With a trio of recent releases, Cherry Red Group’s Esoteric Recordings imprint continues to dig through the archives to reissue some of the most intriguing offerings from the prog-rock era and beyond.

John Lees founded Barclay James Harvest in 1966 with Les Holroyd, Mel Pritchard and Stuart “Wooly” Wolstenholme.  After one single for EMI’s Parlophone imprint in 1968, the progressive four-piece was moved over to the Harvest imprint.  Barclay James Harvest remained on Harvest for four LPs, but didn’t score their commercial breakthrough until a move to Polydor.  The 1974 release of Everybody is Everybody Else earned BJH critical acclaim and soon, greater commercial success followed with charting albums including Barclay James Harvest Live, Time Honoured Ghosts, Octoberon and Gone to Earth.  Though Wolstenholme departed the band in 1979, its remaining members soldiered on until a 1998 split.  That years, Lees formed John Lees’ Barclay James Harvest (with Wolstenholme among its ranks), while in 2001, Les Holroyd activated Barclay James Harvest Featuring Les Holroyd.  Both groups remain active to the present day.  (Sadly, Wolstenholme passed away in 2010.)

Esoteric has captured a 2006 performance of Lees’ group as Legacy: Live at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire – London, 2006.  The CD/DVD set features Lees on vocals and guitar and Wolstenholme on keyboards, mellotron, guitar and vocals, joined by Craig Fletcher on bass, Kevin Whitehead on drums and percussion, Mike Bramwell on keyboards and J.J. Lees on cornet.  The CD (originally issued in 2007) features 13 tracks from the November 5, 2006 show at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire, while the DVD expands the setlist to 17 songs.  These include songs such as “The Great 1974 Mining Disaster,” “The Poet” and “After the Day” which had not been performed live by any BJH incarnation in decades, as well as the live concert premiere of “Poor Wages.”  Esoteric’s edition is housed in a digipak which also contains a color booklet with credits and a brief introductory note.  Note that the region-free NTSC DVD features a 5.1 surround mix.

Harvest Records was also the home of Tea & Symphony.  Refusing to be boxed into one genre, the progressive group drew on folk, skiffle, jazz, vaudeville, rock, and classical influences – and that’s only the first track of the 1969 debut An Asylum for the Musically Insane!  Though the group’s early days had been marked by numerous line-up changes, its nucleus centered around James Langston and Jeff Daw.  The musicians and songwriters had paid their dues on the underground folk scene; they were joined by multi-instrumentalist Nigel Phillips for An Asylum.  Gus Dudgeon (David Bowie, Elton John) was selected as producer for the LP.  Dudgeon was able to take the various elements informing Tea & Symphony’s music and shape them into a unified if still challenging album that could only have been recorded in the same era as Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and Their Satanic Majesties Request.  (Sid Smith’s liner notes in Esoteric’s new reissue quote the original Disc and Music Echo review proclaiming it to be “sort of a mixture between Tyrannosaurus Rex, Third Ear Band and Scaffold gone mad.”)  Most of the material on the album was written by the band members, but a cover of Fred Neil’s “Travellin’ Shoes” made its way to the final track listing. This lost psychedelic gem has been remastered by Ben Wiseman, and features one bonus track: the non-LP single “Boredom,” originally recorded by Procol Harum.

Esoteric has also looked a couple of years ahead to the Fly Records label for the debut of the band Third World War.  Jim Avery and Terry Stamp were encouraged to write songs together by their mutual acquaintance, producer Jon Fenton.  Avery and Stamp clicked, inspired by sources as diverse as Pete Seeger and Procol Harum to create their own brand of rock most distinguished by politically incendiary lyrics.  In Malcolm Dome’s copious liner notes to Esoteric’s expanded edition, Avery admits: “Terry hated hippies, that’s certainly true.  He wasn’t into writing psychedelic type stuff.  No, what he wanted to do was to write songs about things he knew about.  And that meant the working class, because that was his background and also mine…We had nothing in common with the hippies and their peace and love.  We weren’t into experimental drugs at all.  For us, it was getting down to brass tacks.”  With Fenton, they cut their self-titled debut album and with their aggressive delivery and harsh, clipped sound earned the moniker of England’s first proto-punk rockers as they took on hunger, poverty, the law and the government with song titles like “Get Out of Bed, You Dirty Red” and “Preaching Violence.”

Vocalist/guitarist Stamp and bassist Avery were joined by lead guitarist Mick Leiber and drummer Fred Smith for Third World War as well as guest musicians including Jim Price on trumpet and trombone and the great Bobby Keys on saxophone.  Avery was responsible for the overall song arrangements, while Price wrote the brass parts, Keys handled the reed charts, and Nick Harrison scored for strings.  But despite the varied musical textures, the band’s heady lyrics to songs like “Ascension Day” (opening lyric: “Waiting on a signal/Coming down the line/Load your magazine clip/I’ll load mine”) and “MI5’s Alive” (“Let’s free the working class/We’re tired of licking the government’s arse/Let’s free the working class/We’re tired of kissing the Monarchy’s arse/Letting its bad air out”) didn’t find favor with the BBC.  Avery recalls, “They wouldn’t play us at all.  We weren’t exactly banned, but they obviously found our songs too much for them, so they hey said to us, we’d get no airplay.  Without that, we had very little exposure.”

Moving from Fly Records to Track after Fly express objections over its contents, Third World War recorded one more album before splitting up (1972’s Third World War II).  Esoteric’s reissue of the original Third World War has been transferred from the analogue tapes by Rob Keyloch and remastered by Ben Wiseman.  The booklet with Dome’s detailed essay also includes lyrics to all songs, and two bonus tracks have been appended: the single version of “Ascension Day” and the non-LP A-side “A Little Bit of Urban Rock.”

All three titles from Esoteric Recordings are available now at the links below!

John Lees’ Barclay James Harvest, Legacy: Live at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire – London, 2006 (Esoteric ECLEC 22511, 2015) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

CD:

1. Valhalla
2. For No One
3. A Child of the Universe
4. The Iron Maiden
5. The Great 1974 Mining Disaster
6. Poor Man’s Moody Blues
7. Suicide
8. Medicine Man
9. In Search of England
10. Poor Wages
11. Mockingbird
12. The Poet/After the Day
13. Hymn

DVD:

1. Valhalla (Introduction)
2. For No One
3. Child of the Universe
4. Harbour
5. The Iron Maiden
6. The Great 1974 Mining Disaster
7. Cheap the Bullet
8. Poor Man’s Moody Blues
9. Galadriel
10. Suicide
11. Medicine Man
12. In Search of England
13. Poor Wages
14. Mockingbird
15. The Poet
16. After the Day
17. Hymn

Tea & Symphony, An Asylum for the Musically Insane (Harvest SHVL 761, 1969 – reissued Esoteric Recordings ECLEC 2509, 2015) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

1. Armchair Theatre
2. Feel How So Cool the Wind
3. Sometime
4. Maybe My Mind – with Egg
5. The Come On
6. Terror (In My Soul)
7. Travellin’ Shoes
8. Winter
9. Nothing Will Come of Nothing
10. Boredom (Harvest single HAR 5005, 1969)

Third World War, Third World War (Fly Records FLY 4, 1971 – reissued Esoteric Recordings ECLEC 2512, 2015) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

1. Ascension Day
2. I.5’s Alive
3. Teddy Teeth Goes Sailing
4. Working Class Man
5. Shepherd’s Bush Cowboy
6. Stardom Road – Part I
7. Stardom Road – Part II
8. Get Out of Bed You Dirty Red
9. Preaching Violence
10. Ascension Day (Single Version) (Fly single BUG 7, 1971)
11. A Little Bit of Urban Rock (Fly single BUG 11, 1971)