FAERIES (LIVING AT THE BOTTOM OF MY GARDEN)

2 tunes from CAMERA CAMERA in 1981. "Faeries (Living at the Bottom of My Garden)"- Ouch. This is bad. I mean REALLY bad! I guess I could sum it up as a combination of 80's new wave (Blondie?, Nena?) blended with a Buggles song. Disco-dance-new wave-twee-pop? Hard to believe a band that gave us such classics as "Mother Russia", "Can you Hear Me", "Midas Man", and "A Song for All Seasons" could spew out a disaster like this. Even for it's time period it's bad. "Remember"- an almost passable song here, but on a decent Renaissance album, this would have been a short filler song between epics. If you are a complete Renaissance fan, I guess you need this to complete your collection, but hide it behind other albums like NOVELLA or TURN OF THE CARDS. 1 star.

Recently I found this single among several other ´rareties´ a friend had stocked over the years in his basement. It was the typical song done aiming the pop market at the time. Faeries has all the trademark cheese synth clichês of the early 80´s and it´s a rather mediocre tune anyway. Besides, Annie Haslam´s trained, operatic voice is not well suited for this kind of stuff. The b side, Remember, is a little better in terms of instrumental arrangement, is less obvious, but again the melody line is poor, boring and forgetable. If they really wanted something good from Camera Camera, why not Bonjour Swansong? At least the music was good and Haslam´s voice is really soaring on it. But no, they had to try this techno pop crap that was clearly not their forte (to say the least!).

Even for Camera Camera they had to chose some of the worst tracks for single release? it really had to bomb. if you happen to find this turd among a pile of old 45´s like I did, avoid at all costs. It´s not worth the time you´ll waste listening to it.