BARCLAY JAMES HARVEST LIVE

"Barclay James Harvest Live" was BJH's first UK-Chart-Album and therefore it's rather hard to understand why the compact disc has never been released by their original label Polydor... nevermind, with the fine remastered edition released by Eclectic ( Esoteric ) lately... Like I wrote in my review to "Everyone is everybody else" I'm not satisfied with Roger Bain's work as a producer, though the live-sound can't be blamed on him that way... you have to get used to it ( a friend who didn't know much about BJH's discography, owning the original double-set on vinyl, thought it was a BOOTLEG ! ).

The music is very fine... "Summer Soldier" is really best here, with Woolly working in a bit of "Jerusalem" in the intro ( the song you may know by ELP ! ), leading into "Medicine Man" featuring a fierce Moog-Solo.

In fact there's no "weaker" song included here, apart from "Dark Now my Sky" and "Child of the universe" the most important classics BJH had released by then are included in well performed Live-renditions, my favourite track here is "Paper Wings", and as a lover of progressive rock music there's quite a lot for you to find here, you can add a fifth star in your mind if you got used to the rather raw sound ( that's what's making me subtract it )... I'm more into the "polished" sounding recordings from later on.

What's most important to me is that BJH really made it as a four-piece, having to omit the orchestra meant they found their identity as a band: highly distinctive, genuine, moving... no trace of a "Poor Man's Moody Blues" !!!

Rupert