The Pale King

With William and Mary duly crowned there was more topical material available than usual, and the Stewards commissioned the best available author and composer to celebrate in ‘a very splendid Entertainment of all sorts of Vocal and Instrumental Musick’. Thomas D’Urfey included the libretto in his Pills to Purge Melancholy, describing it as ‘An Ode on the Assembly of the Nobility and Gentry of the City and County of York, at the Anniversary Feast, March the 27th, 1690. Set to Musick by Mr. Henry Purcell. One of the finest Compositions he ever made, and cost £100 the performing’. Of old, when heroes thought it base was ostensibly a history of York from Roman times onwards, but it also contained allegories of the Glorious Revolution. Despite D’Urfey’s sometimes contrived text, Purcell responds with music of high quality.

Although a psychedelic record , this album turns out to be the first progressive rock album ever made along with the Moody Blues's Days Of Future Past and Procol Harum's debut (even if the original vinyl did not have Whiter Shade Of Pale), two years before the Crimson King's In the Court of the Crimson King. Yes , without this record most of the progressive masterpieces probably would've never come out in the form we know them. One of the main flaws is the muddy sound recording qualty but we are in 1967!

From the earthy to the unearthly, the unique music and words of Gary Brooker and Keith Reid shine on brightly in this eye-opening new collection of 32 Procol Harum recordings. Covering both studio and stage, it presents superb songs from every album in the band’s illustrious five-decade career, and includes ten performances that appear on CD for the very first time.