Barclay+james+harvest

BBC in Concert is one of those miraculous archival finds that one just can't anticipate and dares not hope for. Apart from Yes (always the exception to a lot of rules), very few progressive rock bands managed to get themselves recorded live under optimum conditions, much less so early in their careers…

Live (1974). Though it seems odd that a live album could serve as a band's breakthrough release, Live shows the band clearly building upon the strengths of their previous studio albums while avoiding their excesses. Without a string section to back them up - or to smother them, depending on your thinking - the band draws more heavily on its rhythm section and on the tonal colorings of Wolstenholme's Mellotron, the latter most clearly on "The Great 1974 Mining Disaster." The rich harmonies, political content, and poignant twang of John Lees songs like "For No One" come across here with the same kind of ragged majesty as Neil Young's live work. And an epic-length "Medicine Man," unburdened of its heavy orchestral arrangement and beefed up with a newly emphasized guitar and drum parts, reveals the brawn lurking beneath the lassitude of the studio version…

Yes, a strange compilation excluding many of the most well-known songs from the great British prog-melodic rock group. The tracks featured are taken from the late 1970's and 1980's when the band was trying to come to terms with the loss of founder member Wooly Wolstenholme and venture into a more popular sound…

Barclay James Harvest's sensibly titled debut album was one of the unsung classics of the late '60s, a post-psychedelic pop album that posits a peculiar collision between the Bee Gees' vision of classic grandeur and the heftier sounds leaking out of the rock underground…

If you are a fan of Barclay James Harvest, or are an uninitiated soul looking for a good introduction to one of the worlds most underrated bands, then look no further than "Caught In the Light"! This is a brilliant album from start to finish…

This double-live CD, made on BJH's last tour with Wooly Wolstenholme, is one of the better live albums to come out of the progressive rock genre. Though not as exciting as Genesis Live or as majestic as Yessongs, it shows the group in excellent form, playing and harmonizing beautifully and doing many of their best songs, among them "Child of the Universe," "Rock and Roll Star," "Poor Man's Moody Blues," "For No One," and "Mockingbird" (the latter never sounded more beautiful)…

Stuart John Wolstenholme (15 April 1947 – 13 December 2010), usually known as Woolly Wolstenholme, was vocalist and keyboard player with the British progressive rock band Barclay James Harvest. His first instrument was a tenor banjo, which he took up at the age of twelve, and he also played tenor horn for the Delph band. He met John Lees at Oldham School Of Art and Woolly played tambourine and sang with John in The Sorcerers, then The Keepers, where Woolly played whatever instrument was required, such as harmonica and twelve-string guitar.

This is compilation of BJH starting from when they left EMI's Harvest label in the mid 1970's. It therefore covers the period from their first Polydor album, "Everyone is everybody else". Unlike most stories, this one begins somewhere in the middle with a single edit of the title track from the "Ring of changes" album. The Harvest years are represented only by a later live version of the perennial "Mocking bird" taken from their famous Berlin concert. The overriding concern here is that the compilation purports to tell the "Story" of BJH.