PROCOL HARUM discography

PROCOL HARUM -
All This And More...

Salvo 2009

The ones wishing to devour a bite-size history of PROCOL HARUM should go no further than the group's debut single: "A Whiter Shade Of Pale" backed with "Lime Street Blues" tell it all concisely by combining the grand and the blunt. Yet stopping within two first tracks of this lavish four-disc box would mean missing the point of the ensemble's existence. They might emerge fully-formed and never really change the tack but there's more than meets the eye in the PROCOL treasure chest, open for all to see. Still, if you look for the obvious, the best place to dwell on is Salvo's 2CD collection, <"#phsoh">"Secrets Of The Hive", while those subscribing for the whole journey are faced with a danger of overlooking obscure gems hidden between the albums' lofty peaks. Hence "All This And More...", which embraces it all on both aural and visual levels that, what with Keith Reid's image-rich lyrics and Gary Brooker's music, have never been separate as reflected in Demis Roussos' amazement on a video part of the package. A big mistake, then, is dividing it into two studio CDs, one live compilation and a mix from previously released DVDs, because everything's accounted here.

So if the selection on the first disc - studio tracks are lined chronologically here - feels a bit strange with cuts like "Long Gone Geek" and the entire epic of "In Held 'Twas In I" but no "Whisky Train" or "Conquistador", the inevitable question is addressed in the opening title of the second platter: it's "Your Own Choice". Anyway, the latter of those two shines on in 2003's version on the DVD and the former found its way onto a concert CD. There are real rarities on it, including 1973's orchestral take on "TV Ceasar" from Hollywood Bowl, "Juicy John Pink" from 1970's Isle of Wight Festival, and 1993's "Last Train To Niagara" which has only been played on-stage and is a short history of the band in itself. That quite makes up for the absence - save for the inspired reading of Johann Strauss' "Blue Danube" from 1974 - of unheard material such as demos and out-takes that embellish the remastered albums. Inclusion of two variants of "As Strong As Samson" and "Broken Barricades", the originals and live ones, an audio and a video track, are justified nevertheless revealing high nicely the band's sound projects before the public, no matter how complicated a recording is. More so, what this compilation clearly underlines is what a tremendous drummer BJ Wilson was.

With a 72-page booklet to put this bonanza for ears and eyes in a context - historical and musical - the box is as great a launch-pad into the world of PROCOL HARUM as a perspective-shifting device for the well-versed in it. Not a simple greatest hits compilation, "All This And More..." adventurously goes beyond the expected, and that's what makes this peculiar navigation so arresting.

*****

PROCOL HARUM -
Grand Hotel

Chrysalis 1973
Salvo 2009

For all the grandiosity of PROCOL HARUM's works, the band never overtly declared the opulence they could offer, only hinting on that in the ghostly "Shine On Brightly", and it possibly took the orchestral album to free the group from whatever concept shackles there were. Now, understatement is no more and the rococo splendor settles in from the opening lines of the title composition - Gary Brooker's piano and voice echoing off the empty hall's walls, Keith Reid's lyrics depicting viands and other pleasures - but it's still full of specters having a ball, "The Shining"-way. The strings, the wind and the choir bouncing off Alan Cartwright's bass lift it heavenly high, especially so in the intrumental dance in the middle, but as the bonus, group-only, close-to-a-live-take version shows, the anthemic transcendence is rooted in the piece's sparseness rather than its lush frosting. That's the key to this album.

But what comes up must come down, and the tired elevation reprised in the otherworldly solemn "Fires (Which Burn Brightly)", featuring Christiane Legrand's soaring soprano, comes counterbalanced with a goose-grease groover that is "Bringing Home The Bacon", a psychedelic downside to the title number's well-mannered feast with Chris Copping's organ and Mick Grabham's (in early run, Dave Ball's) guitar rolling on the floor. And then, there's acoustic "A Souvenir Of London", a deliberately raw shanty that, on-stage, required all the band to step forward and B.J. Wilson swap his kit for a mandolin a full ensemble of which the drummer employs here to make the aftermath of a night on the town (no, it's not a shameful disease as the word has it) feel alluringly dirty. That's where the action is, even though another pantom is dying, anchored to the ground by harmonica, in the dramatically growing tension of "For Liquorice John".

More posh ways of escape are offered in the stately ballad "A Rum Tale" that sets Hammond against the orchestral backdrop and in the carousel swirl of "Toujours l'Amour", where the regular subject for the blues takes an organ-oiled and guitar-spiked noble turn. And while the brisk and a little risque "T.V. Ceasar" brings the modern culture closer to home with its low-ceiling symphony graffito'ed with electric axe, the exit lies in the Latin flavor, handclaps and multi-tracked vocals of "Robert's Box", an ode to drugs, which ends the album on an unexpectedly prosaic note. A note that hides a hint: the opulence of "Grand Hotel" might be only a projection of one blissful delirium.

*****

PROCOL HARUM - Live
In Concert with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra

Chrysalis 1972
Salvo 2009

PROCOL HARUM -
Broken Barricades

Island 1971
Salvo 2009

With a rootsy affair in the heart of "Home" fully explored and its inhabitants established well, a time came for PROCOL HARUM to embark on a new journey, hued darkly still. Opening with a memory-lashing Robin Trower riff of "Simple Sister" and ending with "Poor Mohammed", the guitarist's last contribution to the band's classic canon, their fifth album flies on like a cannon swung to destroy the meek. The former a threatening assault with Gary Brooker's albatross piano and booming voice fleeting over gloomy rock bottom of Chris Copping's bass and B.J. Wilson's almost jazzy drums, quite scary in the middle instumental section that scores the orchestral heights, and the latter a fuzz-and-slide jive hinting on something very indecent, "Broken Barricades" is not for the faint of heart.

Its three-minute title track might roll placidly on a synthesized tidal wave yet Keith Reid's lyrics paint the most frightening picture of all, so the contrast here is purely aural, while Armageddon of a different kind seeps out of "Power Failure"; it sketches the oft-sung life on the road in the revved-up wailing phrases and features the well-tempered drum solo, a usual time-filler for the stage electricity problems. There's a hint of the French Quarter in the "Playmate Of The Mouth" bluesy brass, but it's in "Luskus Delph" that the ensemble come soft in openly erotic way made all the clearer by the surging strings-and-woodwind veil. "Memorial Drive", at the same time, picks the sea theme up for a Neptune feast of unstated obscenities lurking in the honky-tonk panache of the song's pearl-encrusted depth. Then, "Song For A Dreamer" dives in the deepest to let Trower cry away, both vocally and in the multi-tiered guitar solo, his grief over passing of Jimi Hendrix, most notably on the bonus backing track which swells nicely even in voiceless form. After that the guitarist packed the blues to strike on his own and left PROCOL to dream on lighly.

****3/4

PROCOL HARUM -
Home

Regal Zonophone 1970
Salvo 2009

It's almost impossible to recognize the ensemble of "Shine On Brightly" in the progressive blues wail of the opening "Whisky Train" that pre-dates the guitarist's solo endeavors and allows B.J. Wilson to rattle all his wares gracefully - as if to compensate for the lack in the drumming department on most of the tracks further on - and lets Keith Reid to bend his lines to fit the genre. Then, the darkness sets in firmly with the madrigal dirge of "The Dead Man's Dream" and the "Nothing That I Didn't Know" acoustic drama awashed in strings and sprinkled with Brooker's accordion. Where previously was tunefulness now the vain anthemity reigns, so even the acidic "Still There'll Be More" and the oinking coda of "Piggy Pig Pig" don't pour lightness into this creepy gloom.

The death theme gets explored deeper in the brooding "Barnyard Story" and the paradoxically soulful "About To Die" with its piano solo - a nice trick, given it was composed by Robin Trower; and isn't there a hint in the soundalike "rob the tower" passage of the album's sole epic, "Whaling Stories"? The piece is gaining its momentum as it progresses, it swells impressively and has its magic moments, yet still doesn't flick the switch to make "Home" really inhabited with spirit.

***1/3

PROCOL HARUM -
A Salty Dog

Regal Zonophone 1969
Salvo 2009

The ensemble found a great solution to all the contradictions by harnessing two traditions: the rootsy one, in the Chicago-styled Robin Trower-incited Apocalypse of guitar and harmonica of "Juicy John Pink" that Muddy Waters wouldn't have been ashamed of (there's also a live version alongside an incendiary bonus of the Howlin' Wolf staple "Goin' Down Slow") and their own, in "All This And More". It sounds as if it was recorded for the previous LP but reads as a sharp comment on the situation in the ranks where too many forces emerged to keep it all together. The real maturity of the playing and the material's strength comes forth on the Dylan-esque rhythm-and-blues of the "Long Gone Geek" single and "The Milk Of Human Kindness" which combines the vaudeville easiness with the heaviness of blues and puts forward B.J. Wilson's ever-shifting drumming. A contrast to this is the marimba-spiced delicate "Boredom" and a gentle ballad "Too Much Between Us" resting on the acoustic guitar strum and the organ ripples. Elsewhere, another Fisher's creation, the panoramic "Wreck Of The Hesperus", though perfectly scored, underscores the album's prevailing mood of aloofness that the Trower-delivered "Crucifiction Lane" only adds to, even in the concert take. And that feels good - there's a sense of adventure, a sense only a few could challenge PROCOL HARUM for.

****1/2

PROCOL HARUM -
Shine On Brightly

Regal Zonophone 1968
Salvo 2009

By 1968 PROCOL HARUM must have had little qualms as to where to head to: all they had to do was to solidify the edifice that their self-titled debut LP still is, and that's when the future curse of art rock kicked in in the form of conceptual thinking. Bizarrely, the song cycle "In Held 'Twas In I" which occupies side two of the original record feels less epic than the joyful outburst of "Quite Rightly So" with its Shakespear allusion in "ode by any other name" and a "too sick to see" skewed reference to "A Whiter Shade Of Pale" - a medieval royal entry! - and the trumpet-like electric glow of the title track positioned right after the opener which is also shot through with Matthew Fisher's beast of organ. Cut the previous year (there's a guitar-less take to savor), it's the real tone-setter for the album that's as serious as playful, never more so than in "Skip Softly (My Moonbeams)" where Robin Trower's guitar hoots like a train whistle and B.J. Wilson adds tasteful battery to this aural rail-wreck adorned with harmony vocals until Gary Brooker's piano brings relief and release - only for Khachaturian's "Sabre Dance" to deliver a coup de grace. After this, the "Rambling On" dreamy flow is anxiously balming its crescendos notwithstanding.

The guitar-cum-harpsichord-touched murky march of "Magdalena (My Regal Zonophone") bids farewell to the image-heavy assault of the preceding songs and, at the same time, prepares one's ear to the bitter-sweet Eastern nightmare of "In Held 'Twas In I". The piquant sitar ushers in "Glimpses Of Nirvana" - spoken-word-laden, dark as night and chilly as limbo which scatters into confetti in "'Twas Tea-Time At The Circus" and gets spinned into the philosophic cobwebs that is "The Autumn Of My Madness". With "Grand Finale" the piano signals a renaissance of faith, but the whole tapestry illustrated the fact that PROCOL HARUM's big ideas come best realised on lesser canvas, and their concepts worked better in the "Grand Hotel" settings.

When it came to deceptively simple songs such as "In The Wee Small Hours Of Sixpence", out on '45 and added as a bonus here, the band shone brightly, indeed, and let the Hammond swirl around the piano to a great effect. Yet while "Seem To Have The Blues (Most All The Time)" was what it stated, the plain and unimaginative blue, "Monsieur Armand" emerged too raw and had to wait until 1974 to be re-modelled for "Exotic Birds And Fruit", whereas a breezy backing track for "A Robe Of Silk" got fleshed out only in 2005. Quite a forward, or timeless, thinking!

****3/4

PROCOL HARUM -
Procol Harum

Regal Zonophone 1967
Salvo 2009

Without such enigma, the foxtrot of "She Wandered Through The Garden Fence" wouldn't be as catchy as it is, all the more so for employing of the Hammond's churchy roar for such an easy going subject as a little sexual exploit. But there's enough overt vaudeville in the brisky, glass-clanking "Mabel" and "Good Captain Clack", while the guitar on the slouchy "Cerdes (Outside The Gates Of)" and the mournful "A Christmas Camel" which hangs on infections piano motif are where the psychedelia blooms gloomily. Organ-awashed "Salad Days (Are Here Again)" only serves to strengthen the impression of a multicolored celebration of decadence wrapped in black velvet, what with Bobby Harrison's almost samba drumming over the boogie-woogie of B-side, "Lime Street Blues". From there, there was not much space to progress, yet "Il Tuo Diamante", the early, Italian version of the majestic "Shine On Brightly", PROCOL's next album's title track, and the instrumental run of the sly "Pandora's Box" that the band would return to eight years later show the ensemble sensed no boundaries. With vibrant, Tony Visconti-orchestrated ballad "Understandably Blue" demoed for Dusty Springfield and thus un-HARUM-like, appearing on this re-issue for the first time, a document of the group's soft side, "Procol Harum" still sounds vivacious and vital.

*****

PROCOL HARUM -
Secrets Of The Hive

Salvo 2007