Anyhow, the reason why he was underappreciated may have been Annie overshadowing him.  While Tesar's touch is not as delicate as Tout's, he is able to do a very good job of playing the piano portions and so Tout's absence is not noticeable, not in a way that seriously detracts from the shows.  To be fair, Tout used to simultaneously play synth and piano on stage whereas the new band has the luxury of two keyboardists.  But the larger point is the compositions were geared to place Annie's vocals at the center and not as a showcase for piano.  That may not have been the intention to begin with, given Annie and Tout were originally promoted as the twin lead instruments of the band, but eventually (esp by Song for All Seasons) Annie's vocals became the chief attraction. 

^^

"it is one thing as I posted earlier that keeps prog from getting boring.. the fans of it. Never a dull moment when you get a bunch of people that think they are more evolved and superior to others all gathered in the same room."

 

 

 

 

Yeah, I don't see anything wrong as such with your post but my past experience tells me that people get all fussy about semantics on the net when they are angry and forget that everything is just an opinion.  So you can cover yourself by making sure you word it in an unambiguously subjective way.  

Depends on what songs you've heard.  Also, it's bound to be DIFFERENT and it's up to each listener whether they want to embrace that difference or not.  Captive Heart is actually the purest showcase of both Annie Haslam and John Tout's talents in the entire Renaissance canon.  They were both at the peak of their powers here and this was the one odd song from that phase - Novella/SFAS/Azure D Or - where there was nothing but Annie's vocals and Tout's lovely piano for the entire song.  No drums even.  The tune as such is not that appealing but the two had by then matured to the level where they could transcend the composition.

There was never any non-Annie Renaissance that also had John Tout.  I meant Renaissant which was an offshot, with songs written by Terence Sullivan, sung by his wife and with contributions from Tout.  Renaissant doesn't match up to the 70s Renaissance albums but it is better than either Tuscany or Grandine Il Vento, the last two Renaissance albums released in 2000 and 2013 respectively.  

Annie Haslam's first solo album, the aptly captioned Annie in Wonderland, is arguably her best solo work and also her own favourite.  It is not prog in any form or shape but it is also helluva eclectic and has a lightness that was missing in Renaissance especially post-Ashes are Burning.   I am posting two tracks from the album and will stop there lest this becomes a Svetty-like youtube spam.

The Renaissance Mach 1 was more baroque and the Renaissance Mach 2 more romantic.

I like both eras and I think both bands did a good job of distinguishing themselves, even when operating at the same time in 1977-1978.  Hugues, you should check out Renaissant, an album by Terence Sullivan and family put out in the early 2000's.  It reminds me more of Illusion than Renaissance, especially the Hawken like piano rolls that may have been done by Tout.

AZD wasn't much better but he was probably already being sidelined by then.  There's nothing on the record but the evolution of the band during that phase suggests as much.

Camera Camera is an enjoyable album but for all the great synth work there is from the early 80s I can't believe how bad the pallet is on that album. Tout was able to use the CS80 on Azure d'Or to really good effect and I think his approach (with Terry Sullivan) could have made the band have some really, really good prog pop albums instead of the mixed bags we got instead that only serious fans have heard.

Really deserves more credit. 

Well, at the very least, he may have stopped the band from going overly synth pop.  But maybe it was in trying to do so that he got dropped from the line up or left the band, however one puts it. I posted an interview in the other thread about how frustrated Sullivan really had been by the end of the 70s. With the line up intact, they may have gently slid into oblivion, overtaken by 80s trends.  Without them, they made an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to embrace these trends.  The problem at the end of the day was in thinking in terms of 'another Northern Lights' instead of looking for those new developments from the 80s that may have suited them better.  Say something more atmospheric like Lis Frazer's work.  You can kind of hear it on the Nevada version of In the Bleak Midwinter so, just speculating, maybe Dunford wanted that but Camp didn't.  And they went with Camp.

so many great moments.  That one is up there, but so is his intro to Trip to the Fair

I am getting so frustrated with this bot stuff.  It's bad enough that it prompts me to say I am a real person, but sometimes I get a permissions violation after and I lose what I wrote, which is what just happened.

I admit they kept trying for another Northern Lights, with Bonjour Swansong being the only one I really liked, but they did try for a newer sound too, like on the title cut of Camera Camera (which I liked) and Fairies and Jigsaw (which I didn't).  Even Running away from you could have been a hit.  Apart from the godawful keyboard sounds, I think you can chalk it up to poor promotion and bad luck.

Yeah, I posted something on the Politics thread which disappeared and I didn't bother trying again.  Now as for poor promotion, really, it chased them all through their career, just that it got worse from AZD onwards. Once Annie said in an interview that certain influential persons in the industry had offered to make her a huge star in exchange for you-know-what and she refused point blank.  Who knows, maybe those people had a hand in trying to pull down Renaissance any chance they got (and hence the lyrics of Vultures Fly High). I mean, I don't like the keyboards on the title cut of Camera Camera but I don't understand why it didn't become a hit even in that era because it was very catchy and had a kind of ironic flavour that was unusual for them.

Thanks!

It's very strange, but I admit I only looked for it the one time.  I even did simple searches on the last few pages of this topic header, as well as more complicated ones.  It's hardly a controversial thread even though some of us...ahem...might consider the band to have been the equal of the prog giants