The Renaissance Zone

rogerthat wrote: Yeah, I guess there have never been requests to perform Closer than yesterday. Still surprising that they never performed it in the 70s.

rogerthat wrote: I just checked out the performance of Captive Heart in the PA concert, 97.  Tesar did a good job but took lots of short cuts, skipped a fair few notes in the intro.  He is not far off on touch, which I'd have thought would have been more difficult to emulate, but kind of simplified it.  There isn't any recorded live version of this track with JT playing on it.  I don't know if they ever did perform it in the 70s; was always a bit awkward at the chorus where Annie harmonizes with Annie in the studio recording.

Saw them in Newark in August....lovely theater in a rough neighborhood (then again, what in working class northern Jersey isn't "rough" anymore).  The band sounded great....well-rehearsed and out to prove they're still relevant.  Of course, the death of John Tout took away from the soul of the band but didn't rob them of momentum and their signature sound.  I hope this mini-renaissance continues.....Annie still has (most of) it!

Ah, I wondered because they don't seem to perform at Park West anymore.  

Ha ha, yup, Ashes are burning at Park West. Wonder if the Park West is still alive. I guess the Capitol, NJ is no more?

SFAS - Novella - Scheherazade/Ashes - Cards/Prologue for me.  Cards was at one point my favourite.  Boy, has it slid down the pecking order.

I respect the earnestness and ambition on LATC but as I set out in a fair amount of detail in my own review, I don't consider it the best Renaissance live album.  Fair enough that at the time - 70s - it was the only live album they released.  But the band was fully capable of cutting loose a bit without diluting the emotions of the original tracks.  They couldn't quite achieve that on LATC being perhaps a bit tight due to the occasion.  I much prefer Albert Hall in spite of the rather excessive noodling on Ashes in that concert.  

Oddly enough, Novella happens to be my second favourite after SFAS and if I take Cards through Novella to represent the archetypal Renaissance mk ii - grand, symphonic and also generally melancholic - then Novella is the one where this style is fully realised imo.  Can You Hear Me is dragged down a bit by that three minute interlude which goes nowhere but otherwise it's an excellent composition.  I used to find Sisters almost too melancholic to listen to - Annie just flat out wails on that song - but I've come to really love it.  Really this may be the album of which I have the fewest complaints.  Just lacks a little momentum, barring Touching Once but there is a nice consistency in style from track to track while each one still brings out a different shade of emotion.  I think fans expected a fresh progression from Scheherazade and when it wasn't quite there on Novella, they got disappointed.  Actually Dunford brought back guitars on Novella but it blended so well with the symphonic arrangements that perhaps it wasn't noticed. It did take quite a while for me to like this album too; wondering if there's anybody who liked it right off the bat.

Doesn't bother me either.  Just saying that's not the kind of stuff the mainstream likes to hear.

I presume Rolling Stone was referring to LATC which seems to lack the usually relaxed ambience of their shows. Yeah, well, I can agree with the idea of Novella, esp Can You Hear Me as a serious blend of classical and rock/folk, but to call it classical outright was going a bit too far.  It isn't even as classical as Gryphon, well at least Red Queen to Gryphon Three.  There are plenty of such lofty statements from the band.  In a 1978 interview, Camp declared they wanted to be the best live band on the scene.  There was the Jilted John controversy too.  They didn't do a whole lot to endear themselves to the media and it's the media which tells the younger generation which 70s albums to listen to.  Renaissance albums weren't among them.  No prog barring Floyd/Tull because prog is such a bad word now.