TOTAL PRESSURE - LIVE IN CONCERT 1984
Camel
•Symphonic Prog
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4.03
| 53 ratings | 6 reviews | 57% 5 stars
Excellent addition to any |
DVD/Video, released in 2007 Songs / Tracks Listing 1. Pressure Points (7:17) - Chris "Rainbow" Harley / vocals, keyboards
Recorded in 1984 at the Hammersmith Odeon, London, England, directed by Mike Mansfield. and to Quinino for the last updates Edit this entry |
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CAMEL Total Pressure - Live In Concert 1984 ratings distribution
(53 ratings)
Essential: a masterpiece of progressive rock music(57%)Excellent addition to any prog rock music collection(34%)Good, but non-essential (8%)Collectors/fans only (2%)Poor. Only for completionists (0%)
CAMEL Total Pressure - Live In Concert 1984 reviews
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Collaborators/Experts Reviews
PROG REVIEWER
I was not very enthousiastic about that video featuring sloppy camera work at some moments like focussing on the second keyboard player while the first is playing a solo or focussing on the drummer while Latimer is doing great guitar work. But this DVD is another story due to the very interesting extra songs like strong renditions of Drafted, Captured and Lies (from the album Nude, the first time I witnessed a Camel concert) and the socalled 'Added Pressure' section that contains La Princesse Perdue, Unevensong, Never Let Go (I enjoyed the flashy synthesizer solo by fellow countryman Ton Scherpenzeel, ex-Kayak) and Hymn To Her that delivers the both very distinctive as sensitive Andy Latimer style guitarwork, including the 'clowning' because of his intense emotions while playing! Lies is one of my favorite Camel songs becase of the melancholic vocals and warm guitar runs, on this DVD you can enjoy a delicate version featuring a fluent synthesizer solo by Ton Scherpenzeel and another sensitive guitar solo by Andy Latimer. Remarkable is the spacey kebyoard intro by Scherpenzeel on the track Vopos, a bit polished track. During Stationary Traveller (fine play of words) we can witness Latimer on the panflute, a very melancholical sounding instrument, and building up a splendid guitar solo. The absolute highlight is my ultimate Camel composition Lady Fantasy: lots of dynamics, an exciting Hammond organ solo and Latimer plays very compelling guitar work, again including that typical 'clowning'!
To me this DVD sounds superior to the video version, I was carried away by Camel on stage during this Hammersmith Odeon concert in London(1984) featuring guest musicians Mel Collins and Peter Bardens, what a wonderful symphonic prog!
PROG REVIEWER
Nowadays the future of the band is obscured by dark clouds, but I like to wish them a long live tour in the next years - and this is my hope at least!!
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR Symphonic Team
Total Pressure is a re-release of a previously released live video (called Pressure Points) originally filmed and recorded on the tour in support of the Stationary Traveller album in the mid 80's. There is also a live album from the same show. The set list consists of almost the full Stationary Traveller album, though not in the same running order as the studio album and with some songs from other albums played in between the Stationary Traveller tracks. Stationary Traveller was a fine album, but hardly one of Camel's very best albums. In my review of that album I said that Camel's best albums are their first four and their most recent four, and that what they did in between was of varying quality. Stationary Traveller is, however, probably the best album they did in those in-between-years. The other albums represented in the main part of this show are Nude, The Single Factor and I Can See Your House From Here all from those uneven in-between-years. This means that the performance under review here is almost entirely focused on material from 1979 to 1984, hardly Camel's better years! There is, however, an encore consisting of two tracks from The Snow Goose and the show closes with the classic Lady Fantasy from Mirage.
As I also said in my review of the Stationary Traveller studio album, the best songs from that album are the instrumentals. This is also true of this live recording. The show opens with an instrumental from Stationary Traveller, called Pressure Points. This track features the amazing guitar sound of Andy Latimer. Stunning guitar work! They then move on to play three songs from the Nude album, with the instrumental Captured being by far the best. We then get five songs from Stationary Traveller in a row and this is easily the weakest part of the show for me. The instrumental title track being the best of these five songs and here Andy Latimer plays a pan flute to great effect and further stunning guitar solos. I do, however, prefer the studio version of this particular song as it has lovely acoustic guitars missing on this version.
Sasquatch is taken from The Single Factor and is another instrumental that has become a mainstay of the band's shows. Wait is taken from I Can See Your House From Here and is the oldest song played until the encore. It is a basic Pop song and as such is not one of my favourites. Two further songs from Stationary Traveller follows before the encore.
With the exception of Pressure Points which is considerably extended and improved here, the tracks from Stationary Traveller are quite faithful to the studio album. But I generally prefer the studio versions of these songs over these live versions. The performances of the Stationary Traveller tracks are rather lifeless, actually. The tracks from Nude, The Single Factor and The Snow Goose, on the other hand, are actually better than their original versions in my opinion. These songs have a bit more punch compared to their original studio versions (that this reviewer finds a bit subdued). And when the band plays these songs, they seem to live up and the performance adopts a whole new dimension and energy!
The band consists of six people plus two guests. As many as four different keyboard players take part in this show (including Peter Bardens who makes a guest appearance on some tracks)! Ton Scherpenzeel of Kayak does a good job together with Ritchie Close and vocalist Chris Rainbow who also play keyboards. However, the stage presence of these keyboard players is close to zero! The performance of Close and Scherpenzeel feels like "a regular day at the office" for them, basically.
From a visual standpoint this version of the band is rather dull. Andy Latimer himself is the most charismatic person here and even if I love the man very much, I must say that he is not really a show man. Though it is fun to watch him play - his "clown faces" and all. This version of Camel is just not a very visual band, but were they ever? Don't get me wrong here though; I personally like bands that concentrate on playing their instruments instead of doing a lot of unnecessary theatrics. But they must put effort and emotion into the performance! Which they do, occasionally! I really feel that when they finish the last track of the night from the Stationary Traveller album (suitably called Long Goodbyes), the whole band feel relieved. And during the encore, when they play a section from The Snow Goose, the whole show gains a lot in energy and enthusiasm. This is the intensity they should have had all night!
One problem I have with this video is that the cameras are almost never where the action is. The camera men almost never manage to film the one who is playing the most interesting passage at the time (or the angles are simply badly chosen). This is confusing, to say the least! The whole thing is badly filmed; you never really get an overview of the stage. When Peter Bardens is introduced for the encore, for example, they don't even show him walking on stage! I don't think there is more than one single shot at Bardens' face! I have never seen such a badly edited concert film. The picture quality is also not the best, but it is, after all, the music that counts.
The DVD also features some bonus tracks (in slightly worse picture quality). Musically these are good, but visually they are dispensable. Here you get another number from The Snow Goose; Unevensong from Raindances, Hymn To Her from I Can See Your House From Here and the classic Never Let Go from Camel's self-titled debut album. You also get a short but interesting video interview with Andy Latimer filmed at the time.
To sum up. I am a bit disappointed with Total Pressure. But I definitely still enjoy it despite its considerable shortcomings (that lie primarily in the visual aspect and the heavy reliance on material from the Stationary Traveller album). The live album called Pressure Points which features this very same show, though not all of it, is actually preferable over this DVD as some of the weakest tracks from the show has been cut and the album actually flows much better! As the visual aspect is not very strong here anyway, I would actually recommend to go for the live album in this case (that I rated with four stars!).
Total Pressure is still a good DVD despite some obvious flaws, but it is certainly not the best Camel DVD out there (and it is, as I said, not even the best official release of this very same show despite the fact that it is more complete). The more recent live DVD, Coming Of Age, is simply extremely much better in every possible respect compared to the present DVD! Coming Of Age is also a much better video introduction to Camel as it features tracks from the mid 70's to the mid 90's (with a performance of the excellent Harbour Of Tears album in its entirety!).
PROG REVIEWER
Anyway, despite all these problems, this concert video is very good. At least, the quality of the images and sound was improved a lot thanks to the use of some technology, and the inclusion of additional songs was a very good idea. For example, songs like "Drafted", "Captured", "Lies", "La Princesse Perdue", "Unevensong", "Never Let Go" and "Hymn to Her" were included in this new version. And one can watch to all the songs they played from their "Stationary Traveller" album as they really were played in the concert. Fortunately, at least some very good keyboard solos played by Close and Scherpenzeel were caught by the cameras in songs like "Lies" (with Close playing a solo) and with Scherpenzeel and him sharing keyboard solos in other songs. There is also a guest appearance on Hammond Organ from original member Peter Bardens on "Rhayader", "Rhayader Goes to Town" and in "Lady Fantasy", with the cameras sometimes being focused on him playing a solo and in other times not being focused on him while he was playing a solo. In these three songs, there are four keyboard players playing together with the band! Mel Collins also appears playing some sax solos in "Rhayader Goes to Town" and in "Fingertips" (with Latimer being out of the stage in this last song). Latimer also plays some flute in "Rhayader" and pan flutes in the "Stationary Traveller" album title song. All the members of the band played very well, and they looked very happy playing together, very well rehearsed.
Maybe some people don't like CAMEL's music from the eighties. But I really like it a lot. This band like other Prog Rock bands from the seventies had to change a bit their musical styles in the eighties to satisfy their record labels's inclinations towards more commercial Pop Rock arrangements for their music. Unfortunately, CAMEL never has been a very popular Prog Rock band like others (YES, Genesis, etc.) from the seventies despite doing all those changes to their music in the more commercial terms of the eighties. Despite their music became more accessible then it still retained a lot of quality and a lot of Prog Rock's influences, and fortunately their looks weren't very much influenced by the "look fads" of the eighties. Fortunately, they still appeared on stage looking like very good musicians playing their music very well without looking like some very commercial Pop Rock bands from the eighties (Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Culture Club, etc.).
R.I.P. Peter Bardens , Richie Close and Chris Rainbow.
Latest members reviews
The 80's is not my favorite decade, for Camel, and for any other thing. Why would I want to see and hear a live show from Camel's lowest points in its discography? The reasons were very simple: first, the only live recordings I owned by this wonderful band were a downloaded from YouTube video ca ... (read more)
Report this review (#2434199) | Posted by judahbenkenobi | Saturday, August 1, 2020 | Review Permanlink
At long last! This concert was originally shown on British TV in the 80s with a terrible sequence of filmed clips shot at London's Canary Wharf long before the new offices were built. The video clips were supposedly of World War 2 or Cold War scenes with a woman separated from her lover. Reall ... (read more)
Report this review (#124362) | Posted by memark | Saturday, June 2, 2007 | Review Permanlink
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