CAMEL ON THE ROAD 1981

This is another entry in Camel's On the Road series of archival live releases, hailing from a BBC concert recording from the Nude tour. On the Road (and the Gods of Light release) seems in part to have been a "beat the boots" endeavour on Camel's part - putting out decent-quality recordings in low-cost packaging to try and push back against bootleggers trying to flog the material in question, and since radio broadcasts are common fodder for bootleggers it makes sense that the band would make an effort to get on top of this.

After some decent runthroughs of older material, the bulk of this set consists of a run-through of Nude itself - or at least "edited highlights" thereof, taking in the entire first side of the studio album and the better bits of the second side. This is actually beneficial, trimming a bit of the fat from the concept and giving the back third a bit more focus.

Notably, Kit Watkins (formerly of Happy the Man) is here on keyboards, having been in that post for I Can See Your House From Here but not actually taking part in the studio sessions for Nude, so I suppose he was here on a touring basis to provide backup. In fact, a dual keyboardist lineup applies here - Jan Schelhaas is also helping out - giving this a fairly lush sound on that front, albeit with 1980s technology that is perhaps less warm than the synths and keyboards used in the band's prime 1970s years, to the slight detriment of the sound of the earlier material. (The stuff from Nude comes off better, since it was composed with such equipment in mind.)

This is also notable for capturing Andy Ward on drums in his last days in the band; by this point his struggles with alcohol had become severe and his mental health was approaching the crisis point. A few months later, he would attempt suicide, thankfully surviving but injuring his hand in the process, and Camel would attempt to go on hiatus, since everyone needed time off to recover from the shock and Ward in particular needed space to tackle his problems and begin the road to recovery.

Unfortunately, Decca would make loud noises about contractual obligations and demanded a new album in 1982, well before there was any prospect of Ward being able to return and prompting Andrew Latimer to knock together The Single Factor in order to keep the record company satisfied, and subsequently Ward would have a brief and disastrous stint in Marillion, during which his old issues flared up again; Ward would never return to the Camel fold.

Whatever was going on backstage with Ward, however, isn't really evident on his drumming here. He's a little lower in the mix than one might like, but otherwise he's on decent form, and it's particularly valuable to have a good-quality recording of him playing on the Nude material.

It's worth noting that the Air Born boxed set includes a significantly tied-up version of this BBC session, along with a couple of tracks - Summer Lightning and Ice from Breathless and I Can See Your House From Here respectively - which didn't emerge on the original release of On the Road 1981. Chances are that if you're a hardcore enough Camel fan to want to delve into live releases like this, you're probably keen enough to want to get that set - but if that's too rich for your tastes, I'd say On the Road 1981 is a pretty decent standalone release, particularly since it captures a more interesting and appealing time in the band's history than On the Road 1982 - confusingly similar in title (only one digit off!) but fatally different in composition, hailing as it does from the contractual obligation tour in support of The Single Factor.