Search - Camel :: Mirage

By far one of Camel's best

BENJAMIN MILER | Veneta, Oregon | 11/05/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Camel's self-entitled 1973 debut sounds like a band not sounding very confident, but their followup, Mirage found the band in a much improved form. Back in 1972, there was a live recording that was later released in 1992 called On the Road 1972. On that disc shows Camel in a rather raw and aggressive form. They even played "Lady Fantasy" and "White Rider" which later ended up on Mirage (the reason I can tell those early versions were from '72 was Peter Bardens still had his VCS-3 synth, while on Mirage the VCS-3 was gone in favor of the Minimoog). Mirage, of all the studio Camel albums I have ever heard is the one that best captures the raw excitement and energy of the On the Road 1972 disc. When you hear "Freefall" and "Lady Fantasy", you're basically treated with some of Camel's most hard rocking material. "Supertwister" is the first Camel song to feature Andy Latimer flutework, and the song was actually in honor of the Dutch progressive rock band Supersister who themselves had released a handful of albums in the early 1970s on Polydor. Mirage has two different covers. There's one that pokes fun of the Camel cigarette pack, and another with Camel as a dragon, done in a '70s sci-fi fashion. I happen to like the latter better, but for humorous purposes, the cigarette pack cover is pretty silly. Mirage does receive lots of hype in the prog community, and the album is often regarded as a Camel fan favorite, and it's really not hard to see why. If you're a prog rock junkie and this is not in your collection, then you need to get yourself a copy."

Lady Fantasy is Fantastic!

BENJAMIN MILER | 07/09/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is one of Camel's best album. Great compositions and Great playing as usual. I can't stop listening this album from the start to the end once I put it in player. This is very strong and consistent album. You may find out that "Supertwister" and "Lady Fantasy" are excellent works. There are very attractive melody lines which are not easy to find in progressive rock musics (And this is, I think, the strongest point of Camel). There are a couple of problem (?) in regard to this album. First, the playing time is too short (I guess less than 40 minutes). BUT this is a good time range to listen to whole album without any types of internal or external interruption. Second, one may suspect that the album cover is intended to advertise a particular tobacco make. But who cares? (Personally, I like the cover, which does not necessarily mean I like the camel cigarette...)"

In the shadow of Focus

Gavin Wilson | 08/24/2001

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Camel were not widely noticed until the release of their third album, THE SNOW GOOSE. The standard line in the history books is to blame this on audience confusion with another band, Frampton's Camel. Perhaps a more honest explanation would be to say that Camel's first two albums just weren't sufficiently distinctive. Certainly the first album, sensibly called CAMEL, isn't much good. MIRAGE was a lot better. The band were beginning to find their own voice, although at times they sounded a lot like Focus. (The lead instrument line-ups of guitar, flute and keyboards were identical.) And when Focus wasn't at the top of their minds, Andy Latimer could sound a lot like his axe hero, Hank Marvin of the Shadows. Throughout their career, Camel's principal message was "Rock can be quite nice, really". Camel's inoffensive niceness was an antidote to the vigours of Sabbath, Zeppelin and punk. Many of us who went through a Camel phase in the 70s, mistaking their surface attractions and frequent time-signature changes for music that actually meant something. I bought nearly all their 70s LPs. I saw them on the MIRAGE tour -- although the concert adverts used the Camel-as-railroad cover art from the debut album. These were the days when concert tickets cost less than a dollar, and I would imagine that over 95% of the audience at the gig had never heard a note of Camel music before attending. But Camel's mixture of hackneyed rock riffs and sugary flute/organ duets went down well with the audience, all of whom were 13-to-18-year-olds. Many of us bought the LPs, but frankly didn't miss them when we had to sell them a couple of years later because we were hard up. Such is the transitory appeal of Camel. John Tracy's detailed inlay notes for the 1989 CD give almost too much information about the pre-history of the band. We do not need to see the names of all those musicians from Surrey who never made it big. I live in the Leatherhead/Guildford area which Tracy describes, and even this knowledge of the locale does not enhance my appreciation of the sleeve notes. The CD has been nicely remastered, though I'd like to hear more clarity from the bass and drums. The introductory march on track #3, the Nimrodel suite, contains the clearest hints of the direction the band would take with their next album, THE SNOW GOOSE. The final track, 'Lady Fantasy', is a 12-minute epic, a concert rabble-rouser which just about succeeds in concealing the joins between the separate segments which in other Camel tunes often seemed bolted on. Unlike some, I wouldn't describe Camel as 'progressive'. Their music was too likeable on first hearing, which I believe excludes them, by definition, from the category of progressive rock bands. If you like this album, you should also enjoy THE SNOW GOOSE and MOONMADNESS, together with Greenslade's BEDSIDE MANNERS ARE EXTRA. But you should be aiming for FOCUS III, which defined the genre and has never been bettered."