Procol Harum (Liquorice John Death) - Ain't Nothin' to Get Excited About (1970)

Normally, I have a rule of not posting an album that is the same as the officially released version. But I'm making an exception here because of the obscurity of this one. The reason it's so obscure is because it was performed by the British band Procol Harum, but they didn't use their name for reasons I'll explain, and it only came out decades after it was recorded.

Procol Harum started with a bang. Their debut single in 1967, "A Whiter Shade of Pale," was a massive worldwide hit. But they actually started around 1960 as the Paramounts, a rhythm and blues cover band. Gary Brooker was the lead singer and Robin Trower was the lead guitarist from the very start. They had a minor hit in Britain in 1963 with a cover of "Poison Ivy." But by 1966, they realized they were rapidly falling out of style. So they changed the name and switched to doing all originals.

In 1969, Procol Harum had some personnel changes. Two band members left and one former member of the Paramounts joined. The band members realized they once again had the exact same line-up as the Paramounts line-up for many years, minus one member. In January 1970, the band had a studio recording session for their next album. One night, they started feeling nostalgic for their years as the Paramounts. Instead of working on new songs, they spend many hours playing all the covers they could remember that they used to do as the Paramounts. They played almost forty songs. Everything was recorded, but most of them were discarded for one reason or another, such as forgetting the lyrics or stopping before the finish. 

But still, there were a bunch of songs they thought sounded good, enough for an album. However, Procol Harum was known for their original styles done in a progressive rock style. They never did covers on their albums and almost never did them in concert. Putting out an all-covers album didn't make sense for their career at that point. Furthermore, the tape of the recordings soon got lost. It wasn't recovered until the late 1990s. 

This album of covers was finally released in 2005. But even then, instead of releasing it under the Procol Harum name, they decided to release under the name "Liquorice John Death." This was a tribute to a friend of the band who knew them back in the early 1960s, hated the name Paramounts, and had suggested that other name instead.

I've used the officially released album cover. But that cover didn't mention "Procol Harum" at all. So I added that in a big font size at the top.

This album is very different from everything else released by Procol Harum, but I think it's pretty interesting. 

This album is 40 minutes long.

01 High School Confidential (Procol Harum)
02 Kansas City (Procol Harum)
03 Lucille (Procol Harum)
04 Brand New Cadillac (Procol Harum)
05 Matchbox (Procol Harum)
06 Breathless (Procol Harum)
07 Everything I Do Is Wrong (Procol Harum)
08 Old Black Joe (Procol Harum)
09 Shopping for Clothes (Procol Harum)
10 Well, I... (Procol Harum)
11 I'm Ready (Procol Harum)
12 The Girl Can't Help It (Procol Harum)
13 Keep A-Knockin' (Procol Harum)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16182495/PROCLHRM1970_AntNthintoGtExctdAbt_atse.zip.html

As I mentioned above, I used the official cover art, but I added the "Procol Harum" name at the top. Also, the names of the band members were mentioned. I removed those names in favor of the band name.

Isle of Wight Festival, Afton Down, Isle of Wight, Britain, 8-27-1970 to 8-30-1970 - 8-28-1970: Part 4: Family, Procol Harum & Cactus

This is the final album from August 28, 1970 of the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival. Three bands are featured here, but most of the songs were performed by Procol Harum.

Given that most or all of the festival's music was professionally recorded, I don't know why some parts of it has been made public and other parts of it have not. Fourteen songs were released on the album "The First Great Rock Festivals of the Seventies" in 1971, including one by Procol Harum and two by Cactus. But somehow most of the Procol Harum set has come out on bootleg with excellent sound, and none of the Cactus set has.

Only three songs from the Family set have emerged, with varying levels of quality. "The Weaver's Answer" sounds particularly good because it was included in the documentary movie about the festival, "Message to Love." I have read that a couple more songs they played are out there with worthy sound quality, "Procession" and "Drowned in Wine," but I can't find them. If you have them, please let me know so I can add them in.

Unfortunately, even with Procol Harum, this is only a partial set. It is known these songs were also played: "Whisky Train," "Conquistador," a medley of 1950s hits "Go! Go! Go!," "High School Confidential," and "Lucille," and the finale, "Whaling Stories." It's a particular shame no recording of that 1950s medley has emerged, because the band almost never played cover versions, and there are no recordings of them performing that anywhere else.

Procol Harum's lead singer Gary Brooker later commented that the band generally enjoyed the festival, despite it being cold when they played: "Of course it was cold while we were waiting to go on, but once you are playing you soon get hot and sweaty. I really enjoyed playing there, it was not a bit like an American festival. Their festivals are into politics as much as the music and they tend to go on for a whole weekend without a break because it does not get cold at night. It was nice to play to an audience who had come solely for the music, in the most part."

Here's what Cactus drummer Carmine Appice had to say about the festival:

“The thing that I remember the most is the fact that we were hanging out a lot backstage with [Jimi] Hendrix. Everybody had little areas where they hung out. I remember a lot of jamming going on, with guitars and lots of banging on tabletops. At these festivals there was always a lot of drugs. We used to drink a sip of wine backstage, and you didn’t know – sometimes it would have mescaline in it or something weird. Everybody was smoking pot. ... It was cold, it was rainy. I think it was damp and foggy. I think the Isle of Wight was a bit of a disaster. That was the drag of being a headliner of those kind of festivals – by the time you go on it’s like the wee hours of the morning and your audience is going away. Look at Hendrix playing Woodstock – he had nobody there. Whereas Santana played when the place was packed."

This album is 48 minutes long. Just the Procol Harum portion is 30 minutes long.

51 Strange Band (Family)
52 Good News, Bad News (Family)
53 Weaver's Answer (Family)
54 Still There'll Be More (Procol Harum)
55 Wish Me Well (Procol Harum)
56 talk (Procol Harum)
57 The Devil Came from Kansas (Procol Harum)
58 Shine On Brightly (Procol Harum)
59 talk (Procol Harum)
60 Your Own Choice (Procol Harum)
61 talk (Procol Harum)
62 Juicy John Pink (Procol Harum)
63 A Salty Dog (Procol Harum)
64 No Need to Worry (Cactus)
65 Parchman Blues (Cactus)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15584811/IsleofWghtFestivlAftnDwnIsleofWghtBrtain__8-28-1970_Pt4ProclHarm.zip.html

The cover photo is of Gary Brooker of Procol Harum, from this exact concert. This was the only case for all the album covers I made for this festival where I couldn't find a good color photo. So I converted a black and white to color using the Palette computer program.

Procol Harum - BBC Sessions, Volume 5: Sight and Sound, Golders Green Hippodrome, London, Britain, 3-12-1977

This is the fifth and last of Procol Harum BBC albums I'm posting. If you were to only download one, I would suggest this one. The sound quality is excellent, a notch above some of the others. The song selection is well done as well, including some of their earlier classics they'd sometimes missed on their last few BBC albums, especially their signature song "A Whiter Shade of Pale," but also including some of their later good songs not on the earlier volumes, such as their 1975 Top Twenty hit "Pandora's Box."

The band broke up later in 1977. They didn't release another studio album until 1991, so this effectively comes at the end of their classic period.

The first track consists of a BBC DJ introducing the band. I cut it down, because much of it was the DJ talking about different BBC stations and programs, which isn't relevant anymore. That's why there's an "[Edit]" in the title. 

All of the performances here come from the deluxe version of the band's 1977 album "Something Magic." Except, strangely, for one: "A Salty Dog" wasn't included on that release. So that song comes from a bootleg of the show.

This concert is an hour and three minutes long. I would imagine their concerts were usually longer than that, but they had to cut them down for BBC programming purposes.

01 talk [Edit] (Procol Harum)
02 Something Magic (Procol Harum)
03 Conquistador (Procol Harum)
04 Nothing but the Truth (Procol Harum)
05 Strangers in Space (Procol Harum)
06 Grand Hotel (Procol Harum)
07 Pandora's Box (Procol Harum)
08 talk (Procol Harum)
09 Skating on Thin Ice (Procol Harum)
10 talk (Procol Harum)
11 The Mark of the Claw (Procol Harum)
12 A Salty Dog (Procol Harum)
13 Wizard Man (Procol Harum)
14 talk (Procol Harum)
15 This Old Dog (Procol Harum)
16 A Whiter Shade of Pale (Procol Harum)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16697029/PROCLHRM1977BBSessonsVolum5SghtSundGoldrsGrenHippdrme__3-12-1977_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from an appearance on a Dutch TV show in 1976.

Procol Harum - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: In Concert, Golders Green Hippodrome, London, Britain, 3-30-1974

Here's the next Procol Harum BBC album. Like the last one, it's a full concert. There's one more to go after this, another full concert from the 1970s.

This one takes place four years after the last BBC concert. In the meantime, they'd released three albums, so the song list is pretty different. The concert took place shortly before the release of the album "Exotic Birds and Fruit," so songs from that one are particularly featured.

The concert has the same format as the last one, in which the BBC DJ did all the talking between songs. Last time, that was John Peel, and this time it's Bob Harris. 

Also like last time, it seems the concert was meant to fit in an hour long time slot, because this concert is an hour and three minutes long.

01 talk (Procol Harum)
02 Conquistador (Procol Harum)
03 talk (Procol Harum)
04 Whaling Stories (Procol Harum)
05 Bringing Home the Bacon (Procol Harum)
06 talk (Procol Harum)
07 New Lamps for Old (Procol Harum)
08 talk (Procol Harum)
09 Beyond the Pale (Procol Harum)
10 talk (Procol Harum)
11 As Strong as Samson (Procol Harum)
12 talk (Procol Harum)
13 Simple Sister (Procol Harum)
14 talk (Procol Harum)
15 The Idol (Procol Harum)
16 talk (Procol Harum)
17 Grand Hotel (Procol Harum)
18 talk (Procol Harum)
19 Butterfly Boys (Procol Harum)
20 talk (Procol Harum)
21 Nothing but the Truth (Procol Harum)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16697028/PROCLHRM1974_BBSessonsVolum4InConcrtGoldrsGrenHippdrme__3-30-1974_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from an appearance on the TV show "Midnight Special" in 1973. The colors are a bit off, I think, but this was the best color photo I could find from the time period.

Procol Harum - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: John Peel's Sunday Concert, London, Britain, 6-4-1970

Starting in 1970, the BBC began broadcasting full rock concerts, and many of them were hosted by BBC DJ John Peel. This Procol Harum concert is a perfect example. One downside though is that in 1970 these shows had to fit into an hour long radio show slot. So this bootleg concert is 58 minutes long. There may have been more than has been lost since it was never broadcast.

One odd thing about these John Peel concerts is that Peel did all, or almost all, of the talking between the songs, as if the band members could only sing and not speak. That's the case here. 

The song quality of the music is very good, but not great. One problem was that the vocals weren't loud enough in the mix, in my opinion. But I used the X-Minus audio editing program to boost them all up a bit. Technically, all the songs, but not the talking, should had "[Edit]" in their titles, but you can get the point from my write up here.

Procol Harum avoided playing the two big hits they'd had by this point, "Homburg" and "A Whiter Shade of Pale." Perhaps there was more to the concert and those were encores that got cut. The concert happened right at the time the band's fourth album "Home" was released. Lead guitarist Robin Trower was still a part of the band, but he would leave a year later for a successful solo career.

01 talk (Procol Harum)
02 Still There'll Be More (Procol Harum)
03 talk (Procol Harum)
04 Wish Me Well (Procol Harum)
05 talk (Procol Harum)
06 About to Die (Procol Harum)
07 talk (Procol Harum)
08 A Christmas Camel (Procol Harum)
09 talk (Procol Harum)
10 Your Own Choice (Procol Harum)
11 talk (Procol Harum)
12 The Devil Came from Kansas (Procol Harum)
13 talk (Procol Harum)
14 Juicy John Pink (Procol Harum)
15 talk (Procol Harum)
16 Well I (Procol Harum)
17 talk (Procol Harum)
18 Nothing that I Didn't Know (Procol Harum)
19 talk (Procol Harum)
20 A Salty Dog (Procol Harum)
21 talk (Procol Harum)
22 Whisky Train (Procol Harum)
23 talk (Procol Harum)
24 Whaling Stories (Procol Harum)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15267502/ProclH_1970_BBSessionsVolume3SundyConcertLondnBritain__6-4-1970_atse.zip.html

The cover uses a publicity photo from 1970. I would have preferred to use a photo of the band in concert from around that time, but I couldn't find a good color one.

Procol Harum - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: 1968-1971

Here's the second of five BBC albums from the British band Procol Harum. Just like the first volume, all of the songs come from a series of BBC studio sessions.

Nine of these performances have been officially released as bonus tracks. The other seven (tracks 4 and 7 through 12) still sound pretty good.

There's not much else to say here. Procol Harum got lucky in that there are no examples of BBC DJs talking over the music. The song "Nothing That I Didn't Know" fades out in the middle of singing, which is a bummer, but I left it like that.

As far as I can tell, the band didn't do more BBC studio sessions after this. But they did have three full concerts broadcast by the BBC in the 1970s, so that's what the other albums in this series will consist of.

This album is 54 minutes long.

01 Skip Softly [My Moonbeams] (Procol Harum)
02 Wish Me Well (Procol Harum)
03 Long Gone Geek (Procol Harum)
04 In Held 'Twas in I (Procol Harum)
05 The Milk of Human Kindness (Procol Harum)
06 Juicy John Pink (Procol Harum)
07 Too Much Between Us (Procol Harum)
08 About to Die (Procol Harum)
09 Your Own Choice (Procol Harum)
10 Whiskey Train (Procol Harum)
11 Juicy John Pink (Procol Harum)
12 Nothing That I Didn't Know (Procol Harum)
13 Simple Sister (Procol Harum)
14 Quite Rightly So (Procol Harum)
15 Broken Barricades (Procol Harum)
16 Power Failure (Procol Harum)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16697014/PROCLHRM1968-1971_BBSssonsVolum2_atse.zip.html

The album cover comes from a 1970 publicity photo session.

Procol Harum - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1967-1968

Next up with my BBC project is the British band Procol Harum. These days, they're primarily known for their international number one hit "A Whiter Shade of Pale." But they were a classic rock band with a number of hits, especially in Britain, and a long career of albums with intelligent songs.

There's enough material for five BBC albums. This and the second one consist of songs performed in various BBC studio sessions. The remaining three albums are full concerts. That was a typical pattern, with full concerts becoming common starting in the early 1970s.

There has never been any kind of official BBC album. However, some songs have been released as bonus tracks. For this album, all but one of the songs (plus the bonus track) come from bonus tracks. 

The exception is the song"Conquistador." This recording isn't from the BBC at all. It's a key song (and a minor hit) that the band played at the BBC around this time period, but the recordings apparently didn't survive. However, I found a version performed on a French TV show without a cheering audience, so I used that. Unfortunately, for a portion of the song, the lead vocals microphone was turned off. But I was able to find another soundboard quality recording of the song (I forget from where exactly, it's been a while), and I used that to fill in the missing portion, which if I recall lasted for a verse or two. That's why that song has "[Edit]" in the title.

Speaking of "[Edit]," there are a few more songs with that in the title. These recordings are from the time period when BBC DJs were commonly talking over the music. Procol Harum got off fairly lightly, with only four songs with that problem on this album. I suspect that's because the band played for more serious BBC shows where the talking was less compared to the pop based shows where there could be talking over nearly every song.

This album is 39 minutes long, not including the bonus track.

Regarding that bonus track, the instrumental "Repent Walpurgis," it comes from the same BBC session as some others here (tracks 5 through 8), but it's officially unreleased. In this case I can understand, because the sound quality is poor. Thus it's just a bonus track.

01 Morning Dew [Edit] (Procol Harum)
02 Mabel [Edit] (Procol Harum)
03 A Whiter Shade of Pale (Procol Harum)
04 Homburg [Edit] (Procol Harum)
05 Good Captain Clack (Procol Harum)
06 She Wandered through the Garden Fence (Procol Harum)
07 Kaleidoscope (Procol Harum)
08 Conquistador [Edit] (Procol Harum)
09 Quite Rightly So (Procol Harum)
10 Ramblin' On (Procol Harum)
11 Shine On Brightly [Edit] (Procol Harum)
12 Skip Softly [My Moonbeams] (Procol Harum)

Repent Walpurgis [Instrumental] [Edit] (Procol Harum)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16697012/PROCLHRM1967-1968_BBSssonsVolum1_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from 1967. That year, it seems every band tried to wear the most colorful and outrageous looking clothes possible, and Procol Harum was no exception.