"For Richard" for the Ages
Ryle Shermatz | Cedar Rapids, IA | 12/28/2006
(5 out of 5 stars)
"My heart skipped a beat when I discovered this was still available; I have been wearing the oxide off of a cassette dub of this recording for several years, and after BUYING THE CD online I have to come back and try to explain why you should be interested also.
I'll assume that anyone interested enough to read this already knows something of Caravan's pedigree, history and repertiore. "Live in Nottingham" was, I believe, a "one-off" reunion gig for them. Demand and fan response was so ecstatically positive that they chose to rekindle the band and have continued part-time with help from various past members up to the present (2006).
This CD then is a bit of a "victory lap" set spanning most of their career up to this Nottingham show. I am sure that while they DID rehearse before taking the stage, the intensity of the performances comes both from the artists' familiarity with the material and the adrenaline boost from laying it down live one last time for an appreciative crowd.
There is ABSOLUTELY no fat on this release. Every track is primo Caravan, each surely selected by the band as a "greatest hits live" thank-you for their fans (with the possible exception of "Hollywood" which is a damn good song even if it wasn't at that time an established part of the Caravan set list like "Grey and Pink" was/is). Vocal duties are fairly evenly split between guitarist & band mainstay Pye Hastings and the great Richard Sinclair on bass.
ALL tracks are performed with great brio and accuracy; what a show it must have been for those in attendance. However the thing that makes "Live in Nottingham" an ESSENTIAL buy is the riveting, SCORCHING performance of "For Richard" closing the concert. Caravan (like all other "classic rock" bands) lives or dies by the recordings we came to know them by, and "For Richard" has long been their designated "usual Caravan closing number" (as spoken from the stage by Pye Hasings on the "New Symphonia" CD).
I have had the benefit of growing slowly into a full appreciation of "For Richard." This was the big closer to Caravan's second LP, "If I Could Do It Again, I'd Do It All Over You," and at that time I nodded and thought "that's nice" as I loaded up another bong hit, yet that recording never shook me particularly. The orchestrated version on "New Symphonia" was an improvement, with Geoff Richardson's viola SIGNIFICANTLY adding color and heat. It surely also helped that leading that side of the LP with the stellar "Virgin on the Ridiculous" meant that I listened to "Richard" several more times than I did on the original studio record.
The point is that I was well familiar with "For Richard" by the time "Live in Nottingham" rolled around and initially had no reason to expect more than another polite run-through by the reunited band.
However, to my ears, this is the DEFINITIVE performance, and allow me to publicly proclaim here the AWE in which I hold the incredible Dave Sinclair who wrote "For Richard" and is surely one of the most overlooked keyboardists of the progressive rock era. Sinclair's performance soloing and reinterpreting the live arrangement of his own comnposition is truly a bit of musical transmutation we only experience a few times in our lives, and should NOT be overlooked by fans of Caravan.
After the first mournful four lines sung by Pye, the lyrical part of "For Richard" is over, although the musical examination of life, regret, despair, joy, and resolution has only begun. The lyrics are ambiguous, but the title "For Richard" as well as the somber reflectiveness of the lyrics suggest this is a musical remembrance of a friend lost young, and in response, a sprawling, ambitious musical expression of the emotion and drama inherent in EVERY life.
All these qualities are evident on earlier recordings of "For Richard;" what was missing previously was to place Dave Sinclair on a stage with a keyboard that could do anything he wanted and letting him wail at full intensity to totally clobber you with all the passion and fury he wrote into this piece from the beginning. As they would say in the legendary Kansas City jazz clubs and later of Charlie Parker, "that cat can WAIL--he's really telling a story!!!"
I am not a classical music fan at all, but I nibble around the edges a bit and see many of the same elements of passion and genius evident in "For Richard" as eggheads everywhere have attributed to Beethoven's 9th and "Ode to Joy". Obviously Dave Sinclair has not enjoyed the patronage of aristocrats to exalt his work during his lifetime and to ensure his apotheosis postmortem, but to my ears the emotive force of his composition and performance equal the power and majesty Herr Beethoven evoked in listeners 176 years ago. YES to my ears, IT'S THAT GOOD and if you disagree, well, that's your problem.
I harbor no illusions of "converting" classical music snobs, however all Caravan fans and general enthusiasts of progressive rock MUST hear this and feel Dave tap directly into the elemental life force as few modern composers/performers have done before or since. "For Richard" really dwarfs everything else on this collection, although that by no means denigrates the rest of this INCREDIBLE collection by a wildly underappreciated band.
I look forward to hearing from you in wild agreement."
Track Listings (7) - Disc #1