Procol Harum Album: “Whiter Shade of Pale [JVC Japan]”

This, their debut album, originally came out in 1967 incredibly without the great track "Whiter Shade of Pale" which borrows heavily from a melody by J.S. Bach but is still a memorable tune and the one by which this band is most remembered for. This version comes in a mini-lp replica sleeve and has been remastered pretty well given the poor state of the original master tapes. The great heavily underrated guitarist, Robin Trower, puts on a good performance here before breaking out on his own solo career soon after. This band sounds a lot like Steppenwolf although a little less hard and has also been compared with The Doors although I believe the similarities are less obvious. Great debut, okay sound quality and great mlps packaging.

New CD from Japan by Cube Records delivers classic songs from the British rock group Procol Harum, with what seems to be flawless audio quality. Their huge, timeless classic "A Whiter Shade of Pale" never sounded better! And, this is followed by their other big hit in the USA, "Conquistador." Comes with a shiny, miniature paper jacket with design from the original album cover and four extra songs not listed on the jacket: "Lime Street Blues," "Homburg," "Monsieur Armand," and "Seem to Have the Blues All the Time." It would have been nice if all of the extra written material provided with the CD, instead of just some of it, was in English as well as in Japanese. The very high monaural audio quality and the attractive protective jacket (written in English) more than compensate for this one shortcoming, however, and anyone getting this CD is still likely to be very pleased.