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rogerthat View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 11 2015 at 22:17
You mean the trumpet part right at the end of the second iteration?  In live versions from the 70s, Annie vocalised all those portions which didn't capture that same effect because she modified the notes.  With two keyboards, they had the opportunity to perform the brass sections on instruments but I wonder (doubt) if they did that?
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 12 2015 at 08:34
I think that's it;   was it really a trumpet?  The orchestra was so tight with the band back then that I don't always realize when they are playing and when the band is playing, especially since the band was using synthesizers and even mellotron in that track on record.  I honestly don't remember how they handled it live other than, if they did hit that high, it was a bit too buried in the mix.  But overall I thought Annie really had the power to do the song justice, and the backing vocals helped too.  The guitarist in particular seemed very sympathetic to the band sound vocally.  I actually think I saw that he played in the band back in the 1980s as well, at least in several live incarnations

I read somewhere that one of the reasons they stopped using the orchestra after this album was that the orchestra costs went through the roof around that time.  It always seemed odd to me that they would have had to cut the orchestra for economic reasons after the most successful album of their career but it was because of unionization apparently.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 12 2015 at 09:00
Yeah, unionisation.  Well, maybe if Northern Lights had been a hit single in the US as well, that could have bankrolled the orchestra.  
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 12 2015 at 09:34
Sadly, ASFAS did not find a new audience in America, but rather a dwindling existing audience, although I think it still sold quite well.

I recently stumbled upon an archive of the Canadian charts called RPM, a magazine that ran from 1964-2000.  The charts seems to have been based on some combination of radio play, sales and general popularity, and they also focus on English language audience, so any charts for Quebec would have been very different at that time, and local charts could be quite variable.  It has quite a few surprises, first being that ASFAS looks to have been the most popular Renaissance album overall in English Canada.  The only other ones that seem to have charted were Turn of the Cards and Live at Carnegie Hall, but in terms of time on the chart and peak position ASFAS was the most successful, peaking at #45.  But nothing on the singles chart.


edit - Live at Carnegie Hall was on Canadian album charts for 11 weeks in 1976 and peaked at 44;  that was its only week in the top 50
A Song for All Seasons was on Canadian album charts for 7 weeks in 1978 and peaked at 45;  it spent 3 weeks in the top 50
The only other album to chart in Canada was Turn of the Cards in 1974 for just 3 weeks, just scraping into the 90s.


Edited by kenethlevine - November 12 2015 at 22:13
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 12 2015 at 22:40
That's at odds with the US market where I guess Scheherazade, LATC and Novella were their most successful albums with SFAS slightly behind.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 13 2015 at 09:26
Originally posted by rogerthat rogerthat wrote:

That's at odds with the US market where I guess Scheherazade, LATC and Novella were their most successful albums with SFAS slightly behind.

right, and I think it's dubious for a number of reasons, one of which is I don't think it includes Quebec which is 25% of the population more or less, and they had their own tastes, often favoring UK prog at that time. 
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