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10/6/10

Music Break: Procol Harum

A Whiter Shade of Pale...

Early Music Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PmisbzxwoQ

4 comments:

  1. This song used to play through the speakers of Wade's Market almost every night back in 1986-87 when I, coincidentally, spent a LOT of my nights working the c-shift loading spaghetti sauce and cat litter onto shelves...actually it only went through one speaker; I only know that because when "When I'm Sixty-Four" came on all I heard was the woodwinds until "Weeee Shalll Scrimpppp and Saveeeee..."

    Anyway, I for a while assumed this was Van Morrison (and it fits that you post it now because I've been on a serious Van kick for a couple weeks- just keep playing the "Wavelength" album over and over-but eventually I found out about Gary Brooker and Procol Harum.

    A lot of people hate their early jobs, it seems...but to me it was great; I stocked shelves in the wee hours (which, yeah, sucked sometimes) but the people I worked with were cool and interesting, and I got to learn a LOT about music then. Watch a guy dance down the aisle on milk crates in perfect time to "Mr. Spaceman" and you'll know your sorta destined to listen to this stuff and care about it.

    Anyway, sir, my favorite all-time rock singles are this one, and the Marcels' "Blue Moon". They have been forever, and if you ask me why I'll be at a loss to explain.

    That's how it works.

    Extremely cool music break, JR!

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  2. ...And though I didn't mention the video, it's perfect and it gives me the chills.

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  3. This is one of my all time favorite songs also. I'm a sucker for Hammond B-3 organ in all genres. It's so cool to me that the lyrics, based on English Literature (Chaucer), sung with a good vocalist was combined with such an organ that was put down when it was first manufactured. Originally an electric organ meant to simulate pipe organ for churches and snubbed, popular music made it financially viable. How cool is that?

    I actually liked my early jobs a whole lot better than ones I had until the one I have now, which in many way reminds me of my early jobs! Somewhere in the mid-nineties I was forced into a managerial role and I'd rather just "do the work." In that sense, the economic crisis has benefited me, I don't have that role any more and can do "just a job," which with me is of course always more than that, by way of my nature of making things more interesting than the just the job functions. (hmmm...I wonder if that last sentence just made sense.)

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  4. Oh...and Procol Harum, the Animals, the Stones and other British Invasion groups had the advantage of some great concept video productions by English film producers, creating the first true music videos.

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