Merry Christmas.

I’ll be running out of these Christmas numbers soon. This will be the second last track from Tull’s Christmas Album to be featured here, an adaptation of Bach’s Bourrée.

The tune was one of the tracks on Tull’s second LP Stand Up and was also released as a single in 1969 in Europe but not the UK. It has appeared on many Tull compilation albums.

Jethro Tull: Bourée

I suppose this track really ought to have been much higher up this list. However, I didn’t want the category to contain any obvious songs from the 60s (hence no Beatles, no Rolling Stones) nor – certainly after a few weeks – repeats of the same artist. When I posted the band’s Shine on Brightly I thought I had already featured Homburg here. (I had, but before I started the Friday on my Mind category.)

A Whiter Shade of Pale is so quintessentially 60s that it’s a bit clichéd as an exemplar from the decade.

But this still sounds so fresh, possibly because of its source material, Bach’s Air on the G String.

The original video/film was surely in black and white. That’s certainly how I remember it. This one must have been colourised.

Anyway here’s where Prog Rock might be said to have begun – at least in the public’s mind.

Procol Harum: A Whiter Shade of Pale