The Renaissance Zone

iluvmarillion wrote: rogerthat wrote: Oh, I for one am absolutely not judging the album by its sales (wouldn't be a Ren fan if I was ). Just that what I mentioned above didn't work for me. And I am not saying they made too many Northern Lights like songs (I too like Bonjour Swansong). But they tried too hard to write pop hits to get their next Northern Lights, i.e. next top 10 hit and that didn't work out well. Actually both Allmusic and George Starting gave good reviews for Camera Camera as also Steve G but it's just not for me. Actually, listen to Northern Lights on its own, I think its a pretty ordinary song. Now I understand it was a hit but being a hit doesn't make it a good song, if you consider bands like One Direction having hits every day of the week. But listening to Northern Lights in the context of the other songs on "Song For All Seasons" it's a perfect fit for the other songs on the album. So I think Renaissance lost sight of the fact they were an "albums" band rather than a "singles" band and maybe spent too much time trying to replicate the success of Northern Lights, rather than just trying to make great albums.

I think Northern Lights is a good song and is significantly different from the regular Ren songwriting. But in essence, I agree that post SFAS they stopped writing albums as they were trying to score another hit single.

kenethlevine wrote: I actually thought Running Away from you was a fun song that could have been a hit.

The song was a bit too "new wavey" for me, so I suppose you're right!

I thought Camel did a brilliant job
at adapting to a new wave style on the
Stationary Traveller album. They went
with the brooding alienated approach of
say Gary Numan, which seemed to mesh
well with their prog style. And what
did it get them?

I agree that there were too many attempts to duplicate
Northern lights but I didn’t mind if I liked the songs,
And I did like Bonjour Swansong

I loved Annie shrieking on Jigsaw, lol. But elsewhere she didn't adapt so well to the new wave styles on Running Away/Tyrant Tula or even the verses of Jigsaw. Like she was trying too hard to produce a bigger tone than usual. Don't know what exactly went wrong.

SteveG wrote: iluvmarillion wrote: What is it you like about Camera Camera? My copy of the vinyl finished up in the rubbish bin. This is not directed at you, but many early KC fans jumped on the Discipline train when that version of the band came out simply bulked at Camera Camera. I view Camera Camera in the same light, but with a few caveats. One, Gosling's synth tones contain a bit too much dissonance for most people, but he was trying to come up with a distinctive keyboard sound, as was the fashion with 70's prog keyboardists. Two, "Running Away From You" is a terrible song. That's it. I love the rest.

Wow, can hardly wait to hear the early download, when it comes.  And the DVD too.

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

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!

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!

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.