The Album Club choice for June 2017 comes courtesy of Ian (ianlenco) with Renaissance's first and eponymous album. As always, please listen to the album in its entirety before you comment and/or vote.


Renaissance

Back in 1969 I was a 6th former in Redcar, North Yorkshire. At the time Redcar had the Redcar Jazz Club which by the late 60's wasn't really about Jazz at all. By fortune my older sister's boyfriend (now brother-in-law) was on the committee of the Jazz Club so admission was never a problem. So I got the chance of seeing up and coming groups such as Yes and King Crimson as well as more established bands like Fleetwood Mac. One such up and coming band was Renaissance formed when the Yardbirds split. A couple of other band members went on to form Led Zeppelin but Keith Relf and Jim McCarty joined up with Relf's sister, Jane, John Hawken and Louis Cennamo to form Renaissance. I went along to see them not knowing what to expect but the blend of folk, rock and classical certainly made the evening different enough for me to go and buy the album. OK, it's now labelled Prog Rock but at the time it was about innovation, not pomposity



The album was played a few times during my student days but rarely after that until one day I dug it out only to find it had developed a nasty warp in storage. Then a few years later I pulled it out once more and weirdly the warp had gone so I got to enjoy the album all over again. OK, some of this is nostalgia but I think it just about stands up today. There's some good rock stuff in there with excellent piano playing and Jane Relf's voice on the folkier tracks (Island and Wanderer) is quite excellent.
Hope you enjoy it - it's still available on CD if you do. Word of warning later "Renaissance" line-ups are AOR at its worst - avoid!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renais...issance_album)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYy7CjCivAw

https://listen.tidal.com/album/60716664