Procol Harum — and yep, the cod Latin name is a giveaway — made a career from purloining classical music riffs and appending to them words which sounded meaningful but were, rather, pretentious drivel of the most risible kind. Harum was one of the first bands to be allowed to indulge their craving for high seriousness by performing in concert with a classical orchestra, which they did for A Salty Dog, their concept album about boats and stuff. They had a couple of minor hits with the similarly Bach-inspired ‘Homburg’, ‘Pandora’s Box’ and the rather likeable and catchy ‘Conquistador’, the latter a piece of cute rhythm and blues reminiscent of the Zombies which showed how good Harum might have been had they stuck to the basics. A later single, ‘Souvenir of London’, had no Bach influences at all and took as its subject matter venereal disease; after that there was pretty much nothing, just blissful decades of utter silence. Think of them as their John Cage years.

¶ 9:16 AM