THE SNOW GOOSE

I had the misfortune of being born in 1995, when a lot of great prog records like The Snow Goose had been long forgotten. I do enjoy the current wave of prog, with Dream Theater, Porcupine Tree, Frost* and what not, but there is something to the early days that modern prog musicians just don't seem to come up with.

The very first Camel record I owned was A Live Record, which itself contains a full performance of The Snow Goose. I was very young (four), and disregarded the second disc, which was full of birdy fun. Instead, I listened to tunes from Mirage, Rain Dances and Moonmadness. I did develop a fondness for Rhayader, but I failed to ingest the whole album, ignoring that it was a continuous piece, á la Brave or Six Degrees.

Recently, Camel records suffered utter depricing, due to their poor sales in the progless country I live in. Thus, my father decided to reestablish his Camel collection, which he already completed in LP format. He started with Mirage, Camel, Moonmadness and refused to buy The Snow Goose, arguing that we already had it, with our A Live Record copy.

So I decided to protest, arguing that studio albums are perhaps more important than live albums, and that it was being offered at a very good price. He decided to give in.

Now that that happened, I cannot set iTunes to play anything else than The Snow Goose.

It's hard to believe that it doesn't get 5 stars here.

A lot of reviewers argue that it doesn't live up to the hype surrounding it.

I respect their opinions. I've read a lot of reviews.

But The Snow Goose is beyond anything any of us can say. It is solely Latimer's and it is for us to really understand and digest. It is simply perfect. Tracks like Preparation and The Flight Of the Snow Goose give us that technicality that while not completely overwhelmin nor excessively evident, show how progressive rock goes beyond odd time signatures, modulations, polyrhythms, syncopations and accents that confuse the metronome.

And then, we have songs like Rhayader and its followup, which show us how progressive rock incorporates mundane simplicity and manages to create a world of its own. If you've read The Snow Goose and listen to the record, you'll see that Latimer and his buddies need no lyrics to recreate Gallico's world.

Finally, epic tracks like La Princesse Perdue give us the sense that while not excessively epic, an album with songs that do not surpass six minutes in length is probably in a league of its own in the genre.

To understand and appreciate prog, you need a lot of records. The Snow Goose is definitely one of them. Hands down

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