The Renaissance Zone

Annie just sings better live, for whatever reason.  And maybe it also rubs off on the musicians and lifts their level in turn.  Some singers just need to be unshackled from the confines of the studio to fully express themselves.  I found this to be the case with a singer who has recorded many songs for Hindi film music.  She sounded good, even great, on the recordings but live she was simply fabulous. I found myself enjoying the same songs which I would have skipped had they come up on the radio.

Yeah, that too.

Yup.  It is also very well recorded, which sadly many of the live albums from the 70s of the band weren't.  Probably the tech didn't exist.

that's very touching Steve.  Did she like Renaissance?

Scheherazade and other Stories is one of the most beautiful albums ever recorded, definitely in my top 10 prog albums of all time.  I'll never forget the first time I heard it, I was probably 13 or 14 years old.  I was visiting my older brothers at their apartment.  I had just come back from a music-buying trip to a great record store in Seattle ("Peaches Records & Tapes") and had several new albums I wanted to play.  I remember I bought Tangerine Dream's Rubycon & Phaedra both on that day.  We listened to them, and my One of my older brothers (who had previously turned me on to Pink Floyd & Steely Dan when I was a younger boy) put Scheherazade on the turntable and said "Here.  Listen to this."

Changed my life.  I was already into quite a bit of prog by that time, but it was my first exposure to Renaissance, and I was floored.

They are only a couple of hundred dollars short now in the last day of extended fund raising.  If the prog lovers of this website could chip in a little bit, I am sure they would easily meet the target. I was tempted by the Skype chat option but $250 is like a month's expenses for me.  Just a bridge too far. Settled for the early download instead.