MOONMADNESS

My first Camel album was The Snow Goose. I discovered the band, or rather my friend Steve and I discovered them, nearly forty years ago, courtesy of "Stone Trek," disc jockey Greg Stone's late-night prog show on station KOME in San Jose. It was Stone who played tracks from The Snow Goose and inspired us to seek it out. This became a formative experience of sorts, and TSG remains one of my favorite mid-70s prog albums: a pleasant long-playing, immersive experience. It may be the Camel album that holds together best, despite being, I think, overstretched on Side 2. Of course, the vocals on TSG are limited to brief passages of scat or vocalise by Andy Latimer: a kind of instrumental coloring.

Moonmadness was my second Camel album (Steve and I had ventured out to learn a bit more). It came as a shock. In fact, I instantly hated it. The vocals, I thought, were wretched -- and Moonmadness had plenty of vocals, because, unlike TSG, it favored traditional song form. If TSG, a loosely narrative instrumental suite, a kind of program music in which you could pretty much ignore the program, had fit right in with my love of symphonic tone poems and film music, Moonmadness asked me to listen to songs. This was not a case of assertively weird vocals, which I could learn to love: I loved Ian Anderson's singing in Tull, and was learning to dig Peter Gabriel's in the early Genesis, as well as the polyvocal workouts of Gentle Giant. Rather, Camel's vocals were earnest, even mawkish: lugubrious, draggy, and blurred, at times hidden underneath a blousy veil of studio effects as if the band were afraid to bring their voices out front. I figured out right then that singing was not Camel's strong suit, and I've been of that opinion ever since. Ditto their lyric-writing. This was a big hurdle for me.

At some point soon after, I must have heard Mirage, and I certainly became an all-around Camel fan despite not warming to Moonmadness. The lyrics and singing on Mirage were just as poor, but that album had a ferocious energy, some real spirit and attack, and its vocals were not shrouded in mist. I dug it. On Moonmadness, by contrast, the attack felt blunted, and the singing sort of foggy and recessive, as if it were taking its corner, reluctant to venture out. So I filed Moonmadness away as a clumsy transitional record, and didn't listen to it much.

Now I see that it is Camel's most beloved album here on PA! Huh? I guess some reconsideration is in order...

I admit, though Moonmadness is still not a fave, over the years I've learned to listen to it differently, to take it in as a mood piece with a certain swooning atmosphere. There is good melody writing here, notably in "Air Born" and "Song within a Song," both of which would shine with more confident singing, and there's also, in the home stretch, one of my favorite Camel tracks, the delicious nine-minute instrumental, "Lunar Sea." That one's a beaut. Propelled by Andy Ward's intense drumming, it really puts the band through its (sometimes 5/8) paces. I love its great, racing fadeout, as well as its eerie opening and closing. I can hear Latimer and Pete Bardens' writing partnership at work here, as the track goes through its different phases.

"Lunar Sea" is easy to love, and often excerpted (I would listen to it a lot on the compilation album Echoes, years later). It attains that Mirage sort of energy, while somehow keeping with the woozy, dreamlike mood of the whole album. Other tracks took me longer to like, but, as mentioned, "Air Born" and "Song within a Song" strike me as high points, each one tuneful and a bit complex, reminding me of earlier Camel numbers like "Earthrise." Both have that sort of melancholy and minor-key, almost bleary Romanticism that I associate with Camel: the sense of something bittersweet yet also, oddly, hopeful, never grim for the sake of being grim, and often downright sentimental. Moonmadness might be the Camel LP that best captures that mood.

So, perhaps Moonmadness IS the quintessential Camel album? Listening to it now, I'm reminded of what I miss in the post-seventies Camel: the feeling of a live band, that snap and energy. Despite its groggy atmosphere and smothered vocals, Moonmadness has that. So, I'd call this 3 stars -- though for nostalgia's sake it has become a keeper for me. I smile to think of how I raged when I first spun this album, all those years ago.

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