Renaissance? While I pride myself on having a wide general knowledge of music, especially that of the 60's and 70's, this was a group I had not heard of! Looking into them, I found their origins began from members of the Yardbirds (a group I DID I know and really liked!) but by the time of their best-known (and most loved) line-up with Annie , all those original members had long since departed!
I left it to youtube to "recommend" songs from Renaissance to check out, and the ones that kept coming up were tracks from albums "Ashes are Burning" and "Turn of the Cards". I wasted no time digging in, and HOLY TOLEDO, was that youtube commenter RIGHT!
The first song I heard from them was the awesome "Carpet of the Sun" with lead vocalist Annie Haslam's heavenly voice soaring above...DAMN, I fell in LOVE right away and had to hear MORE! As I clicked on track after track, I became more in awe of this group- they were simply AMAZING! Every song blew me away with its magical sound, wonderful vocals and a deep, driving bass that reminded me of YES' bassist Chris Squire- VERY bottom heavy!
I next got into another one of their albums, "Scheherazade And Other Stories" and WOW, this was great as well! Soon enough, I had to purchase CD copies of Ashes and Burning, Sheherazade, and Turn of The Cards for my own!
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Falling in love with the songs, I was further stunned to find a collection of fine live performances of the band in their prime on youtube- complete sets to fully IMMERSE myself in the experience! The band sounding so great and Annie a mesmerizing as she did on record!
It has now been about half a year and I now own a small handful of well played and well loved albums from them; besides Ashes, Sheherazade, and Turn of The Cards, I got "A Song For All Seasons" (with their song "Northern Lights"), Prologue (first Renaissance album with Annie) and Novella! When even THOSE turned out to be AWESOME, I even ventured further with their latter "Azure D'or" album, another instant classic!
The only Renaissance output I've yet to check out are the 80's releases which saw the band moving into a more contemporary sound, but you know, with the way my fandom is blowing out of control, it seems it won't be long til I've got to get THOSE as well!!!
Sometimes I'll listen to my Renaissance discs and marvel at how a simple comment in a Mary Fahl video made me such an ardent fan of the group, and one day I saw a match made in heaven with Mary Fahl DUETTING with Annie Haslam!!! SIMPLY WONDERFUL!! Seems I was DESTINED to love BOTH these lovely ladies!
PS: Since her departure from the band, Mary has kept active releasing wonderful new albums annually, as you may recall I adored her Christmas Release a few years back, and her most recent album "Can't Get it Out of My Head" is yet another modern masterpiece!
This is a covers album with Mary doing tribute to some of her fave tunes, like Tuesday Afternoon, Nick Drake's "River Man" and the title track, ELO's "Can't Get It Out Of My Head', and OOOH, a HAUNTING cover of Neil Young's "Don't Let it Get you Down"!
