THE BEST OF BARCLAY JAMES HARVEST (1977)

I guess that their first label "Harvest" must have been quit PO to see the growing BJH success under Polydor. But, boy ! Releasing a second compilation five years after "Early Morning Onwards" is really exaggerated. On top of that, several of the same mistakes than on the previous one will be made.

The best and most progressive track of their debut album "Dark Now My Sky" is again omitted, as will "She Said" from their best album of that era "Once Again". At least this time, we'll get "Galadriel" which is a very nice and subtle piece of music and "Medecine Man", an elaborate and great track. To have repeated "Mockingbird" is a bit useless (although it is one of my fave of the band). I would also have expected "Happy Old World", one of their best poppish songs from those days.

Instead we'll get third class old singles tune like "Brother Thrush" and "Poor Wage" which were already featured on the fisrt "Harvest" compilation. And if you don't get enough of these, you'll get them as well on the remastered edition of their debut album, and on at least one or two further compilations of which "The Harvest Years" that will almost feature all the tracks of their first four albums !

I guess that BJH did not have a lot of control on such compilation efforts. It is obvious that "Harvest" wanted to cash in at a time that the band has never been so popular but I can hardly cope with this policy.

I fully understand that compilations have their value and I would consider one like "The Harvest Years" as the ultimate of that era and probably the only one worth buying if you want to discover how BJH sounded in their early years. My advice though is that you stick to their chef d'oeuvre of 1971 "Once Again".

Shame on you "Harvest". One star. Not only for their policy but also because the tracklist is very poor and redundant ("Mocking Bird").