The Renaissance Zone

Tom Ozric wrote: Shame, Camp is such a great bassist. Right off the bat on Prologue, and even the ‘abysmal’ (I happen to like it a lot !!) Time Line, Camp was up there with the best of ‘em. Man, I love Camera Camera. It blew me away at the very first listen (like most of their albums). My first taste of this wonderful band was around ‘91 - Novella. The gatefold cover was fancy and the long track timings drew me in immediately. I did not regret the discovery !!

Ha !! Mustaine and Hetfield eh ? Talk about a clash of egos. Gimme Megadeth over Metallica any day.
Back on track now : Day Of The Dreamer    Love this exquisite piece of music.

^ Classic !!

the show at the Keswick is tomorrow night and I can't wait!

To just explain in short why the thing she does at 4:50 in the Park west performance of Ashes is incredible, just try singing at the very top of your range.  You won't be able to hang around for too long before you run out of breath.  Slipping into a single note and sustaining it is easier than trying to actually sing, like, different notes up there.  Annie rapidly (and I mean really rapidly, like a guitar shred) alternates E6 and F#6 like it was nothing.  And she does it for something like 10 seconds without losing breath.  That's just beyond words.  Not to raise the sexist bogey, but I bet if a male singer did that, he would self promote himself shamelessly and people would lap it up too.  People just find it hard to take a woman's talent seriously, sorry to say so.  Not intended for the Renaissance fans here, who obviously do appreciate Annie's amazing talent.

Yeah, the video/audio quality does help. My point was more that there are actually other performances of the track which are more or less as good. Who knows where else she performed it in the 80s (and of which there are no recordings).

kenethlevine wrote: rogerthat wrote: Yeah, the video/audio quality does help. My point was more that there are actually other performances of the track which are more or less as good. Who knows where else she performed it in the 80s (and of which there are no recordings). I did see them in April 1982 in Ottawa and they definitely did Ashes.  It may well have been the Boardwalk/Park West Ashes, and I know my college mates were all raving about it afterwards.  It was a fantastic show with a few songs from Camera Camera and a few from ASFAS.  As we have noted, the band's live performances certainly didn't suffer even when record sales were plummeting

So..Another thing I love about the Park West performance is initially the audience looks grumpy (it had not been a great show up to that point). But when she goes for the high G at around 3:50 (unable to post the link), they start jumping up like kids in excitement and when she does that guitar solo thing at 4:50 they just go wild. Annie at her best can toy with the audience just standing there and singing into the mic, no running around, no "come on Chicago" nothing.

Hope you enjoyed the Keswick show, Ken. They have posted stills from the show on facebook and even video of their Carpet performance from the Ridgefield show. I have never seen Annie so excited. She goofed up the song name while introducing but made a hilarious joke out of it. Sounded in great voice too. When the orchestra sat down, she did a sort of joke operatic vocalise... turned away from the mic!

The show was fantastic and the orchestra brilliant.
Here is the set list as I remember it but may be slightly off in order

Prologue
Trip to the Fair

Then orchestra appears
Carpet of the Sun
At the Harbour
Grandine Il Vento
Symphony of Light
Kalynda
Island
Mother Russia
Song for all Seasons

Orchestra and band departs, only band returns
Ashes are Burning

So 4 songs that have not been part of the regular live set for years. I really had goosebumps
when they did Kalynda. It was my favourite from
Azure D’Or and one of the few bright spots of the album.
She actually referred to it as a beautiful song written by Jon Camp. Such class

The orchestra really brought out the brilliance of the Mother Russia/Song for all Seasons
combo. Annie deferred to Mark Lambert’s guitar shredding at the end of Ashes but
she didn’t skimp on much else.
U
While the orchestra only had about 10 members, they probably played 30
instruments between them. Loved the oboe
and flute especially.

Can’t wait for the DVD!

Ken, how was Island? I am curious as to how Annie sounded on the song she had performed for her Renaissance audition.