Log #71 - Two Camels and a Dummy

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1. Genesis - The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway

2. Genesis - Selling England By The Pound

3. Portishead - Dummy

4. Camel - The Snow Goose

5. Camel - Moonmadness

6. Iron and Wine - Kiss Each Other Clean

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Two Classic Camels

While rediscovering Genesis over the last few weeks I noticed the band that resembled them the most to my ears was Camel. Both proggers are quite keyboard heavy but not in the mellotronic string backing style of King Crimson or The Moody Blues. The keyboards in Genesis and Camel are much more to the forefront of the music often taking up the melody lines. In Genesis this seemed to be to the detriment of guitarist Steve Hackett who is barely heard on many recordings. In fact, famously he was not even replaced on leaving in 1977. No such chance with Camel as guitarist Andy Latimer was most definitely the leader of the band both musically and spiritually (and now the only remaining original member).

Andy Latimer and Pete Bardens of Camel -  they could have been brothers?

Two classic mid 70s Camel albums in the player this week. If you like your prog melodic and at the easy listening end of  the heavy and challenging scale then you'll enjoy Camel. 

Consummate musicians with an ear for a heart wrenching melody the majority of both these albums is instrumental. In fact Snow Goose is entirely so. Both the recording and live performances featured the services of The London Symphony Orchestra. 

Beginning with Latimer's famous Rhayader flute riff the music on Snow Goose flows and soars continuously, essentially one symphonic piece with repeating themes that weave in and out across the fifteen tracks. The prominent organ and synthesizer arpeggios recall Genesis and when Latimer lets rip on the guitar over one of Pete Barden's organ grooves he sounds like Dave Gilmour or Carlos Santana - Rhayader Goes To Town is a Pink Floyd Echoes in miniature, the beautiful Snow Goose title track sounds like Santana's Samba Pa Ti.

(Im)famously the concept album was based on a novel of the same name by Paul Gallico who threatened to sue the band on copyright (I don't understand why fellow artists do this when the only effect the music could possibly have had - and it did become a popular record - surely was to increase the exposure to the source material?). 

The 1941 novel is a love triangle of sorts featuring a young girl who meets a reclusive artist living in an abandoned lighthouse on the Essex marshes. Together they nurse an injured bird back to health which subsequently returns each year during its migration. After the man is lost at sea during the Dunkirk evacuation the symbolic bird returns to the girl one more time.

Interesting Trivia Fact: Paul Gallico's other famous story was The Poseidon Adventure

In fact to avoid the copyright claim the album was originally entitled Music Inspired by The Snow Goose. Whatever, Paul Gallico did not live long to benefit or otherwise from the success of the record, dying in 1976 only a year after it was released.

Moonmadness, Camel's 4th album, followed Snow Goose in 1976. Following the extended concept of  the instrumental Snow Goose, Moonmadness saw a return to the more defined track based writing of their first two albums. Most of the 7 tracks are lengthy with extended instrumental passages of keyboard, guitar, and flute, and minimal, often distorted or mixed down, vocals (the band had literally yet to find it's voice with the understated vocals shared across all members). Sudden changes in direction are less bewildering than some employed by their prog contemporaries like Yes or Genesis but this does mean the music does verge upon the easy listening spectrum sometimes. What elevates Camel above that slightly anaemic diagnosis though is the sheer melodic beauty of the music. 

Camel are touring Moonmadness this year ending with a September gig at the Royal Albert Hall. I'm very tempted, if tickets are still available. 

Dummy

I had a gap year travelling in 93/94 and when I came back there were two new albums out on the UK streets that everyone was talking about. These were the debut albums by Oasis and Portishead. I was completely unaware of either having spent most of my time in Whitney Houston and Bob Marley obsessed South East Asia.

One was very old fashioned and derivative (not that there is anything wrong with that) and the other sounded futuristic and out of this world. I liked the latter, by Portishead, the more, but have to say I play neither very much any more. In fact I don't even own the Oasis one. But at the time Dummy, from the initial eerie strains of Mysterons, sounded amazing being one of those records the like of which you have not heard before. Someone posted a clip of a live track performed with orchestra on facebook the other day encouraging me to dig out the original album just to remind myself how fresh and original it was 24 years ago. Then I was watching the film Wild the other night with Reece Witherspoon (in the film, not on my sofa, obviously) and the soundtrack included Glory Box ("give me a reason to love you").

In 1995 I was in the acoustic tent for Portishead's long awaited set (long awaited as I recall there was some delay to do with Evan Dando of the Lemonheads failing to show, and then much consternation that it shouldn't take two hours to plug a synthesizer in, even if this was supposedly the acoustic stage). This is the story taken up by Paul Stokes writing in the NME:

‘Dummy’ had sneaked out in August 1994. By the end of the year word of mouth was spreading fast: Portishead’s debut album finished at or near the top of all the end of year polls and was hailed as the most brilliant, original album of the decade. The hype snowballed into 1995. Radiohead expressed admiration; Noel Gallagher declared that it had been an influence on ‘The Masterplan’; soon it would win the Mercury Music Prize, and bands imitating its cinematic sound – trip-hop – started to spring up everywhere. For Portishead, hailing from Bristol, Glastonbury was something of a homecoming show. Yet having been offered the pick of slots and stages, they opted for a low-key billing in the small Acoustic Tent on Saturday night. When it finally came, however, there was nothing ‘acoustic’ about this performance: their set crackled with electricity. Little was said onstage, yet the ever-shy Beth Gibbons bewitched the crowd, and every song from everyone’s new favourite album was cheered like an anthem on a football terrace.

In front of Portishead, it was total chaos. Sweaty limbs slid against each other and one moment you were capsizing to the right, before pressure came back the other way and the ripples started swelling again. Briefly, the band left the stage, allowing just enough time for word to skip around the crowd that, outside, 15,000 others were trying to squeeze in. The scrum had been worth it, though, and, as ‘Glory Box’ rounded off the encore, the mass of bodies who’d been squashed together all night were suddenly able to part. For those of us who endured the wait, the crush and, worst of all, Dando, a bond for life had formed. We are the ones who can say: Portishead at Glastonbury 1995, I was there…

Beth Gibbons of Portishead, Glastonbury 1995

1995 was hot. I went back in 1997 which was a quagmire. Another thing I remember about 1995 was bumping into a friend I'd met in the Philippines the year before. Imagine that - randomly meeting again in a field of 100,000 people in Glastonbury.