Barclay James Harvest Live Tapes

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)…

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…

This originally 2-LP is my introduction to Barclay James Harvest. I was searching for progrock in a record store and my eyes felt on the inner sleeve of that 2-LP.

Esoteric Recordings are pleased to announce the release of a re-mastered and expanded deluxe two-disc edition of the classic 1993 album by Barclay James Harvest, "Caught In The Light". The album was the band’s last album to be issued by Polydor Records in the UK and was a highlight of their later work.
Featuring excellent material such as ‘Who Do We Think We Are?’, ‘A Matter of Time’, ‘Knoydart’, ‘Back to Earth’ and ‘Ballad of Denshaw Mill’, this re-mastered edition also includes the full version of ‘Forever Yesterday’ (only released on the cassette edition of the album) and a bonus track of the rare German promotional edit of ‘Who Do We Think We Are?’.
Significantly, this expanded Deluxe edition features a bonus CD of unreleased live material recorded at the band’s 25th Anniversary concert at the Town & Country Club, London on 16th February 1992…

Cut live at the Reichstag in the German city, Berlin is very different from The Live Tapes, with a rather leaner, harder-rocking sound, and more of a dance-rock feel as well, and is also miked much closer for a more intimate sound…

Punk's rise in Britain seemed to be leading to the demise of Barclay James Harvest, the fate awaiting so many of the island's veteran rock bands. Although 1976's Octoberon had finally pushed the band into the U.K. Top 20, it was all downhill from there, as the group's follow-ups in 1977 and 1978 landed ever lower in the listings, something that Barclay James Harvest's shift to a brighter, more American sound did nothing to prevent…

Barclay James Harvest was, for many years, one of the most hard luck outfits in progressive rock. A quartet of solid rock musicians John Lees, guitar, vocals; Les Holroyd, bass, vocals; Stuart "Wooly" Wolstenholme, keyboards, vocals; and Mel Pritchard, drums with a knack for writing hook-laden songs built on pretty melodies, they harmonized like the Beatles and wrote extended songs with more of a beat than the Moody Blues.

Esoteric Recordings are pleased to announce a newly remastered edition of the 1987 album by BARCLAY JAMES HARVEST, "Glasnost”. The album was recorded at Treptower Park, East Berlin on 14th July 1987 at a time of great change in Eastern Europe, prior to the reunification of Germany…