CAMEL
The Town Hall,
Birmingham, UK
10th March 2014

CONTRAST CLAUSE:
Alternate source to:

Relayerx9's recording at : http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-details.php?id=485179
paul44's recording at: http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-details.php?id=485201

Lineage (3rd Source):
CA14 Cardioids > CA9200 > Edirol HR-09 (@24/96) >
Cool Edit Pro 2 (edits, volume and downsample to 16/44) > CDWave > TLH
Recorded Row C, ~10' back midway between House Left Stack and Centre Stage

Recording and artwork by boombox


Set 1 (The Snow Goose):
01. The Great Marsh
02. Rhayader
03. Rhayader Goes to Town
04. Sanctuary
05. Fritha
06. The Snow Goose
07. Friendship
08. Migration
09. Rhayader Alone
10. Flight of the Snow Goose
11. Preparation
12. Dunkirk
13. Epitaph
14. Fritha Alone
15. La Princesse Perdue
16. The Great Marsh (reprise)

Duration: 49:35

Set 2:
01. Never Let Go
02. Song Within A Song
03. Echoes
04. The Hour Candle (Dedicated to Guy Le Blanc)
05. Drafted
06. Watching The Bobbins
07. Intro to 'Fox Hill'
08. Fox Hill
09. For Today
10. Encore break & band intros
11. Lady Fantasy

Duration: 85:35

For burning to two discs, place the first three tracks from Set 2 at the end of Set 1.

The Band:
Andy Latimer - Guitar, flute, keyboard, vocals
Colin Bass - Bass, acoustic guitar, vocals
Denis Clement - Drums, bass
Ton Scherpenzeel - Keyboards (replacing Guy Le Blanc)
Jason Hart - Additional keyboards, acoustic guitar, vocals

boombox's notes march 2014:

My second Camel show in six months - could it get any better? Well, yes, I think it could! Another packed out venue full of generally respectful music fans come to see Andy Latimer & Co deliver a lesson in how to do a first class show and have a ball doing it. First up was the reboot of 'The Snow Goose', which many thought benefited from the slightly rockier, more classic prog keyboards of Ton Scherpenzeel, standing in for Guy Le Blanc, who is battling serious illness. Ton's keyboards added a different colour again in the second half of Camel favourites, which were slightly tweaked from the Autumn tour - out went Airborn, Tell Me, Mystic Queen, Wait and Never Let Go (For Pete), with only Drafted coming in. So a shorter set than the last tour, but no-one felt short-changed. Andy's playing, as usual, was as wonderful and expressive as his facial gurnings, as ever more than ably supported by Colin, Denis and Jason - and the version of Lady Fantasy to close the night probably stands as my favourite ever. I've also included a small folder of pictures from the night.

So what of the recording? On taking my seat, I initially thought the Curse of Camel was going to strike again (I toasted my recording of Wolverhampton 2013 by accidentally knocking the mic gain switch on my Edirol): I was a little further away from the stack than I would have liked and wondered whether omnis might have been better. As it was, it came out very well, though being close to the front, the mics did pick up the natural sound of the drums and Denis hits 'em hard! Had to do some emergency work on the levels a few minutes in as I wasn't expecting the PA to be so quiet, which I've smoothed out.

Listening to the recording, the gunshot clapper to my immediate left was quite intrusive during the applause and prevented my raising the overall levels very much. Rather than just blanket reducing the volume or using hard limiting on the applause, I took the decision to manually lower the volume on each individual clap, a time consuming process involving zooming right in and reducing the spikes in 6db increments, sometimes three times per clap. With close on 2000 such spikes to fix, this has taken more time than I would care to total up, but I think the end result is worth it. I did use the blanket method for the encore break though - a couple of minutes of ecstatic Camel fans clappping and cheering for all they were worth was just tooooo much!

With at least three sources out there, anyone wanting my master files for a matrix or remaster is more than welcome to them.

Play loud and enjoy!!



Images for all shows as well as full size images for this show.

Images for this show:











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