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DREAMS & OMENS

Renaissance

Symphonic Prog


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Renaissance Dreams & Omens  album cover
3.14 | 20 ratings | 4 reviews | 20% 5 stars

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Live, released in 2008

Songs / Tracks Listing

1. Can You Hear Me (14:32)
2. Carpet Of The Sun (3:53)
3. Day Of The Dreamer (10:32)
4. Midas Man (4:22)
5. Northern Lights (4:19)
6. Things I Don't Understand (9:35)

Total Time: 47:16

Line-up / Musicians

- Annie Haslam / vocals
- Terry Sullivan / drums, percussion and vocals
- John Tout / piano, keyboards and vocals
- Jon Camp / bass, guitar and vocals
- Michael Dunford / acoustic guitar (6 and 12 strings) and vocals

Releases information

White Dove Records FRM 1093 (2008)
Recorded At The Tower Theatre, Philadelphia PA 1978

Thanks to progshine for the addition
and to lilicoco for the last updates
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RENAISSANCE Dreams & Omens ratings distribution


3.14
(20 ratings)
Essential: a masterpiece of progressive rock music(20%)
20%
Excellent addition to any prog rock music collection(30%)
30%
Good, but non-essential (40%)
40%
Collectors/fans only (10%)
10%
Poor. Only for completionists (0%)
0%

RENAISSANCE Dreams & Omens reviews


Showing all collaborators reviews and last reviews preview | Show all reviews/ratings

Collaborators/Experts Reviews

Review by lor68
PROG REVIEWER
3 stars For sure it's difficult to evaluate an important live concert like the present one (dated 1978), where the monophonic mix, as well as their first turning point of their career (culminating into the disappointing "Azure D'or" ), seem to make us express a controversial opinion about it!

Don't get me wrong, Annie's voice is clear as usual and in general the sound of the best ensemble of Renaissance as well; but here the mix of the bass guitar is bad (perhaps can you hear it?), being almost missing and- moreover- They have not included any symphonic track from "Turn of the cards" (with the exception of "Things I Don't Understand"), "Scheherazade" and also the majority of "A Song for All Seasons"...well this is the point, this latter album issued on the same period, was a perfect balance between the commercial ballads such as "Northern Lights" and the symphonic suite of the title track, of which there's no trace in the present live act . You can find the main songs from "Novella", played in a remarkable manner as usual, but their attempt to achieve a wider audience is clearly evident when you listen to "Northern Lights" (otherwise already used for a tv-series in the UK), an hit single in that period, where their new mood began to grow...Unfortunately their best folk-symphonic period ended after the issue of "Novella" (dated 1977) and here (despite of their good execution concerning "Day of the Dreamer", the second track inside "A Song for All..."), their stuff is not enough to know the best Renaissance" (otherwise is a very short audio cd- 47 minutes long, which is not completely representative of the band) and at the end you lose the acoustic guitar a bit and the bass guitar too much...nevermind, cause the duo represented by John Tout at the keyboards and Annie Haslam with her magic fascination and her clear voice, makes this "Dreams & Omens" worth checking out at least!!

Perhaps, by means of a great sound engineer like for instance Terry Brown, the final output as well as the quality of the recording should be completely different...but such defect cannot erase the grandeur of a legendary band, which became a controversial group only in the late seventies/early eighties!!

Review by Warthur
PROG REVIEWER
3 stars Dreams and Omens captures a December 1978 concert from Philadelphia. With the band on the tour for A Song For All Seasons, one can see this live release as a capstone of the most acclaimed period of the band; with 1979's Azure d'Or having a mixed reception among fans and the band largely losing interest in prog after that, A Song For All Seasons was the end of an era, and here we get to see material from it and preceding albums as far back as Ashes Are Burning together in concert.

The band didn't have an orchestra to hand this time around, but do a fine job using synthesisers to stand in, and they sound find. So why the mediocre score? Simply for this: this is a great concert, but they've hacked away over half of it! That's right, comfortably over 55 minutes of material has been trimmed, leaving less than 48 minutes. Whilst the desire to keep the release to a single CD might be understandable, the cuts include Opening Out and A Song For All Seasons, two of the best songs from the Song For All Seasons album - having live performances of those songs from the classic Renaissance lineup on an official release would be wonderful, and this was a golden time to do that, but Friday dropped the ball with these misguided editing choices.

If you are interested in this Renaissance show, I would say you are much better served by seeking out the Esoteric reissue of A Song For All Seasons, which includes the entire performance - with the cut songs restored and the correct running order reassembled - as bonus discs. The full concert is four and a half stars, but with these brutal cuts I have to give this release only 3 stars.

Review by rogerthat
PROG REVIEWER
3 stars OK, let me explain the rating first up.

The point of this review is to alert Renaissance fans and anyone else interested to the terrific Esoteric Records (Cherry Red) remaster of Song for All Seasons. This expanded edition also has two other goodies. The first is the BBC Radio One Session from 1978 (which was released previously on Renaissance Live At The BBC). The second is this here concert at Tower Theater, Philadelphia. But...the full concert.

The story of 2008 (as well as perhaps the period before that) was the story of weirdly truncated Renaissance concert releases! The black and white Song of Scheherazade DVD left out (in the 'infinite wisdom' of the label) the performance of Ashes Are Burning in both shows that were part of the DVD. I only learnt of this much later when Concert Vault made them available on their subscription service. Now...when you know that the black and white video is going to earn the wrath of fans anyway, why would you aggravate them even more by leaving out the one song that was always the piece-de-resistance of Renaissance concerts?

But, it now transpires, they did this on Dreams and Omens as well. This release is taken from their concert at Tower Theater, Philadelphia from 1978. But it does NOT Song for All Seasons, Touching Once and...Ashes Are Burning (again!), all of which were played at the show. It also excludes Opening Out which was played in the run up to Day of the Dreamer.

As a result, the only real reason to own this album was to have live versions of two songs from Song for All Seasons (and even then, if you had the 2000 release Day of the Dreamer, Northern Lights would be the only one you'd be missing and you'd have got the title track instead). As well as Things I Don't Understand which is not on any other official release of a concert performed by the classic line up. Naturally, then, Dreams and Omens is not one of the coveted live album releases of the band (quite apart from lacking the prestige of the Carnegie Hall and Albert Hall shows).

Speaking of, it's also missing the orchestra. Alas, there doesn't seem to be an orchestral version of Song for All Seasons performed by this line up (though the Annie-led incarnation did their best to fill that gap a couple or more years back). But since the band performed all but a select few of their shows without the orchestra anyway, they are habituated to this and more than make up for the lack. There is a good amount of punch in the drum sound on this recording compared to many other live recordings of the band (and even some of the studio recordings!).

Which is where I detour a bit to talk about the Song for All Seasons remaster. It brings the much needed bottom end to the recording. I have the previous CD edition and the one complaint about it was the somewhat trebly sound. Fixing that makes the title track in particular stupendous to hear. Even if the reissue had NOT offered the Tower Theater show as a bonus attraction, it would still be worth purchasing for the quality of the remaster alone.

But to have the full Tower Theater concert, including both Song for All Seasons and Ashes Are Burning, makes it even more special. With its multi layered chorus and spiky dynamics, Song for All Seasons was and is an awkward track to perform the vocals on live for Annie and it tended to show. But this is one of the best I have heard, better than the rendition on the Boardwalk show on the Song of Scheherazade DVD.

As for Ashes Are Burning, there's a good part and a bad part. The bad is this is one of those over-bloated, near-30 min versions where the endless soloing in the middle 10 min really tries my patience. But the good part is this is also from the period when Annie's vocal solo began to become, well, something else. Those in the know need no further elucidation but I am talking about the sort of rapid alternation of notes she would do up in the sixth octave on the Park West 1983 performance. The only other officially available version on which something similar can be heard is the Boardwalk performance. I can now add Tower Theater to that very short list (in reality, I am sure there were many other shows from that late 70s to early 80s period where she did this). If you really need to explain to someone what the fuss is about her range, this or the Park West performance of Ashes...would do the trick while Touching Once at the Tower Theater show has some fantastic gymnastics as well.

To repeat, the rating of 3 is for the Dreams and Omens standalone CD. But the combined Song for All Seasons remaster and full Tower Theater show easily merits 5 stars within the Renaissance catalog. Get it while you can for it's still available.

Latest members reviews

3 stars My relationship with Renaissance can only be described as the relationship between a dog and sausages. In other words, I love them. ........ Although my love for them is put on trial on this live album. A live album from 2008 containing some live tracks from 1978 from a gig in the USA. My lo ... (read more)

Report this review (#292113) | Posted by toroddfuglesteg | Tuesday, July 27, 2010 | Review Permanlink

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