Procol Harum

Beyond
the Pale

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Procol Harum in Croydon, UK

Fairfield Halls : 25 May 2002


  Brooker, Brzezicki, Fisher, Pegg, Whitehorn

Bringing Home the Bacon ('Opus 85 in B flat')
Piggy Pig Pig
Pandora's Box
Magdalene (My Regal Zonophone)
Harlequin
Homburg
The King of Hearts
As Strong as Samson 
Seem to Have the Blues (Most All of the Time)
Imagine (Lennon)
Wizard Man
A Rum Tale
She Wandered Through the Garden Fence
Whaling Stories
Monsieur R Monde
Theme from Separation ('Opus minus 1')
Ten Thousand Souls
Beyond the Pale
A Whiter Shade of Pale (3 verses)

encore … after a long, long ovation

Repent Walpurgis

Why no scanned set-list on this occasion? Because none was in evidence …

Gary was suffering with a bad throat and he selected material, apparently extempore, in order to suit or spare his voice as required.

At the start he came on with two folders of songs, and announced that 'tonight we will play songs from The Book of Orchids'.

'Orchids' is of course a near-anagram of 'chords', but it was evident (thanks to the Richard Beck memorial opera glasses) that this folder was in fact named after the Procol Harum orchid (story here), a picture of which adorned its front cover.

Some numbers heard in sound-check, such as Grand Hotel, were not offered on the night. And it seemed – from the now-standard spoken introduction about 'people no longer with us' – that we were to have heard A Salty Dog as an encore, although what ensued was Repent Walpurgis.

 

If you were at this gig, please send us, pictures, memorabilia, interviews and so forth!

20

Songs altogether:

2

From Procol Harum

1

from Shine on Brightly

0

From  A Salty Dog

2

From  Home

0

from  Broken Barricades

2

From  Grand Hotel

3

From Exotic Birds and Fruit

1

from Procol's Ninth

1

From Something Magic

1

From The Prodigal Stranger

6

non-album tracks

1

Non-originals

Notable points: no Conquistador, Shine on Brightly, A Salty Dog, Grand Hotel; two highly unexpected 'tangential items': the Brooker/Reid Harlequin, originally recorded by the Hollies, and Matthew Fisher's Separation (probably given its live première last year by The Palers' Band); one entirely new Procol Harum song, Ten Thousand Souls. Imagine was evidently unpremeditated, but we got a full verse and (after a hilarious hiatus) a full chorus too.


Interesting choice of support act. Tim Rose, who performed for 30 minutes, is the US singer-songwriter of mid-60s fame: in a June 1967 BBC broadcast Procol covered Morning Dew, which Rose adapted (not wrote: the author is Canada's Bonnie Dobson: see here).

Even though Procol Harum then contained only one player from the Home era, their cover nonetheless sounded considerably like a warm-up for Still There'll Be More


Have a look at other set-lists

Procol Harum concerts in 2002: index page

Analysis of all the set-lists from this tour


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