DREAMS & OMENS

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.