Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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39 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Close To Perfect Compendium (No BARRICADES, Natch), August 26, 2001
As box sets go, this one's pretty damn essential. Brit label Westside has assembled the first four Procol records on 2 CDs, plus a third disk containing singles and alternate mixes. The singles are understandable (two of them are 'Whiter Shade of Pale' & 'A Salty Dog', after all) but the remainder of Disc 3 SHOULD have included the 5th album 'Broken Barricades', thus presenting the complete Brooker/Trower era. One star off for this blown opportunity as well as the nondescript packaging (this has to be the least lavish 30th anniversary box set in memory). While everyone familiar with Procol Harum will admit some kind of grudging respect, they weren't the kind of band you did cartwheels over: they kind of seeped into your high esteem by degrees. And yet they performed accessible and intelligent music that somehow touched all the bases - rock, blues, progressive, folk - all at once, and in a more meaningful way than many of their contemporaries and descendents. While Matthew Fisher's organ (funerals a specialty) and the early metallic scree of Trower's guitar are prime components of their sound, the focal point of Procol was and will always be singer/pianist Gary Brooker, whose haunting, haunted vocals always reminded me of wearing a peacoat in a cold December fog. (The weather's bitterly gloomy, but the coat is warm and comforting.) Add the fact that most of these tracks are products of a songwriting partnership (with Keith Reid) that resonate with distorted echoes of Brecht-Weill and English music-hall artists, and pinning Procol Harum down to a single category becomes impossible. The resulting music somehow holds the disparate elements together, creating something new in the process, and it works beautifully. To Westside's credit, the remastering on all four albums is superb and a big improvement on the original vinyl. Got us a no-brainer here, folks.
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23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
here's a bargain, March 10, 1999
Procol's first four albums, some singles, B-sides, and outtakes, all of which have something to commend them. The sound is much better than previous releases of this material, and the material is often terrific. At their core, Procol was really a British R&B outfit with an imaginative Hammond organist in Matthew Fisher, and one of the most distinctive guitarists around in Robin Trower (before he submerged his style into that of Jimi Hendrix). And Gary Brooker was always a terrific singer. The first record was mostly Ray Charles influenced, although the lyrics strove for mid-sixties Dylan. The second record is as psychedelic as they come, and the third (Salty Dog) was Beatlesque in its scope and variety. Procol fans shouldn't miss this collection.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Four Classics in One Convenient Box, May 20, 2004
Procol Harum practicallly invented "classical rock", and few groups have had the kind of musical alchemy that this band did: Matthew Fisher's classically-trained organ, Gary Brooker's bluesy vocals, Robin Trower's emerging guitar-god chops, and Keith Reid's intriguing lyrics. This set includes their first four album releases, representing perhaps their best work.
Their self-titled debut album established Procol Harum's baroque sound with classically-infused tunes such as "Conquistador" and "She Wandered Through the Garden Fence". It is interesting that the original UK release omitted their smash single, "A Whiter Shade of Pale", but that was standard practice in the UK recording industry in those days, to omit singles from the subsequent album release. (If memory serves me, the US release dropped the track "Good Captain Clack" in favor of "Whiter".) Also of note is the fact that the album is entirely in mono, a strange production decision considering it came out in the same era as stereophonic sprees such as "Sgt. Pepper" and "Pet Sounds". (There are stereo takes of some of the songs on the third disc.) For my money, "Shine on Brightly" was their best album, and one of the 60's rock masterpieces. Trower really begins to emerge as a force here, as evidenced on tracks like "Rambling On" and the suite "In Held Twas In I". (According to the liner notes, the latter work was a big influence on the Who's "Tommy.") The album's theme of self-searching and discovery echoes the Moody Blues' "In Search of the Lost Chord", and production-wise, its ambition rivals "Sgt. Pepper".
"A Salty Dog" is another classic, a more subdued concept album for the most part, but with satisfying tunes throughout, including the lushly-orchestrated title track (a hint of the Edmonton Orchestra collaboration to come), the searing guitar of "The Devil Came from Kansas", and the gentle ballad "Too Much Between Us". The band carries the sea-voyage theme very effectively here. (The producers of this set made the annoying decision to leave off the title track on this disc, for "time constraint" reasons, and instead included the single version of "A Salty Dog" on Disc 3.) "Home" is a bit more uneven than the previous two albums, and marked the departure of organist Fisher. But there are still highlights, including "About to Die", the mini-suite "Whaling Stories" (whose seagoing theme could easily have fit on "A Salty Dog"), and the amazing "Whisky Train", one of Trower's greatest moments and one of the best damn rock songs ever. Disc 3 would be for completists only, if not for the inclusion of "A Whiter Shade of Pale" and "A Salty Dog". Also, "Homburg", the followup single to "Whiter", is worthy of inclusion. I agree with another reviewer that it would have been nice to drop some of the "alternate takes" in favor of squeezing in their excellent fifth album, "Broken Barricades"; maybe licensing was an issue. But make no mistake: this is a fine three-disc compendium of Procol's early work, and an essential addition to the collection of any fan of the "progressive rock" era.
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~ Elvis Costello
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