bar blues called "Whisky Train" (Trower really lets loose for the first time here). Are the boys giving us a fun party record? Not on your life. Reid's lyrics quickly slip into macabre images of death and decay (complete with maggots) on the following dramatic piano ballad "The Dead Man's Dream", and into sociopathic violence on the otherwise bouncy "Still There'll Be More". "Nothing That I Didn't Know", "About to Die" and "Barnyard Story" all contain dark images of death and despair as well.

Musically, as I mentioned, there's more of an emphasis on guitar thanks to Robin Trower's increased role, and even Gary Brooker's quieter piano-based songs seem to have an added layer of gravity and heaviness to them, fitting the dour subject matter well. The dense, apocalyptic "Piggy Pig Pig" and the dramatic maritime epic "Whaling Stories" are clear highlights; the former song further explores the doomy symphonic sound of the prior album's "Wreck of the Hesperus", haunted by the refrain "God's aloft, the winds are raging / God's aloft, the winds are cold", and the latter song is the dark underbelly of the romantic sea captain theme explored on the prior album. "Whaling Stories" is, in fact, one of the band's most direct connections to progressive rock, building from a quiet, yet ominous piano ballad (similar to "A Salty Dog", the prior album's title epic) to an absolutely mind-blowing middle section akin to a chaotic storm. The slow, heavy, chromatic climbing riff in this section is probably my favorite moment on the whole album. The final track, "Your Own Choice", is an uncharacteristically light song; in this context, however, it feels almost like a suicide note, a moment of calm reflection and philosophizing just before offing yourself. Draw your own conclusions, as the song says....

A wonderful album. Not a five star album, but a very high four.

The shorter songs on side one offer a strange blend of warped music hall, blues rock, and piano-based pop. "Quite Rightly So" takes the stately march of "Whiter Shade" and betters it; "Shine on Brightly" is a proud ode to madness with screaming lead guitar; "Skip Softly" is a bizarre merry-go-round of a song; "Wish Me Well" is earthy blues; and finally, "Rambling On" is an amusing tale of a man who decides he can fly.

Side two begins with a brief hymn, "Magdalene (My Regal Zonophone)", which sets the stage for the album's centerpiece. The 19 minute suite that follows, "In Held 'Twas in I", is a spooky, multifaceted epic, incorporating several shorter "songs" to build an overall whole (in retrospect, it seems to be the template for things like "Supper's Ready" years later) that seems to tell a story of a man's quest for meaning ("the Dalai Lama smiled and said, well my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?" being the most famous phrase in the song) and battle against personal demons.

File with the "best of 1968" and give this puppy 5 stars.

This album is a portion (at least, I assume it's only a portion) of a show from right before the release of Exotic Birds, and the setlist reflects this. The four tracks I love so much from that album indeed make it here, and while there's not a ton of departure from the studio versions, there's enough roughness (and hard work from the band to overcome this roughness) in the sound to make them worthy companions. They also do "Butterfly Boys" and "New Lamps for Old," and while part of me would have preferred some more straight-up rock'n'roll with "Monsieur R. Monde," these do just fine. Previous albums are represented as well as they can be given the time constraints: Grand Hotel gets the title track (with some amusing organ substitutions for the missing orchestrations) and a rousing "Bringing Home the Bacon," Broken Barricades gets "Simple Sister" (featuring an extension of the mid-song instrumental part, with the piano/bass riff getting played quietly into a crescendo over a long period of time while the guitars do their thing), and of course we get "Conquistador" and "Whaling Stories." Not surprisingly, "Conquistador" is a killer live track even without the orchestra, but I'm kinda surprised that "Whaling Stories" still sounds better live even without the orchestra. I really can't explain why the studio version sounds so labored and stiff compared to both live versions I've heard, but it does, and this live version is every bit the blast that the Edmonton version was.

And that's it! I would have definitely preferred a lot more material, but what's here shows that this lineup of Procol Harum was a perfectly servicable live unit, and I get plenty of kicks out of it.

The problem is that this album, in retrospect, is waaaaay too cautious for such a supposedly groundbreaking experience. See, while so much of the band's catalogue to this point was suited well to an orchestra, this live album only contains five tracks, one of which is a totally rote copy of "In Held Twas In I," which I never really loved in retrospect. It sounds ok, but then again, to me the original just sounded ok; in other words, the "revelatory" nature of this performance is virtually nil. Similarly, "A Salty Dog" is done on side one, and it sounds perfectly beautiful ... but the original was ALREADY completely orchestrated. So while it was probably cathartic to the max for those who were actually there, here it's just like, "well, ok, now I just have to remember if I just listened to the live or studio version, oh, wait, there's applause, I guess it's the live version."

The other three choices are less obvious, fortunately, but even these vary in quality. "All This and More" has always been decent, but just that - I mean, it'd be a hell of a lot neater if they could have included, say, "Whisky Train" or whatever, and I don't see what this version adds to the previous one at all. However, the first two tracks of the album are easily worth the cost, and the main reason I give this as high of a grade as I do. "Conquistador" totally blows away the already great original, with the orchestra providing a bunch of counterpart riffs to the main melody, and the way they sound during the "And though I hoped for something to find ..." part is total symphonic-rock majesty. Likewise, "Whaling Stories" is much better, though in this case the change is from "ehn" to "wow" as opposed to the "wow" to "WOW" change of "Conquistador." Put another way, I actually notice the various atmospheric nooks and crannies I couldn't be enticed to notice before, and this is the one place on the album where I feel like my music exposure has been widened significantly.

So yeah, it's an alright album. I doubt anybody but a diehard would want or need it, though.

If the band could break ground in ''A Whiter Shade of Pale'' by sneaking Bach lines into a light pop song, but the multi-sectioned ''In Held Twas in I'' dug further into new territories in all of its seventeen minute glory. I would love to join the choirs of praise for the epic, but I can't fully. ''In Held Twas in I'' really does sound like the first epic as it's very prototype-ish, patchy and isn't the cleanest in segueing. It's like Procol Harum wanted to have sitar-drenched psych, classical bombast, circus/carnival music and their patented sound in one piece of music.

Somehow the shorter songs are what save SHINE ON BRIGHTLY because they've got that Procol Harum sound in semi-light classically-influenced '60s pop music with a little juice to them. The dynamics between Brooker and Fisher is actually quite marvelous with the piano and Hammond doing slightly different things. Trower's buzzy guitars are the icing on the cake, and everything wonderful about this album can be summed up on the title track and ''Skip Softly''.

To be honest, I find SHINE ON BRIGHTLY lacking stellar production, and to be honest, that's why I didn't care for this album before. Then Side A hit me as splendid pop music with an incredible sense of divine melody and soulful vocals. The mammoth epic is part of prog's history, and that's that.

Well... Procol Harum is a band where we collect albums more for the name (and the historical importance of their music) rather than for music. What is a lightweight and quiet Progressive POP, dominated by piano and organ, well played and arranged and properly written and sung. Nothing more. But the songs mentioned at the beginning of the review are evergreen of Rock, not only of Prog.

This compilation includes songs from BR Music from Cube records period (beautiful songs) that the period of Chrysalis contract (except "Conquistador" [live orchestral] the other songs of this period not convinced me). And one is a pure AOR Rock song by Gary Brooker solo. First 5 songs are great. other good and other not conqust me. But, in general, this is a midly good compilation, at the end.