Procol headline at Fillmore East

23 - 24 April 1971

Why did we bother to post this New York Times review when it barely mentions Procol Harum at all? Compare this with the same author's report on Procol at the Fillmore in 1969, where Bach borrowings were a bit before their time ... and read Frans Steensma's additional report below.

Rock Beat altered by Winter Consort: Mike Jahn, New York Times, 1971

Two of the most prominent schools of rock might be called Pure Excitement and Texture.

Most of the groups passing through are the former. There is nothing wrong with excitement. That emotion was the main reason for the birth of rock in the first place. Rock was more exciting, in 1955, than Rosemary Clooney.

The Texture school has developed more recently., Such groups as Jefferson Airplane, and particularly the Grateful Dead, built their appeal around interwoven fibers of differing tones, colors, sensations. It was called 'head music' or 'psychedelic rock' at one point, but now those names seem inappropriate. Texture is more workable.

The development of this school led inevitably to jazz and classical music. The Winter Consort, which played this weeke3d at the Fillmore East, is one of the high points of the texture school, as it blends so many things so well: jazz, Mid-Eastern folk music, pieces of Bach and Bartók, and African music among them.

It isn't rock. It doesn't have the requisite incessant beat. But the Texture school is so well-liked now - the Grateful Dead plays the Fillmore tonight through Thursday - that the Winter Consort goes well.

On a bill with Teegarden & Van Winkle and Procol Harum, Paul Winter's group drew much applause. The band's duets - between guitar and flute, guitar and table, table and bass, for example, were exquisite.

Thanks, John Overall

Thanks to Beverly Peyton for the Guest Pass from this gig and to Karl Baker for the graphic

The date with Winter Consort and Teagarden & Van Winkle consisted of two nights (April 23 - 24, 1971).

Procol was headliner. In the official Fillmore program (Vol. III, Number 23) for these gigs there's only five lines devoted to Procol, but this time it's at least correct information:

That's all - Winter Consort and Teagarden & Van Winkle get twice as many lines!

Two brownish printed pictures of Procol in the booklet: one well-known, in some art gallery (Reid in the foreground), and a full page ad by A&M for the Broken Barricades album.

  Thanks, Frans Steensma: more of his writings at BtP