The Renaissance Zone

As per their FB page, Ren's show at Bethlehem has been filmed, so a new DVD could be expected and hopefully this one has both Song for All Seasons and Closer than Yesterday. 

Just got back from a Renaissance concert. Annie's voice is still absolutely top notch, I don't know how she does it. Some pretty solid music played all around. She forgot the first line of Mother Russia, which gave her and the crowd a good laugh  It ended with a great rendition of Ashes are Burning, had some great solos in there. 

Update about the Bethlehem show. The recording was not done by the band but by the venue for live projection on the screen. But they MAY release depending on the quality of the footage.

I have been slowly coming back to Renaissance after a long absence of listening to other bands. I forgot how much I love Camp's bass. People have tried but failed to win me over, I still think he's my all time favorite player. No other band has so many melodic bass lines and even on the 80s albums, listen to Faeries (at the bottom of the garden) and tell me that bass isn't infectious.

Edited by fudgenuts64 - November 27 2016 at 05:17

The one thing I don't really like about Camp's approach is it is not harmonically very adventurous at all.  Especially with the lack of overpowering electric guitar, there was plenty of scope for independent, contrapuntal bass and he seemed to largely fight shy of it (Trip to the fair is one exception).  Literally, other than Trip to the fair and maybe Things I don't understand, there isn't one track of Ren MK-II where Tout or Camp try a few things harmonically and that's very strange in a prog rock band.  To contrast this with Squire, see South Side of Sky where he is playing beautiful independent basslines as Anderson & Co vocalise.  In a way, Camp is the bass version of a Satriani or Gilbert, technically amazing for sure but not very interesting (like say a McLaughlin or Holdsworth). Of course, it's possible Michael Dunford wanted it that way but there's no evidence from the later Camp dominated albums to that effect and when Rave Tesar and Jason Hart decided to express themselves in live performances of Trip to the fair, Dunford didn't stop them.

SteveG wrote: ^I think that Camp is completely underrated due his admittedly heavy influence by Squire. But Camp was ten times more melodic and always added to the music without overpowering it. Not an easy thing for "lead bass" player in a prog band.

SteveG wrote: ^Perhaps it wasn't to his taste and he felt like that type of playing didn't serve the songs. Just a guess.

rogerthat wrote: SteveG wrote: ^Perhaps it wasn't to his taste and he felt like that type of playing didn't serve the songs. Just a guess. Or that he didn't have the imagination because coming up with adventurous chords is more about composition than technical chops.

Yes, he wasn't thinking outside of the box. However, I said he was impressively melodic. I never said that he was a genius.  

Edited by SteveG - November 28 2016 at 07:24

interesting discussion.  I think that to some extent Renaissance is Renaissance because they weren't especially outside the box, which made them more accessible to certain fans like myself who don't have a strong musical background but can nonetheless feel comfortable with the artiness of their sound and their emphasis on grandeur and melody.  Yet they were very unique.  They found their groove and pretty much stayed with it at least through "Song for All Seasons", even if that album did show a definite progression in its boldness

^ you're right.  I was meaning they didn't go from being simple to complex, so that you suddenly heard Camp doing different melodies with the bass.  They did make a lot of changes within the melodic framework.  I don't agree that Sceherazade was poppier - even Vultures Fly High seems more straight on rock than pop.  In any case it's very refreshing much as Northern Lights was on ASFAS.