Fresh Fruit 20

Although Procol Harum owed their career to their initial single, "A Whiter Shade of Pale," they were never really a singles band. Annotator Chris Welch notes that the group was not a one-hit wonder, but it might be called a three-hit wonder by tossing in "Homburg" and "Conquistador" (four, if "Pandora's Box," a U.K. Top 20, is included). For the most part, Procol Harum were known for their LPs, so the idea of organizing a compilation around singles that happen to have been excerpted from those LPs, largely without the band's say-so, in one country or another, is a curious one…

During the mid-seventies, the Hamburg-based band Novalis established themselves as leaders in the field of German-language romantic rock. The quartet called itself Novalis after the most important German poet of early romanticism. They created a rock music of poetic, lyrical with german lyrics and instrumental beauty. Their music, a heavy organ rock, was compared to the sounds of bands such King Crimson and Pink Floyd. They released a few albums of lush, keyboard-dominant prog rock during the seventies. The keyboards created majestic layers on which the guitar builds airy melodies.