I still love “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” and “Whisky Train,” and “Shine On Brightly,” and “Homburg,” and “Repent Walpurgis,” but not so much “Conquistador.” I mean, I wouldn’t go so far as to kick it out of bed, although I might give it the bum’s rush out the door afterwards, saying, “Get down!/Get up!/Get out!” like Rod Stewart in “Stay With Me.” This love for Procol Harum flies in the face of everything I know about myself, because the lads from Southend-on-Sea, Essex, formed perhaps the first prog-baroque-symphonic rock band (their second LP, 1968’s Shine On Brightly, included the groundbreaking 17-minute “In Held ‘Twas in I”) and my general feeling for such bands is summed up by the hoary Russian adage, “Your German: He may be a nice enough fellow. It never fails to transport me to a Magic Mountain in the remotest Alps of my mental circuitry, thanks to Matthew Fisher’s impossibly baroque and ethereal didgeridoo and-what’s that?-Fisher isn’t playing the didgeridoo? He’s playing the… organ? You’re kidding, right? That’s not a didgeridoo? Well I’ll be a purple-assed baboon’s nether regions. Speaking solely for myself-and John Lennon, who considered it the one song of the period that wasn’t crap, and who called it “that dope song… You play it when you take some acid and… whoooooooo” - Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale” is one of those extremely rare songs of which I’ve never tired.
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