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Fifty Year Friday: March 1973

Pink Floyd: Dark Side of the Moon

Few progressive rock albums have had such great appeal across a wide section of the music loving public as Dark Side of the Moon, released March 1, 1973. Casual Listeners, Hard Rockers, Stoners, Prog heads, Music Majors, and just about anyone with more than 10 rock albums in their collection, had a decent chance of owning this timeless classic, an album as likely as any other album to be in the collection of anyone from age 17 to 25 during the mid 1970.

Despite a collection of diverse material with varying levels of contribution from each band member, Dark Side of the Moon has a cohesiveness, largely due to Alan Parson’s proficiency and creativity as an engineer. Just as Parsons significantly contributed to the Beatles’ Abbey Road sense of musical unity despite an understandable lack of shared thematic material between tracks, with one exception, the same result is achieved here: an album that holds up nicely as a single work as opposed to a collection of unrelated tracks. If it has been sometime since you have last heard it, get it out, put it on the best equipment possible (don’t just stream it a suboptimal bitrate or listen to it through low quality headphones or speakers) and enjoy one of the great musical works of our time.

King Crimson: Lark’s Tongue in Aspic

Released on March 23, 1973, King Crimson’s fourth album is less accessible than their previous three studio albums, but the level of musicianship and improvisation are better, with the two parts of Lark’s Tongue in Aspic that open and close the album being particularly impressive.

Roxy Music: For Your Pleasure

Before the release of Queen’s first album, or Bowie’s Aladdin Sane, we had this Roxy Music’s For Your Pleasure, released on March 23,1973, adventurously combining art rock, glam rock, and a range of experimental sound techniques into a cohesive, very enjoyable and very well executed work of art. Throughout the entirety of the album, Roxy Music’s musicianship is highly focused and expertly executed, serving as an essential component of the band’s overall artistic vision. Phil Manzanera is amazing on guitar, and Andy Mackay sax provide richness and additional depth, with strong compositions, foundational keyboard work and distinct, nuanced and expressive vocals from Bryan Ferry.

Alice Cooper: Billion Dollar Babies

Released on Feb. 25, 1973, Alice Cooper’s sixth studio album is also his finest with an effective mix of hard rock, glam, and non-traditional topics, some of which were competently exploited for Alice Cooper’s live theatrics. Including four singles, the two standout tracks on the album are “Elected” which was released in September of 1972 prior to the Nixon-McGovern election contest and “Billion Dollar Babies”, released several months after the album’s debut and features Donovan providing effective glam-style vocals including Donovan’s falsetto reaching his upper limit.

Tangerine Dream: Atem

Atem, released their fourth album, Atem, in March of 1973, one of the most impressive works of electronic music, providing a more interesting and substantial listening experience than most of the works by the academic-based classical composers who had been creating electronic sound compositions since the publishing of Luigi Russolo‘s “Art of the Noises” in 1913. The opening title track takes up the first side with three tracks on the second side, each compelling, each a story with the sound caringly shaped and crafted to provide a self-contained complete musical journey.

Todd Rundgren: A Wizard, A True Star

With 1973 being one of the most innovative periods in music, Todd Rundgren’s fourth album, A Wizard, A True Star, is about as ingenious, original and imaginative as any album of the 1970s. The first side is the musical equivalent of “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride”, apparently madly reckless, yet never careening off the rails. “International Feel” starts and ends that first side, with a myriad of sparkling, brilliantly shimmering musical excursions thrown in between. The second side is mellower, allowing the listener to finally relax with a reflective, sympathetic re-creation of four 1960s R&B classic singles, and a memorable anthem, “Just One Victory”, bringing this one of a kind album to a close.

Rundgren’s engineering and production is historically impressive, taking advantage of various vocal and instrumental layering and effective editing. Additional richness is added by both the array of and the arrangement of instrumental timbre. And as an extra bonus to all this, the album is over twenty-six minutes on the first side, and almost thirty minutes on the second side — something matched by some of the classical records I had at the time, but not even approached by any of the single LP rock records in my collection.

One of my music teachers and I were talking about progressive rock around 1977 or 1978 and he was emphasizing how hard it was to predict what music would be canonized in the distant future. Much to my surprise he referenced Todd Rundgren, indicating his familiarity with contemporary, non-“academic” music, by casually remarking that “for all we know Todd Rundgren may be just a footnote in musical history fifty to hundred years from now.” Well, fifty years have passed, and I think it’s safe to say that Todd Rundgren will be encountered by those exploring the music of the 1970s, not as a footnote, but as a musical and engineering wizard, if not a true star.

Electric Light Orchestra: ELO 2

Though not as ambitious or consistently appealing as the first album, or with anything that equals “10538 Overture“, ELO 2, released March 2, 1973, has many fine moments with generally more emphasis on smoother, more conventional orchestration. Particularly good is the opening track, “In Old England Town (Boogie No. 2)” and its second-side counterpart, “From the Sun to the World (Boogie No. 1)”, the latter incorporating true boogie-woogie components. Also worthy of note, is the seven-minute (or eight-minute arrangement in the U.S.) of Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven.” A four and a half minute single version of it got substantial airplay in the UK, charting as high as number six, while in the states, a slightly shorter version, got some AM airplay starting in late April of 1973, climbing as high as 42 on the Billboard singles chart. In Southern California several FM stations regularly played the full-length album cut during the spring and summer of 1973, providing greater exposure in terms of airplay, even if not in terms of audience reached. Besides being a fairly spirited and compelling cover of the original tune, the work incorporates the famous motif of the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, perhaps unintentionally inspiring (though no evidence to support such an assertion) Walter Murray’s 1976 disco-hit, “A Fifth of Beethoven.”

Led Zeppelin: Houses of the Holy

Once again, Led Zeppelin eschews just copying what made their previous album successful, creatively exploring new musical techniques and pathways, but as often the case not shy to incorporate notable musical elements of contemporaries and past predecessors. The overall result is an excellent hard-rock album that nicely balances acoustic and electric components and that successfully incorporates reggae, R&B, funk and even some classical and progressive influences.

Tom Waits: Closing Time

Tom Waits’ debut album, Closing Time, was released on March 6, 1973, receiving limited attention. Though largely folk-based music with some country, jazz and blues influences, what is most notable is how the music supports the lyrics and how each work, independent and finished, come together into a quasi-concept album of isolation, loneliness and dependency. Whereas an artist like Randy Newman comments on the darker side of life with a isolated, somewhat remote detachment, Waits incorporates a very distinctive viewpoint not only within each song but makes it as a necessary component of the content, the character often representing someone not really getting the implication of the commentary, making the song’s meaning even more apparent. Each song works nicely, there is not a bad song on the album — the opening track received some minor airplay as a single, well deserved and eventually covered by the Eagles, but, curiously, there are better candidates to have captured greater airplay if that had been the Asylum label’s focus. However, this is an album best heard from start to finish, enjoying such the varying emotional shading and of each song with “Martha”, “Rosie”, and the evocative ballad, “Grapefruit Moon” being three of my favorites pieces of the whole experience.

John Cale: Paris 1919

Released around March 1973, Paris 1919 is a remarkable work, consistent and enjoyable throughout with generally strong lyrics including Cale’s freewheeling imagery in the first track, “Child’s Christmas in Wales” and his historical references in various songs. The most impressive work is the title track, but the other tracks are all praiseworthy, particularly the last track with its memorable fragile opening of whispered vocals and electric piano building up with energy for what promises to be a strong dramatic ending, but even more appropriately tapers off into another moment of delicacy to provide a fine closing to the entire album.

Herbie Hancock: Sextant

The first track, the stunningly pointillistic “Rain Dance” is like nothing ever recorded previously, either in jazz, rock, fusion or academic electronic music. Furthermore, it makes full use of the stereo sound-field materializing packets of sounds in various, hovering points of space in the listening room, some of the pinpoint sounds coming within the expected stereo field, but others unexplainably occurring well out of the usual and expected speaker-range territory. This wonderful first track, is then followed by the two remaining tracks that, though closer to traditional fare that melds jazz, rock and funk elements, still are pretty far out there, effectively incorporating synthesizers and other electronics with trumpet, trombone, sax, bass and drums. Sextant was not a commercial success, and I never remember seeing this in anyone’s record collection — and wasn’t even in my own collection until recently.

Mahavishnu Orchestra: Birds of Fire

Though Herbie Hancock’s Sextant sold relatively few copies, the opposite was true of Mahavishnu’s Orchestra’s Birds of Fire: it was in several of my friends collections and soon I would buy my own copy. This is one of the finest albums of 1973, appealing to jazz and progressive rock fans alike — and beyond — for anyone in love with electric guitar virtuosity this was a must have. Besides McLaughlin’s guitar, there is unfaltering, propulsive percussion work from Billy Cobham, keyboards from Jan Hammer, and violin work that provides a perfect compliment to McLaughlin contributions. A classic album of unerringly invigorating and captivating instrumental music.

Argent: In Deep

Argent releases their fourth studio album on March 5, 1973, and though there is nothing to match the organ solo in Altogether Now, there are still some good piano and organ work from Rod Argent. The first side is mostly written by Russ Ballard and includes a semi-hit rock anthem, “God Gave Rock and Roll to You”, which was later picked up and modified by Kiss for the soundtrack to Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey and “It’s Only Money” part one and two. The second side is mostly written by Rod Argent and Chris White and is substantially closer to a progressive rock than the first side, with “Be Glad” and “Candles on the River” being the most adventurous.

Procol Harum: Grand Hotel; Steeleye Span: Parcel of Rogues; Faces: Oh La La

Other notable albums released in March include Procol Harum’s elegant and grandly orchestrated Grand Hotel, overall their most consistent and cohesive album, Steeleye Span’s spirited and well-produced, prog-tinged folk album, Parcel of Roques, and the Faces earthy, energetic Oh La La.

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Progressive Rock, Rock, jazz, Fifty Year Friday

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Fifty Year Friday: April 1972

GENTLE GIANT: THREE FRIENDS

Released on April 14, 1972, Three Friends is Gentle Giant’s third album and their first self produced album, and takes a musical direction quite different from the previous two, with the music coalesced around the thematic concept of three schoolmates and the different directions they take. Whereas the music of the previous album generally flows and evades concrete musical borders, owing much to medieval and renaissance musical sensibilities, the music of Three Friends is distinctly of the twentieth century with repeated musical cells and patterns, occurrences of syncopation, and both subtle and more strongly emphasized meter changes — all taken together, form the initial characteristics of an identifiable Gentle Giant style that would become more prevalent in their fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth albums.

The first track, the prologue, starts off in 3/4, appropriate for the concept of “three friends”, then shifts into 4/4 in preparation for the lyrics and then ends in mostly 3/4 with a few apparent meter changes for the ending. The high register synthesizer, like the wispiness of memory, adds to the overall effect of detailed stereo separation. The interlaced vocals continues with the next track, “School Days”, which brings to mind that back and forth playfulness of school children, with some more shuffling of the time signature and then a brief dark middle interlude that shifts into 4/4 for the “remember” section which includes Ray Shulman’s son providing age-appropriate vocals against uncle Phil Shulmans grown-up vocals. After a jazzy vibraphone solo from Kerry Minnear, there are some more meter changes and the the reflection on past school days quietly ends.

Each of the next three tracks focuses on one of the three friends. “Working All Day” is the stoic pronouncement of the manual laborer, voiced appropriately by Derek Shulman, who matter of factly accepts his fate with “no regrets” in mostly straight 4/4 common time. Notable is the introduction, a free multi-voiced, contrapuntal, synthesizer part, that, through the magic of magnetic type, slowly (and seamlessly) grinds down to the plodding working class tempo of the opening theme. Near the end of the piece, in the recap of that initial “working all day” theme, we get a few bars of what I call the Gentle Giant “stride” style (see Fifty Year Friday: July 1971), a “keep on trucking” era type of passage, that appears about twenty-seconds before the end of the song.  

“Peel the Paint” showcases, lyrically, Phil Shulman, light and airy with “free from the start”, then Derek with an anguished “peel the paint”, “nothing’s been learned”, and musically, the two sides of the artist — the aesthetic highs and the tortured lows — with the “peel the paint”, “same old savage beast”, and “nothing’s been learned, no, nothing at all” section relying heavily on the use of the “devil of music” (“diabolus in musica”), the tritone, and a guitar solo that starts out tormented and appears to flop into a drunken-like stupor with the piece ending with a recap of “nothing’s been learned.”

The third track covers the final friend, the lad that made the “big time”, reflecting on the material advantages of success, in a mostly 12/8 meter with some shorter bars for typical Gentle Giant variety. The album ends with “Three Friends” redeploying material from the prologue, including use of both 3/4 and 4/4 meters. The album, though maybe not delivering the most profound concept or realization of that concept, succeeds musically, and with its ample occurrence of 4/4, 2/4 and 12/8 rhythms, makes wonderful driving music. I would also suggest listening to it with visual cues — perhaps something like “light speakers” — devices that bundle different colors of strings of Christmas lights with each color associated to a band of audio frequencies and placed behind a semi-transparent plastic to create dazzling color effects coordinated with the music.’

Overcast: The Approaching Storm

Recorded in a series of contentious sessions in January 1972, made even more difficult by equipment issues and studio logistic headaches (with the band unpleasantly mired in the resulting red tape spawned by recent ownership changes at the La Brea recording studios), Overcast’s fifth album, The Approaching Storm, saw the light of day on the first of April, 1972.

Shifting tentatively from the basic blues and blues-rock formula that had provided their only hit, “Better Yet”, the band, led by the urging of classically trained keyboardist Trevor Stuart (see Fifty Year Friday: Overcast, With a Chance of Showers) explored more complex musical avenues, incorporating a range of influences from the The Who’s recent 1971 album, Who’s Next to the Yes’s Fragile album — though clearly, David Amato was no Keith Moon or Bill Bruford, and Douglas Brandt was no John Entwistle or Chris Squire.

The first side starts with the title track, with heavy bass and darkly-tinged doom-laced lyrics contrasted with pleas for optimism (“No room for grooming this looming, mushrooming doom and gloom”), followed by “Cognitive Unconsciousness” with its bagpipe-like synthesizer passage, and then “Decidedly Dangerous”, which merges into “Disaster Part One: Recognized, Resisted, Realized”, which effectively ends the first side.

Side Two opens with “Disaster Part Two: Reality” with stabbing marimba-like effects from the synthesizer and concludes with the dramatic and stormy, fifteen-minute, “Crystal Palace Workshop”, which leans heavily on Stuarts multi-track use of moog synthesizer and Bill Fortney’s heavily arpeggiated and intermittently apocalyptic electric guitar.

David Crosby & Graham Nash: David Crosby & Graham Nash; Stephen Stills: Manassas; Jim Croce: You Don’t Mess Around with Jim; Procol Harum: In Concert with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra

Additional albums released in April of 1972 include the first Crosby/Graham album, with an exquisite balance between the well-crafted Nash compositions and the mellower Crosby tunes crowned by Nash’s timeless gem “Immigration Man”. the Stephen Stills two LP Manassas with its individually themed LP sides, Jim Croce’s breakout commercial album, You Don’t Mess Around with Jim, with its quality arrangements, well-recorded acoustic guitar and the elegantly-wrought classic, “Time in a Bottle”, and Procol Harum’s best selling album recorded live with full orchestra.

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Blues Rock, Country Folk Rock, Fifty Year Friday, Folk Rock, Gentle Giant, Hard Rock, Music, Progressive Rock, Rock

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Fifty Year Friday, June 1970 Part One

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Deep Purple: Deep Purple in Rock

Fifty years ago, June 1970 was heralded in not with trumpets and trombones but with more intense screaming guitars and more repetitive and thunderous bass lines than any prior months of recorded history, whether on 78s, 33s, 45s or on magnetic tape. Yes, music would get louder, more emphatic, blusterous and even over-the-top annoying, but in June 1970,  the spigot of the fountain of the music of youth was opened up fully, the genie was released from the bottle mounted on a Harley fully armed with motivations and munitions, and the cat was not just let out of a bag, but fired from a cannon with its hair lit luminescently, waking up every previously recumbent, sleeping, and partly hypnagogic dog in the neighborhood.

The world would only be given a few more months of Jimi Hendrix, and though no single guitarist would ever match his originality and creative capabilities, the sheer volume of those stepping into the electric-music colosseum, both in headcount and decibels, would be enough to more than measurably tip the direction of the hardest and heaviest rock onward and forward.

On the very first track of Deep Purple in Rock (released on June 5th, 1970), “Speed King”, Ritchie Blackmore announces his addition to the up-to-that point comparatively staid Deep Purple, with such pitch-altering pyrotechnics that he effectively shames much of the previous decade’s incarnation of so-called mind-expanding and psychedelic music into permanent hiding with a similar level of effectivenss as computer-aided animation upstaging the assembly-line Hanna Barbara animation of the sixties. With organ, bass and drums added, the texture is as dark and thick as a Wagner full-ensemble scene stuck in an endless feedback tape loop.  Quickly this dissolves into an introspective church-like Jon Lord Organ solo with any delicacy hinted at immediately crushed by reentry of guitar, bass, drums and Ian Gillain’s banshee-styled vocals.   Amazingly,  this landmark instrumental intro was ommitted from the U.S. release of the album, victim of corporate-influenced editing.

And so with the release of this decidedly different hard rock album, Deep Purple had indisputedly arrived.  After three fine studio albums of  Lord and Blackmore exploring all styles of music within and on the borders of their capabilities, the addition of Ian Pace and Roger Glover focuses their talents to a distinctly, more blues-based, hard rock sound, influenced by Cream, Led Zeppelin and even Chuck Berry and King Crimson at the extreme —  but very distinctive and recognizable as what would soon be readily identified as the Deep Purple sound.

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Procol Harum: Home

Procol Harum (now minus Matthew Fisher) also released their fourth studio album on June 5th, 1970.  The album is a bit uneven starting off with the bluesy “Whisky Train” before getting to the more substantial, more evocative and more representative “Dead Man’s Dream.” Side two is much better with the first three tracks being commendably representative of that dark, dense Procol Harum sound that makes them so special.

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Uriah Heep: Very ‘Eavy, Very ‘Umble

Uriah Heep’s debut album like so many debut albums seems to be a document of the band searching for their sound.  We hear influences of King Crimson’s “21st Century Schizoid Man” and Black Sabbath’s oblique foundational bass lines, as well as the trademark Uriah Heep non-lexical vocables (in other words, without words: wordless vocalizing like “oohs” and “aaahs”) and their love of riff-based repetition. This would be the first of their many albums that the critics loved to hate, but one cannot deny the creativity of the participants.   Though the lead guitarist, Mick Box, is rarely mentioned alongside peers like Ritchie Blackmore or Robin Trower, he should be — as I do so right here in this blog post, and most specifically, this sentence.

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Barclay James Harvest: Barkley James Harvest

Barclary James Harvest, assembled their name from paper slips drawn at random. Fortunately more care went into the music, with this, their very first album, released June 5, 1970, bountiful in melodically rich, almost Beatlesque (McCartney-like) material.  The last track appears to have taken a cue from Moody Blues with its recited poetry intro and orchestral content, but it goes deeper and heavier with a dark metallic hue along parallel lines at places to King Crimson’s “Epitaph.”

 

 

 

 

 

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1970, Album review, Blues Rock, Hard Rock, Heavy Metal, Progressive Rock, Rock

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Fifty Year Friday: It’s A Beautiful Day, Beck-Ola, Pretties For You, A Salty Dog

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It’s a Beautiful Day: It’s a Beautiful Day

Recorded starting in 1968 through 1969, released in June 1969, the debut album of the Bay Area group, It’s a Beautiful Day, is clearly rooted in the Bay Area culture of mixing folk rock and psychedelic rock.  In addition, the music reaches into the classical-influenced rock genre by incorporating the violin of classically-trained David LaFlamme and the keyboards of his first wife, Linda LaFlamme.  The finally product is an early progressive rock album, accessible and more mellow than busy or just complex for the sake of complexity.

It’s A Beautiful Day

Additional musician

  • Bruce Steinberg – harmonica (track 2)

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Jeff Beck Group: Beck-Ola

I am not normally a jam-album fan.  This album, recorded in April of 1969 and released that June, is mostly a thrown together assembly of music that would be suitable jam-rock material.  What is inescapable is the quality of the improvisation and the distinctive character of the individual musicians and what they have to say. Mozart and Beethoven could dazzle listeners by improvising on the most mundane material.  Here we have the 1969 equivalent, with the exception of Nicky Hopkin’s reflective ballad “Girl From Mill Valley”, a welcome contrast with Hopkins providing both the piano and organ tracks.

In fact, Nicky Hopkins particularly shines throughout the album.  Add to that Jeff Beck’s unerring musicality, Ron Wood’s hard-rock bass, and some earthy vocal work from Rod Stewart and we get an album that is a pleasure to listen to.

Personnel

Alice_Cooper_-_Pretties_for_You

Alice Cooper: Pretties for You

Also recorded starting in 1968 through 1969, released June 25, 1969, Pretties For You, is another one of those 1969 total commercial failures by a band that would go on to make it pretty big.  The album is heavily influenced by some of Frank Zappa’s more musical works and Sid Barrett-era Pink Floyd — not surprising, the band is on Zappa’s “Straight” label, which recorded a small number of artists, including Captain Beefheart, and Alice Cooper was the opening band for Pink Floyd during Barrett’s tenure.

At this point in time, Alice Cooper was still the band’s name, not yet taken as a stage name by their singer, Vincent Furnier. The album is full of content that required careful rehearsal before recording, with many instances of time signature changes or compound meters. Despite the Zappa and Barrett influences, this music is different from anything before, and different from later progressive rock or Alice Cooper albums to follow. Perhaps with some better production, fine tuning, and further crafting, this album would be particularly noteworthy — unfortunately, it doesn’t quite come together and so it is a bit of a curiosity — but still a particularly enjoyable work and one of historical interest, for unlike most of the future progressive rock bands that start sounding more traditional and refined and extended their approach, this band, Alice Cooper, starts with some pretty lofty objectives, delivering an interesting art-rock album, to later distinguish themselves as a hard-rock, quasi-glam-rock band.

Alice Cooper band

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Procol Harum: A Salty Dog

Recorded in March 1969 and released in June 1969, this album begins with one of the finest early orchestral-based prog-rock pieces, “A Salty Dog”.  The soft cries of the sea gulls and the chromatically descending strings create the appropriate atmosphere for the narrative to follow “All hands on deck, we’ve run afloat“)  With the classic early prog-rock anthem unfolded and completed, the rest of the album continues to flirt with a nautical-based theme, and though nothing on the remaining album comes close to the first song, overall we still have an eclectic mix of blues, rock, Jamaican pop, gospel, country-rock, classical and British pop, with strong vocals, and strong musicianship.  Listen to the second track, “Milk of Human Kindness” and try to not compare to later Supertramp songs like “Bloody Well Right” — or try to ignore the simple charm of the third track “Too Much Between Us.”

The arpeggios that open “Wreck of the Hesperus” and their stubborn recurrence later,  provide the pattern for many upcoming prog-rock symphonic-style numbers, including Genesis’s “Fifth of Firth.”  The strings here, might be later replaced by synthesizers, but the basic quality is much the same.

“All This and More” is another trademark Gary Booker song, providing that dark, sinuous, introspective quality so strongly associated with Procol Harum at their best.

The slow bluesy-gospel style of the alternatively-spelled “Crucifiction Lane” anticipates some later McCartney and Lennon works like Lennon’s “She’s So Heavy” and material on Paul’s first solo album. The album ends with “Pilgrim’s Progress” which clearly influenced later prog-rock groups like Kayak and Fireballet.

All in all, an important album historically, required as necessary listening for anyone that is looking for a broad understanding of the development or post-1960s rock.

Personnel

  • Gary Brooker – lead vocals (1–4, 6, 8), piano, celeste, three-stringed guitar, bells, harmonica, recorder, wood, orchestral arrangements (1, 8)
  • Robin Trower – lead and acoustic guitars, lead vocals (9), sleigh tambourine
  • Matthew Fisher – organ, lead vocals (5, 7, 10), marimba, rhythm and acoustic guitars, piano, recorder, orchestral arrangements (7), production
  • Dave Knights – bass
  • B. J. Wilson – drums, conga drums, tabla
  • John “Kellogs” Kalinowski – bosun’s whistle, refreshments
  • Keith Reid – lyrics

 

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Blues, Blues Rock, Country Rock, Fifty Year Friday, Hard Rock, Heavy Metal, Progressive Rock

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Fifty Year Friday: Procol Harum “Procol Harum and The Doors “Strange Days”

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When I first heard Procol Harum’s “Whiter Shade Of Pale” single in the summer of 1967 on AM radio, I had assumed it was an older song, perhaps from the late 1950s.  I was now twelve years old, but still musically very naive with no musical training except listening to AM radio and my very limited 45 collection assembled from the occasional 45 my grandfather gave me (he worked for Firestone and somehow he would sometimes get unused 45’s from the late 1950s) or from one of the few 45s my dad had purchased including two or three 45s of Ethel Merman and cast singing songs from “Annie Get Your Gun”, a Stan Kenton 45 of “Artistry in Rhythm” and a 45 with “Third Man Theme.”

“Whiter Shade of Pale” came and went on the Billboard charts, and I never gave the song or the group much thought, until later in life, when my next door neighbor brought over their “Grand Hotel” album.  Well, better late than never, and eventually I purchased their “Salty Dog” album, the A&M reissue of the first album, and their album with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra.  This would be one of those rock groups that didn’t neatly fall into the progressive rock category, and one group that I was never particularly head-over-heels excited with, but I respected and appreciated for the well-written lyrics and well-crafted and arranged compositions.

Their first album, “Procol Harum”, was released around September 1967.  The original North American version on Deram includes “Whiter Shade of Pale” and omits “Good Captain Clack”, (also found on the b-side of the “Homborg” single), however the A&M 1972 reissue includes all the tracks of the original UK album plus “Good Captain Clack.”

Gary Booker’s dark baritone voice, along with his keyboards, Matthew Fisher’s Cimmerian organ, Robin Tower’s expressive guitar work and the high quality of Keith Reid’s lyrics and Booker’s compositions make this an engaging album.  Highlights include “Whiter Shade of Pale” (included on CDs and on the American LPs), “Conquistador” and “She Wandered Through the Garden Gate”, the guitar passages on “Cerdes” and “A Christmas Carol”, the organ and guitar in “Kaleidoscope”, the organ accompaniment and solos in “Salad Days”, and the Matthew Fisher composition, “Repent Walpurgis” which includes a Bach piano interlude and a couple of notable Trower guitar solos.

Track listing[from Wikipedia]

All tracks written by Gary Brooker and Keith Reid, except as noted.

Side A
No. Title Length
1. “Conquistador“ 2:42
2. “She Wandered Through the Garden Fence” (two versions of this song were released—one with a “firm” ending, not a fade-out) 3:29
3. “Something Following Me” 3:40
4. “Mabel” 1:55
5. “Cerdes (Outside the Gates Of)” 5:07
Side B
No. Title Writer(s) Length
1. “A Christmas Camel” 4:54
2. “Kaleidoscope” 2:57
3. “Salad Days (Are Here Again)” (from the film Separation, 1968) 3:44
4. “Good Captain Clack” 1:32
5. “Repent Walpurgis” Matthew Fisher 5:05

US version

Side A
No. Title Writer(s) Length
1. “A Whiter Shade of Pale“ Brooker, Fisher, Reid 4:04
2. “She Wandered Through the Garden Fence” 3:18
3. “Something Following Me” 3:37
4. “Mabel” 1:50
5. “Cerdes (Outside the Gates Of)” 5:04
Side B
No. Title Writer(s) Length
1. “A Christmas Camel” 4:48
2. “Conquistador” 2:38
3. “Kaleidoscope/Salad Days (Are Here Again)” 6:31
4. “Repent Walpurgis” Fisher 5:05
German version

Personnel[edit]

Procol Harum
Additional personnel
Technical
  • Simon Platz – executive producer (for Fly Records)
  • Eddy Offord, Frank Owen, Gerald Chevin, Keith Grant, Laurence Burridge – engineer

1967 had plenty of colorful, bright shimmering bands providing technicolor, rainbow-glistening music with plenty of upper register sunlight.  Procol Harum and the Doors provide a notably contrasting, distinctively dark, often gloomy, sound. They are more Mahler than Mozart, more Buxtehude than Vivaldi.  Even the bright spots, “Like People Are Strange” on the Doors second album, absorbs more light than it radiates.

“Strange Days” opens up with a repeating pattern anticipating German space rock, seetting an austere bleakness that is carried throughout the album.  The bass guitar intro that opens up “You’re Lost Little Girl” comes from dark subterranean underground caverns, supplemented by atmospheric and Morrison’s moog-synthesizer processed baritone vocals.

The dark, reflective music continues through the album.  “Horse Latitude” breaks the mood as it is more indulgent than germane to the overall mood of the album.  “People Are Strange” is more melodic and accessible, more catchy than indispensable, and more of a commercial single than an essential part of the album’s broad fabric, providing relief by breaking the general mood as well as providing an effective mood-based modulation to the upbeat “My Eyes Have Seen You.”  Elements of dusk and darkness resume with “I Can’t See Your Face in My Mind” and are nicely concluded with the final track, a nearly 11 minute psychedelic, expansive “When the Music’s Over” with its moog synthesizer, organ and Fender Rhode’s piano bass.

The lyrics, are dark, but at times spirited and environmentally militant.  Does Morrison foreshadow his death or the death of our environment?

“When the music’s over
When the music’s over
When the music’s over
Turn out the lights
Turn out the lights
Turn out the lights”
….
“Before I sink
Into the big sleep
I want to hear
I want to hear
The scream of the butterfly
…
“What have they done to the earth?
What have they done to our fair sister?
Ravaged and plundered and ripped her and bit her
Stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn
And tied her with fences and dragged her down
I hear a very gentle sound
With your ear down to the ground
We want the world and we want it…
We want the world and we want it…
Now
Now?
Now! “
…

 

Track listing[from Wikipedia]

All tracks written by The Doors (Jim Morrison, Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger, and John Densmore).

Side A
No. Title Length
1. “Strange Days“ 3:11
2. “You’re Lost Little Girl” 3:03
3. “Love Me Two Times“ 3:18
4. “Unhappy Girl” 2:02
5. “Horse Latitudes“ 1:37
6. “Moonlight Drive“ 3:05
Side B
No. Title Length
7. “People Are Strange“ 2:13
8. “My Eyes Have Seen You” 2:32
9. “I Can’t See Your Face in My Mind” 3:26
10. “When the Music’s Over” 10:58

Personal (from Wikipedia)

(Note: Not credited in Wikipedia, but there is clearly a moog synthesizer on the last track, “When the Music’s Over.”)

Previous Fifty Year Friday Posts:

The Beatles

Fifty Year Friday: Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington

Arthur Rubinstein/Pink Floyd

Marta Argerich and Carlos Paredes

Jimi Hendrix

David Bowie, Marc Bolan, John’s Children

John Coltrane/Jefferson Airplane

Thelonious Monk/McCoy Tyner

Hindustani Classical Music

The Doors

The Velvet Underground

Aretha Franklin/Simon Dupree and the Big Sound

Mahler recordings

Rolling Stones

Zappa/Beefheart

 

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Fifty Year Friday, Music, Progressive Rock, Rock

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