Repertoire
2002
Renaissance
About This Album
The first Renaissance album features what today would be considered almost a legendary lineup at its core. At the time of the Yardbirds' split in mid-'68, Jimmy Page walked away with the blues and hard rock side of the band, plus whatever heavy metal influences they'd ever manifested, while lead singer Keith Relf and drummer Jim McCarty -- who'd represented the more folk-oriented, creative side of the old band in earlier years, and their trippier, spacier side in more recent times -- decided to get experimental in those directions, initially under the name Together as a duo, and then forming an entirely new group. Ex-Herd/Jimmy Powell & the Dimensions alumnus Louis Cennamo joined on bass and John Hawken, late of the Nashville Teens, came in on piano, with Relf picking up the guitar as well as singing, and his younger sister Jane Relf sharing the vocals. The resulting group, working from Relf and McCarty's compositions, proved greater than the seeming sum of its parts as Hawken and Cennamo quickly began expanding on the basic songs, developing their own classical-style cadenzas -- at the time, in 1969, there was just enough adventurousness left from the psychedelic era to hold their audience to what they were doing, even as a new art rock audience began coalescing.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,5 and 6)

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