Procol Harum Bonus Tracks
Further news on the the Fly Records and Salvo reissues of the first four Procol Harum albums as mentioned on Wednesday. As said, the first two, Procol Harum and Shine on Brightly are already out, but the classic A Salty Dog and Home are to be released on May 18th (2009).
As with all these superlative Fly reissues – the recent The Move ones being textbook examples of how these things should be done – they come with a host of bonus tracks to keep the connoisseur and completist happy.
1967′s Procol Harum boasts eleven bonus tracks alongside the original remastered album, including the perennial singles ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ and ‘Homburg’, plus the unreleased ‘Understandably Blue’, originally written for Dusty Springfield and regarded as Gary Brooker and Keith Reid’s lost masterpiece. There’s also an early instrumental version of ‘Pandora’s Box’, which would later be re-recorded for 1975′s Procol’s Ninth, going on to reach No. 16 in the UK charts.
1968′s Shine on Brightly also has eleven bonus tracks to delight, including the original 1967 version of the sumptuous ‘Magdalene (My Regal Zonophone)’ and two other Head Full of Snow faves, the humorous ‘I Seem to Have the Blues (Most All the Time)’ and the split-personality tale of ‘Monsieur Armand’. There’s also ‘McGregor’, the final Procol song to be produced by Denny Cordell and an unreleased backing track, ‘A Robe of Silk’, long a hot topic of rumour between Procol Harum fans.
The yet to be released A Salty Dog, from 1969, has six bonus tracks on offer, four of which are live tracks recorded in the US at the time of the original album’s release. If you’ve heard the live disc included on The Move Anthology then you’ll know that the sound quality should be of a tip-top standard. There is also the first take of ‘The Milk of Human Kindness’ , which has come from a tape box marked 31st January 1969. This track, in its rawest form, promises to be a good example of the band’s recording process.
Which brings us to the final release – until Salvo and Strongman Productions reissue the remaining Procol Harum albums – which is 1970′s Home. This has two bonus tracks to offer (the only ones approved by the band), which are raw versions of the splendidly misanthropic ‘Still There’ll Be More’ from the Chris Thomas produced sessions at Abbey Road, and a work-in-progress taken from PYE Studios of ‘Whaling Stories’. Once again these promise to illustrate the recording process, from the very early stages of laying down tracks.
Head Full of Snow can’t wait for these last two to be released, particularly A Salty Dog, and reviews of all four albums will be posted in the future.
See also:
Procol Harum debut album reissue
Procol Harum – Shine on Brightly
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