LIVE AT THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL WITH THE ROYAL PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA PART 2

I would have been happier with this, the second half of the original show broadcast on the King Biscuit Flower Hour, if they had just left it alone. The concert with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra was something special, in the symphonic arrangements as well as the band's enthusiastic performances.

As stated above, the first five tracks are wonderful. It is a concert of Renaissance at it's stylistic and creative peak. The symphony orchestra adds much to the power of the music, and was used better than most of the concerts where a prog band is backed by a true orchestra. And the songs are great. The only problem to me is a slightly questionable bass solo in the half hour long Ashes Are Burning. But that's a slight problem.

The first CD of this concert is 62 minutes long. Without the "bonus" material this one would have been about the same. It was someone's idea to tack on a fair, but typical performance of Prologue from a 1979 concert (I have to dig out my cassette of a later King Biscuit concert to see if it was from that one), and an unreleased song, You. Now this song was recorded in 1982, after John Tout and Terrence Sullivan had left the band. It actually is better than anything on the two albums recorded after the pair left the group. But it still has that eighties synth pop junk that marred those albums.

But still, if you skip the last track, it's a great album.