Procol Rarum • BtP's Brooker / Reid plaque presentation

Saturday 21 July 2007 • London, England

Click here to listen to the onstage presentation, at St John's Smith Square in London on 21 July 2007
– by Roland and Jens from 'Beyond the Pale' on behalf of Procol Harum fans worldwide – of two
Bristol Blue Glass trophies for Gary Brooker and Keith Reid, commemorating over forty years of Unique Entertainment.

Picture by Jeremy Gilien from Los Angeles

'Beyond the Pale':
Gary Brooker and Keith Reid! (Applause; Brooker and Reid come on stage like sparring partners and shadow-box for a few moments) Men who have enriched the world. In this country – as you will know if you've been good tourists in London – in this country when artists do great work the British public [sic] puts up a Blue Plaque on the wall to say what these people are and what they did.

But we don't do that while they're still working, if I can put it like that, and as you know Brooker and Reid are still working. The last song we heard last night I think was written in the last week (GB mutters something off-mic) and there was one that was written tonight as well. Long may it continue.

So we can't do a Blue Plaque exactly but ... 'Beyond the Pale' is partly Norwegian and partly English: Norway is famous for glass, and Bristol, where I come from, is famous for Bristol Blue Glass. So with that in mind ... we've got you a couple of pizzas.

[Laughter. Enter Allen 'One-Eye' Edelist (pictured, right) in the garb of a pizza-delivery person, carrying the two glass plaques in presentation boxes of pizzoidal dimensions] (GB, off mic: 'Wow, pizzas ... thank you, Sir'). Applause as the plaques are held up.

Gary Brooker:
I don't know if this is on (oh, it is) ... I'm sure on behalf of Keith and myself we'd like to thank Roland and Jens very much ... I mean um, you know ... they've helped us over the last few years. They've helped bring everybody together whenever we're playing somewhere, or we're doing something, then these days everybody knows, and that's why a lot of you are here in London this weekend, I'm sure.

So that, if it was the only thing that happened, would be worth it, but there is of course a lot more than that that happens as well. So we do appreciate their great work, and all their forerunners, like John Grayson and Diane Rolph, and Michael Henshaw, who was our accountant in 1967 (laughter). A fine plaque!

Keith Reid:
Yes, I would say um ... had a ... fantastic for me because first of all I did nothing, listened to some great music, and I got a gift as well (laughter). So I had the best gig of all.

Picture by Martin Awsop from Barcelona in Spain

Picture by Jeremy Gilien from Los Angeles

The BtP team with Brooker and Reid

Gary Brooker, holding his plaque, responds. Keith Reid looks on


Keith's plaque (left) and Gary's plaque (right)

	Left ... the kind of commemorative plaque referred to in the comments on stage. (Roland from BtP was involved in fund-raising for the rebuilding of Shakespeare's Globe, at Sam Wanamaker's invitation, in days before 'Beyond the Pale'). Will Brooker and Reid ever earn genuine English Heritage plaques? To be eligible, the celebrity must have been dead a score of years, or have passed their hundredth birthday; they must be rated high by fellow professionals, have made an outstanding impact on the welfare or happiness of mankind, deserving national recognition. The plaques are generally erected on the actual buildings inhabited by the persons they memorialise. There are plenty of musicians thus commemorated in London, and they're not all British: famously, Handel and Hendrix have plaques on adjacent houses in Brook Street, Mayfair. 'A plaque on both their houses', as it were.

Five months after the presentation, Gary posed with the plaque at home in his barn / studio for 'Beyond the Pale'. We hope to get a snap of Keith with his when the moment arises.

Procol dates in 2007 | More about the 40th Anniversary celebrations