Over the past couple year's I've found that the Camel album I return to the most is "Nude".
I was always baffled that Kit Watkins was associated with Camel for a pretty long period of time, as far as members of Camel go (1979-1982) and yet he only appeared on one studio album, "I Can See Your House From Here". ICSYHFH is an underrated album with a terrible record cover. He did play on at least three tours though: the ones for "I Can See...", "Nude" and "Single Factor". (Two of those tours were memorialized in live releases.)
The recent-ish remaster of Nude by Esoteric records has a near complete live rendition of the album as a bonus (from the same concert as "On the Road 1981", I think) with the lineup of Latimer, Colin Bass, Andy Ward, Jan Schellhaas, and Kit Watkins.
The studio version of Nude had featured Watkins and Schellhaas on the writing credits, but not as players. I guess Camel's live band had done a small number of live shows under a different name to road test the Nude material. I wonder why that group didn't record it?
At any rate, the live version is great--featuring Watkins' playful and nimble pitch bends. His playing really elevate songs like "City Life", in my opinion. It is only lacking a couple short instrumental chunks, "Please Come Home", and "Lies". I must admit I never liked "Lies", though somebody does, as it keeps popping up on compilations. If I was going to edit down Nude to 35 minutes, I would've only subbed "Pomp and Circumstance" in for "Changing Places."
Any fans of Watkins in Camel?
Are On the Road 1981 and On the Road 1982 worth getting?
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