I've been continuing to blast my ears with Procul Harum, the 1971 vintage, in odd breaks at work and, alongside enjoying a superb band, have been trying to figure out if it was B.J. Wilson, their drummer who made a deeply profound impression on me in my early years of attending live concerts. I have this incredibly powerful memory of seeing a band in concert with the drum riser placed centre and upfront and me looking down from the circle (second level at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester) utterly mesmerised by the sheer drama of the drummer's playing. I'm pretty sure this was the first time I'd ever really picked out a single musician in concert and made them the fulcrum of my consciousness of the great noise they were part of. Even watching early Crimson it was the totality of the sound that did it for me. But this time my listening, in tandem with the visual, visceral power of it all, went up a level or, possibly, two.
The thing is, that it could be I'm remembering the excellent Mel Pritchard, the drummer with Barclay James Harvest - a fine live combo. Having said that, I can't think of BJH, for all their many virtues, having quite the same variety of tempi that PH indulged in. And it's difficult to think of any drummer quite as visually expressive as Barrie Wilson. Also, in the numbers I gave links to from Procul's Beat-Club performance the other day he's very much front and centre. Just to add to those, I thought I'd better post a link to Powerfailure, a stunning drum-feature, if ever there was one, and Shine On Brightly, in which the playing is flawless in terms of providing exactly the right dynamics at exactly the right moments. Those fills!
Oh, and here's a bit of an erratum. It turns out that Simple Sister is a Brooker/Reid song after all despite that great guitar riff. Surely Gary must have copped it from Robin Trower at some point in their jamming?
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