CAMEL ON THE ROAD 1982

"On the Road 1982" was recorded during the worst creative period in Camel's history and this fact is pretty obvious if you listen to this album. The real highlights here have to do with the tracks from "Nude" (an amazing exception to the mediocre records Camel released after Bardens' departure), "Rain Dances" (great album) and two songs: "Sasquatch" a terrific song in a horrendous album ("The Single Factor"), and the fantastic "Never Let Go". The rest is mostly AOR, dull and sad. The line-up is also quite mediocre compared to what we were used to and even if we compare it to future line-ups. It's a record only for fans (that's why I own it) because it adds nothing especial to Camel's excellent discography (1973-1978 plus "Nude", of course.)

Well, well, well. When you read the tracklist of this album, you know that this adventure will not be the greatest one in your life. It was recorded a year after "On The Road" 1981 but will be released three years BEFORE it. Some kind of "lost" tapes again ...

Five tracks from their last album "The Single Factor" (pretty weak. Both the album and the songs from it). "Highways Of The Sun" is a dull pop song from "Raindances".

Four poor songs from "I Can't See..." (but still no "Ice") and another three from "Nude".

To close the album, we finally get a good song : "Never Let Go" from their first album (also available on the previous "On The road 1981" released three years later...

One good song out of forteen. This is by far the weakest live effort from Camel. Since it renders songs from weak efforts, there is no wonder here. One star.

Why this album ever saw the light of the day? I don't even think this was a clever business decision - to get more money from the band's fans... Anyway, this is a live material of the songs taken from the worst period in the band's career, from 1979-82. If that's not already frightening enough, let me tell you that those two earlier tracks - "Highway of the Sun" (from "Raindances") and "Never Let Go (from the debut) - do not really save this disc from garbage because both are poor performances. Prog rock? Rock? Forget about it! This is not even an elevator muzak! Avoid at all costs!

PERSONAL RATING: 0/5

P.A. RATING: 1/5

Since the dawn of the 1980s was a difficult time for Camel, one might expect this 10th anniversary live album to be thoroughly dispensable. Its emphasis on concert renditions of album tracks from that period means that no epics are included and precious few early classics. Yet they do reveal the band to be comfortable playing a more AOR style, and feature everything you need to hear from "Nude" and "Single Factor", in live versions as good as the studio efforts. In particular, "You are the One", "Lies", and "Heroes" are all well performed. As such, this work can substitute for those 2 weaker albums. With a few expected live blips the performance is worthy of the group.

In addition, if "Ice" had been included, we would have also had sufficient representation from "I Can See Your House from Here", as versions of "Hymn to Her" and "Who we Are" capture the Camel spirit at this time of adversity. Chris Rainbow's presence shows how Camel could sound with a more traditionally skilled vocalist. The closer is an excellent version of "Never Let Go", with strong keyboard work from Kit Watkins as well as Latimer's melodic guitar runs. Camel managed to avoid getting run over on this bumpy section of road, and this document is a satisfying snapshot of those travels.

I really don´t understand why such album was ever released. The late 70´s/early 80´s were the worst period in Canel´s discography, a time when that group (now lead solely by Andrew Latimer) tried hard to sound commercial but ended up like a sub par version of the Alan Parsons Project (the inclusion of such APP members like David patton, Chris Rainbow and Stuart Tosh to the band is no coincidence!). And, besides, if you wanted a reasonable good live album of that period, you already had it with 1984´s official release Pressure Points. So I see no reason to put out such collection.

There are some nice stuff here and there, like the instrumental opener Sasquach or the final tune, a good version of Never Let Go, the only track from their glorious past. But mostly what you got here is bad pop: things like Highways to The Sun, Heroes and You Are The one only proved they couldn´t come up with a convincing commercial work. Embarassing! And they didn´t even included a single outstanding song from the CDs they were releasing at the time, like Ice (from I Can See Your House From here).

Of course the musicians involved were good, and they all performed well, but still this album is only for hardcore fans, collectors and completionists. And I doubt enven them would hear this dud frequently...

Heroes

So far, there have been three entries in the "Camel on the road"-series of archive live releases: Camel On The Road 1972 (released in 1992), the present one (released in 1994), and Camel On The Road 1981 (released in 1997). Recorded on tour in support of The Single Factor album and almost exclusively featuring tracks from the 1979 to 1982 period, Camel On The Road 1982 did not bring with it any high expectations. As such, I was positively surprised when I finally heard it. Even if several other Camel live albums are far superior to this, this one is actually not that bad at all! Newcomers to Camel's excellent live output should by no means begin here, of course, but fans of the band will probably enjoy this live album. This fan certainly did!

Five out of the 14 songs featured here were taken from The Single Factor, generally considered to be Camel's weakest studio album ever. While I totally agree that it is a weak album by Camel standards, it is not a bad album as such. 1981's Nude is, on the other hand, a very good album, represented here by three pieces. 1979's I Can See Your House From Here is represented by four songs, two of which are really good and two of which are not so very good. Never Let Go is the oldest number and the only one played here from the early days of the band's career.

The best source of Camel live in the 80's is the 1984 Pressure Points live album, but both archival releases Camel On The Road 1982 and Camel On The Road 1981 are nice, though hardly essential, additions to any Camel collection. Personally, I actually prefer the Camel of 1979 to 1984 in general over the Canterbury-influenced Camel of 1977 to 1978.

REVIEW #16 - "Camel on the Road 1982" by Camel, (1994)

The second in the series of "official bootlegs", one particularly knowledgeable Camel fan can probably guess the kind of material that will be performed on this live performance. Sure guitarist Andrew Latimer does remark that this is the band's tenth anniversary tour, but it's also the supporting tour for "The Single Factor" album, considered by most to be the worst in Camel's discography. This album was recorded live in the city of Den Haag, in South Holland. Interestingly enough, "The Single Factor" was the best charting album in Camel's history in this country, peaking at #10 on their album charts.

Camel at this point was basically just Latimer backed up by various veterans of the Alan Parsons Project. Vocalist Chris Rainbow and bassist David Paton accompany him on the tour, while bringing along drummer Stuart Tosh, as by this point Andy Ward had left the band due to mental health issues. Another fascinating addition to this tour lineup was the inclusion of keyboardist Kit Watkins, who featured on Camel's similarly mediocre 1979 studio album "I Can See Your House from Here" (yes, there's a lot of songs from that album on this record too.). To put it short, this concert is largely made up of works from Camel's worst albums, so you should know what to expect.

What really gets me is that Latimer indeed remarks early on in the performance that the band is going to play "new and old" tracks from the band's discography. If you look at the actual tracklist and/or listen to the whole performance, then you'll realize he was lying for the most part. All but one of the songs are from the period of 1977-1982, and all but two are from 1979-1982, arguably considered to be Camel's worst period. To make matters worse, the band doesn't play around with the songs, just making bland renditions of what we already heard. If you're a fan of this period of Camel, then perhaps you will enjoy this, but in my opinion you're really not getting anything new from the studio albums besides an 80's style rendition of "Never Let Go" from the band's first album, which is also at the very end of the concert.

And to make matters even worse, from the songs they do play in this concert, many of them aren't even the best cuts. Yes, the band chooses to play throwaway songs like "Neon Magic" over "Ice", and much of the setlist is some of the worst songs from "The Single Factor", such as the bland pop tune "You Are the One" or the comically bad "Manic". The band chooses to include the worst song from 1977's "Rain Dances" in "Highways of the Sun" instead of playing a prog classic such as "Unevensong". I get Richard Sinclair was long gone by this time, and so was Peter Bardens, but even just back in 1978 Camel was playing inspiring live performances with tons of improvisation and a diverse range of songs from the band's incredible discography. This entire effort is not progressive in the slightest, and only really serves to show to the listener that yes, Camel did have the gall to play this kind of music to their fans. I mean, imagine being some Dutch prog fan in 1982 and buying a ticket to this concert expecting to hear some modernized rendition of "Lady Fantasy" and then getting "Wait" instead, especially after Andrew Latimer told you at the beginning of the show that the band would play "older" tunes for the tenth anniversary tour.

"Heroes" is my personal favorite track from "The Single Factor", and I just wanted to mention it because it is on the setlist here, and Paton does do vocals, but you can tell he really can't handle doing the chorus outside of the studio. Another missed opportunity to kick us in the right direction, and the boring "Who We Are" really doesn't do much to improve the mood.

I cannot recommend this to anyone outside of people who really want to listen to all of the Camel live shows. There is nothing new or contrived here that warrants critically analyzing this album, and the deception on the part of the band for wasting their 10th anniversary playing AOR tunes is just sad. It's not that the songs are terrible - yes they are incredibly mediocre - but we should expect better out of a band like this. One star.

OVERALL RATING: 1.3/5