LIVE AT THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL WITH THE ROYAL PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA PART 2

This is the second of a pair of volumes principally derived from a concert performed in October 1977 at the Royal Albert Hall, London, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Essentially, observations about technical quality apply to both volumes: the recordings are crisp and dynamic, and the orchestra is exceptionally detailed, but they are plagued by a persistant buzz throughout as well as some inevitable hiss and hum, despite being mixed and remastered in 1997. Additionally, John Tout's piano sounds awful, and the mix, at least as regards balance between orchestra and band, is at best variable.

While Volume 2 will prove to be a less satisfactory proposition than its twin, opening track Running Hard is a very fair start though marred by an orchestra that is inaudible for a large part of the time and at others is too recessed. That apart, though, the band perform very well, almost too faithfully to the original studio version. Aside from the technical issues, this track compares well with the standard-setting Carnegie Hall set. Midas Man is played without orchestra, Dunford's 12-string acoustic providing the main motive force backed by a variety of synths. It works well and the layered harmonies are spot on.

Mother Russia begins well, and is another good performance spoiled by an odd disappearance of the orchestra which resurfaces later on. Touching Once is even more bizarre. Even when the orchestra makes a late appearance it can barely be heard until the instrumental interlude when things get a little chaotic during the section with a sax solo. Control is just about maintained but it is a close run thing! It ends on a rousing climax though. Ashes Are Burning closes the main set with a lengthy 27 minute version, ten minutes of which contains mostly unnecessary and tedious unaccompanied solo spots, the sort of over-indulgent nonsense that everybody did in those days. The remainder sounds OK though, especially rocking out in an extended coda with Annie's vocalese.

This volume is augmented by a couple of tracks from other sources to flesh out the running time. The first additional track presents a problem. It should be a version of Prologue recorded in July 1979 without an orchestra, but some early copies were pressed with live rendition of A Song For All Seasons instead before the fault was rectified. Inevitably, my copy has A Song For All Seasons: it's live, it is sonically quite different to the other tracks but source is unknown, it has probably been severely overdubbed. It is OK without being special. Final track - You - is a previously unreleased studio recording from approx 1981. Again, it is OK, but marred by an overuse of synths.

Overall this volume doesn't gel quite as well as Volume 1, due partly to the ten minutes of solo tedium that should have been left on the cutting room floor, and having two alien tracks tagged on at the end as make-weights. Otherwise it is a set of good to excellent performances spoiled by those persistant technical problems. If you can only get one, then get the first volume. Better still, get the 2CD Carnegie Hall set.

Second part of this "King Biscuit Flower Hour". Somewhat on the lower edge of the scale when compared with the first one.

Don't get me wrong. There are still excellent songs performed here. The best example is IMO "Mother Russia". This version features so emotional vocals and the band is in full symbiosis with the orchestra. A great musical moment and my preferred one from this album. But I am talking about one of the best "Renaissance" song ever, so.

When compared to its counterpart of the first leg of this album (fully orchestrated), I have to humbly admit that "Prologue" is faaaaaar much better here. The orchestra has gone, and the band has the full control of the song. Annie can display her fantastic vocal harmonies as during the original studio version. I even prefer this one: fresher, more dynamic, crystal clear vocalizing. A damn good track.

The band plays some songs from their latest studio album (at the time - 1977). "Midas Man" as well as "Touching Once" are not the best ones from Renaissance but I must say that these live approaches have more feeling. They just "live" better. Especially "Touching" which is very pleasantly interpreted here. Way better than the studio version.

What annoys me most on this CD is the ultra long "Ashes Are Burning". Of course, we all know by now that "Renaissance" couldn't refrain their need for "expanding" this song. Indulgence during (almost) twenty seven minutes (while the original lasted for about eleven). After an acceptable intro, there are nine PAINFUL minutes (including the P.I.T.A. bass solo). I have never understood why the band decided to add such dull part to a very good original track.

To tell the truth, I have to add that the final part (some ten minutes) are just wonderful. Annie again is just a wonderful showcase: her vocalize job during the closing section is just GORGEOUS. But my feelings are mixed on the overall length of this song. At least a third is totally useless and improvised.

The closing track is an unreleased song. "You". Well, not that unreleased any longer. The band brought out an album of left-over songs ("Songs From Renaissance Days") which featured this song. The sound is more on the pop side but not too much (especially during the second and symphonic part). A good song after all.

At the end of the day, if the band could have refrain their useless jam session during "Ashes" I would have used the same rating as the first CD of this concert. As such I can only rate this one with three stars.

There is also a cheaper version of this album available under the name "Mother Russia". Exactly the same music but with a cheaper packaging.

Ashes are burning, and burning, and burning....

Volume two of the King Biscuit Flower Hour recordings gathers in some of the remaining tracks from Renaissance performance at the Royal Albert hall in London,UK. This concert saw Renaissance performing some of their finest material, supported by a full orchestra.

"Ashes are burning" was already an epic track, but here it takes on mammoth proportions, running to over 27 minutes. The vast extension of the piece is due to some interesting improvisation, including a vocal section by Annie Haslam, and some largely superfluous soloing. I am not averse to a bass solo, and while Jon Camp's one here displays his undoubted talent on the instrument, it tends to ramble somewhat. That said, the track as a whole is a fine prog statement. Three of the four other tracks from the main gig run to around 10 minutes, and as such are much more in keeping with their studio originals.

Since around an hour of material from the concert remained unreleased (after Volume 1), this album generously includes a further two songs. The first of these is an alternative version of "Prologue" performed live. The song was actually included in the RAH set, but it has already appeared on Volume one. This version is from a couple of years later, and is devoid of orchestra. On some versions, this track is missing, with "A song for all seasons" replacing it.

The final track, "You", is a previously unreleased studio recording from 1982 which runs to over 8 minutes. It is not really a hidden gem though, the feel being generally pop due to the wispy melody. The fine harmonies and competent instrumentation do though reprieve the song somewhat.

Note, the album called "Mother Russia" is a straight repackaging of Renaissance "Live on the King Biscuit flower hour Volume 2" album, with the tracks re-sequenced into a different order. The error mentioned above whereby initial pressings had "A song for all seasons" in place of "Prologue" is continued on "Mother Russia", at least on my copy!

Renaissance is one of my top 5 fave bands of all time. I just loved it from day one when I was still a young teenager in the 70´s. The reason why it took me so long to write about this CD is that as much as I adore this band they were not however known for having a particularly great live show. Ok, they could reproduce their stunning studio perfomances quite convincinly, but little else. There was not much improvisation and even when they eventually did some jamming it was only on one song (Ashes Are Burning). Always the same song. Besides, they already had a definitive live album (Live At Carnegie Hall), a must have for any fan.

So, this Live At The Albert Hall part 2 is a complete waste? Yes and no. The tracklist brings few new things. The perfomances here a no better nor worse than of those on Live At Carnegie Hall, including a massive 28 minute version of the aforementioned extended Ashes Are Burning. Touching once (is so hard to keep) (from 1977´s Novella) is the main atraction, being a nice live version that was not available elsewhere. The inclusion of an then unissued tune You is also of merit, although it was not one of their best (its original studio take remained in the can for a long time until it was released on the Songs From Renaissance Days). My CD says the final track should be Prologue (recorded on another unknown time and place), but instead we have a quite good live take of Song For All Seasons (from their 1978 album of the same name). It was a mistake, of course, but I really prefered that song instead of another Prologue (already featured on Live At Albert hall vol 1).

Conclusion: nice album. After all it does have a couple of novelties and the overall perfomances are everything you should expect from this great band. Rating: 3 stars. Good, but not really essential.

Of course, after the review of part 1 I have to immediately close the circle by reviewing this part 2.

There's very few to add. This part contains almost all the tracks left out from the first that were included in the Live at Carnegie Hall, apart of Midas Man from Novella and a previously unreleased song that appears just like a filler, not because it's bad but because it's a "normal" song in a serie of masterpieces.

By coincidence when years ago I put Carnegie Hall on two C60 cassette tapes, I've used Midas Man as filler...

"Ashes Ar eBurning seems to be used each time to include something different: There's a long guitar solo, not too good for my tastes on the studio version, one of my fave bass solos on Carnegie Hall and here we have a long psychedelic jam session featuring percussions, bass and Annie's vocalisms. One of the most acid moments of this band, even more acid than the debut (and it was a totally different lineup).

However the presence of a song like "Mother Russia" is enough to make this album appealable to any progger.

2.5 stars.....I'm joking, I mean that I intend this album as the second half of part 1 so the two together make 5 stars.

The second part of a masterpiece.

I would have been happier with this, the second half of the original show broadcast on the King Biscuit Flower Hour, if they had just left it alone. The concert with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra was something special, in the symphonic arrangements as well as the band's enthusiastic performances.

As stated above, the first five tracks are wonderful. It is a concert of Renaissance at it's stylistic and creative peak. The symphony orchestra adds much to the power of the music, and was used better than most of the concerts where a prog band is backed by a true orchestra. And the songs are great. The only problem to me is a slightly questionable bass solo in the half hour long Ashes Are Burning. But that's a slight problem.

The first CD of this concert is 62 minutes long. Without the "bonus" material this one would have been about the same. It was someone's idea to tack on a fair, but typical performance of Prologue from a 1979 concert (I have to dig out my cassette of a later King Biscuit concert to see if it was from that one), and an unreleased song, You. Now this song was recorded in 1982, after John Tout and Terrence Sullivan had left the band. It actually is better than anything on the two albums recorded after the pair left the group. But it still has that eighties synth pop junk that marred those albums.

But still, if you skip the last track, it's a great album.

This is the second of the two disc release drawn from Renaissance's performance at Royal Albert Hall in October of 1977. It is also in my view the more interesting of the two albums.

The reason I say this is because it draws material from Novella apart from also including concert staples Running Hard, Mother Russia and Ashes are Burning (which is a super-super-extended version). In comparison, Part 1 only has Can You Hear Me from Novella, while the rest is mostly material you already have from Live at Carnegie Hall (I say mostly because Prologue on Part 1 is performed by the orchestra and is a very interesting interpretation), rendering that a little more superfluous.

It also helps that the two tracks drawn from Novella on this album, Touching Once and Midas Man, translate better live than Can You Hear Me with its plodding interlude. This performance of Touching Once features what is almost like a duel between saxophone and Renaissance's lead instrument Annie Haslam and is far and away the best one I have heard so far. Annie is in superlative form and the RPO also seems to respond better to Renaissance's music than did the New York Philharmonic, elevating this performance even perhaps above the studio cut. There's precious little to choose between the versions of the Turn of the Cards tracks on here and LATC.

The album also features a performance of Prologue drawn from a 1979 concert. It is a really good one and is now available in video format (um, black and white just like the rest of the Song of Scheherazade DVD, I am afraid) on Concert Vault. As an appendage, we have You (Pts 1 and 2) which would make it to the outtakes album Songs from Renaissance Days and sounds positively incongruous in this lush, orchestral live album with its extremely 80s sounding synths and percussions.

The other problem is the performance of Ashes Are Burning. By this point, Renaissance seem to have grown almost inordinately fond of this, one of their most magical and best loved tracks. Surely, extending an originally 11 minute or so track to 28 minutes (!) is a feat that even ELP would have been proud of. Consider that nearly 5 minutes of this is just Jon Camp on bass. While he may be a fine player, the problem is he doesn't really explore any interesting harmonic possibilities on this solo and only seems to be demonstrating the limits of what he can do on the instrument. The performance never completely recovers from the loss of momentum at this point even though all the rest of it that they play is very well done.

For this and for forcing You on to this collection, I dock a star and give the album 4 stars. If you would like to hear a more confident version of Renaissance than that seen (heard) on LATC and also add some Novella along the way, this is a great release. If you do not have LATC at all, then Albert Hall pts 1 and 2 are more worth your time in my humble opinion.

Buyer beware: for some unaccountable reason, the good folks at the King Biscuit Flower Hour decided that rather than putting the Royal Albert Hall show out as a 2CD package (outside of a release in Japan where they did just that), they'd split it into two distinct releases, with the latter one completely pointlessly padded out with extra material. (Namely, a performance of Prologue from a 1979 concert - redundant because an all-orchestral version of Prologue begins the proceedings in the Royal Albert Hall concert itself - and a 10 minute studio track from 1983, You, from when the band was close to running out of steam entirely and needing to go into hibernation.)

It should also be noted that Esoteric, as part of their excellent series of Renaissance reissues, has included the whole Royal Albert Show as bonus discs on their release of Novella. As such, there is little need to get the separate release of the show if you have that or are planning to get it.

So, with that point understood, how is it? Well, essentially it's Renaissance working with a top-tier orchestra, so you know it's going to be good - with much of their material already optimised for performance with an orchestra anyway, they can get out there and do what they do best and trust the Royal Philharmonic to back them up to perfection. Unfortunately, the recording quality is not what it could be, with some sections having a sort of fuzzy sound quality to them, and at points there's a background hum which doesn't seem to have been tackled. In essence, it's a five-star performance let down by three-star technology - call it four stars as a compromise.

I'm going to set aside the performance of Prologue and You here because they are essentially bonus tracks unrelated to the original performance. This half of the concert has somewhat more in the way of new tracks not represented on previous Renaissance live releases, with Midas Man and Touching Once (Is So Hard To Keep) from Novella sitting comfortably alongside better-established material.

It is also distinguished by a nearly half-hour version of Ashes Are Burning, which includes an extensive improvisational section which strays into being a bit overly self-indulgent - improvised jams were never Renaissance's strong suit and whilst it is interesting to hear them stretch themselves in this manner, it's perhaps for the best they saved it for the album closer; I mind the improv section far less considering that it's spicing up a track which had been such a staple of their live show, and the way the band emerge from the depths of improv limbo to bring about a cataclysmic ten minute finale to the song raises goosebumps.