THE BEST OF PROCOL HARUM [A&M]

This was a LP era "best of", meant to supplement Procol's A&M albums which had made a few criminal omissions, thanks to the group's less than brilliant tactic of leaving their hit singles off the albums. In that context it's a perfect companion to those unadulterated albums, but in the days of bonus tracks, its relevance drops significantly. If you want to limit yourself to just a solitary compilation, there are better single CD collections out there.

Nonetheless its hard to argue with the music on offer here. First off there's the magnificent A Whiter Shade Of Pale, the mesmerizing psychedelic masterpiece that just happens to be my favourite song of all time. Procol's other outstanding, heartbreaking singles Homburg, Quite Rightly So and Shine On Brightly are also given a slot while there's a track each from the A Salty Dog (the spellbinding heavily orchestrated title track), Home (Robin Trower's riff-heavy Whiskey Train) and Broken Barricades (the slow-burning Simple Sister) albums. Round this off with three exciting B-sides Lime Street Blues, In The Wee Small Hours Of Sixpence and Lone Gone Geek and the live hit version of the first album's brassy Conquistador (which can be found on the live album Live In Edmonton) and you really have some stellar music that tempted me to give this album a four-star rating.

Nonetheless the fact that the non-album tracks are included on the Procol Plus ... series of reissues, and the fact that I've heard a far more comprehensive single CD collection covering the same 1967-1972 era means that I can't go too far in praising the collection that first got me into this exceptional band. ... 58% on the MPV scale