(no subject)
When we last gazed upon the life of our proud protagonist, he was standing atop a huge mound of cultural artifacts. Today we find him furiously burrowing through said mound, shreds of pages and shards of albums flying every which way like bullets on a regular texan shooting range outing. Suddenly he freezes in the middle of tearing through some unfortunate and doomed volume and turns to look at us, hunched like some wild beast caught in the midst of supping on its kill. His eyes are wide open and are...are those pages hanging from his mouth?
Righto...
So, there was some talk about analyzing the contents of my last weeks haul a little more in-depth. Let's tackle the music part first. Dream Theater, of course, is still Dream Theater and being the fan that I am, I find it difficult to find anything to criticize other than the pitifully flimsy cardboard 3-cd packaging of the Score cd version. The band is probably in the best live shape of their career - I've never heard LaBrie hit the high notes so confidently and seemingly easily on a live album before - and a live performance of the whole Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence epic with orchestral backing achieved almost mythical proportions. I almost squealed with delight.
Continuing with the theme of live albums, next in line was To Live Again by Tarot. I've been recommended the band on several occasions and I can see why. The music was good'ole no-nonsense metal and that's that. Screaming and roaring and blowing fire all over the place kind of stuff. A more bluesy approach to playing on stage was provided by Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble with their eighties performances in Montreux. When someone is considered among the classics of their style, who am I to disagree. Certainly mr. Vaughans playing exhibits the soulful effortlessness of a hummingbird seeming to just hang in the air. If I could play the guitar like that, I'd probably do nothing but blues the days away. Oh, is that a Hendrix cover I hear? Wonderful!
On the bluesier side of the spectrum we also have Marcia Ball. So Many Rivers is the kind of music I've always unknowingly sought. At times soft and mellow and at times full of raunchy humour. A nice addition to my collection and something to listen to on a rainy day. The last female-led compilation of the haul was violinist Regina Carters album Paganini: After a Dream. The recording sprung from the idea of playing jazz on "Il Cannone" - the italian national treasure violin owned and played by Paganini himself. While the finer nuances of violin music still escape me, the album was intricate and full of dynamic interplay between the band members. Certainly good stuff and worth listening to more than once.
The Desperado soundtrack was a collection of laid-back spanish-influenced guitar music - quite fitting, considering the theme of the movie - interspersed with short clips of dialoque. While it didn't rock my world, it was still a nice distraction. The Dangermen Sessions (vol.1) by Madness was a nice collection of ska and reggae covers by a band that's been mostly an unknown to me thus far. Trying to extrapolate their own style from just the one song I had previous to getting this album would have been a bit silly, but after listening to their way of making covers, I think I'll have to look for some more of their original material.
The two Allan Holdsworth albums sounded like Allan Holdsworth again. Though perhaps a notch or two below Sixteen Men of Tain, they still were a good one-and-a-half hours of fusion guitar played like he had sold the devil not only the souls of himself and his family members, but also the family pets, the dentist, the stock-broker and the lady who puts the discount stickers on the fruit in the local grocery store. If I had his skills I would end world hunger. Or at least make half of the guitarists who listen to my playing quit their instruments in disgust and the other half to pick them up and practice 'till their fingers bled.
Then we get to the only real disappointment of the bunch. Zero Tolerance for Silence by Pat Metheny was an experience I wouldn't really recommend to anyone. Fourty-five minutes of guitar wankery on two channels with nary a trace of melody or any real attempt at song-building. Apparently the man is considered one of the jazz-guitar greats, but on this album it just doesn't show. (Or I'm just not civilized enough to see why...)
So all in all quite a nice haul. 9/10
Some more about the books a bit later.
Righto...
So, there was some talk about analyzing the contents of my last weeks haul a little more in-depth. Let's tackle the music part first. Dream Theater, of course, is still Dream Theater and being the fan that I am, I find it difficult to find anything to criticize other than the pitifully flimsy cardboard 3-cd packaging of the Score cd version. The band is probably in the best live shape of their career - I've never heard LaBrie hit the high notes so confidently and seemingly easily on a live album before - and a live performance of the whole Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence epic with orchestral backing achieved almost mythical proportions. I almost squealed with delight.
Continuing with the theme of live albums, next in line was To Live Again by Tarot. I've been recommended the band on several occasions and I can see why. The music was good'ole no-nonsense metal and that's that. Screaming and roaring and blowing fire all over the place kind of stuff. A more bluesy approach to playing on stage was provided by Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble with their eighties performances in Montreux. When someone is considered among the classics of their style, who am I to disagree. Certainly mr. Vaughans playing exhibits the soulful effortlessness of a hummingbird seeming to just hang in the air. If I could play the guitar like that, I'd probably do nothing but blues the days away. Oh, is that a Hendrix cover I hear? Wonderful!
On the bluesier side of the spectrum we also have Marcia Ball. So Many Rivers is the kind of music I've always unknowingly sought. At times soft and mellow and at times full of raunchy humour. A nice addition to my collection and something to listen to on a rainy day. The last female-led compilation of the haul was violinist Regina Carters album Paganini: After a Dream. The recording sprung from the idea of playing jazz on "Il Cannone" - the italian national treasure violin owned and played by Paganini himself. While the finer nuances of violin music still escape me, the album was intricate and full of dynamic interplay between the band members. Certainly good stuff and worth listening to more than once.
The Desperado soundtrack was a collection of laid-back spanish-influenced guitar music - quite fitting, considering the theme of the movie - interspersed with short clips of dialoque. While it didn't rock my world, it was still a nice distraction. The Dangermen Sessions (vol.1) by Madness was a nice collection of ska and reggae covers by a band that's been mostly an unknown to me thus far. Trying to extrapolate their own style from just the one song I had previous to getting this album would have been a bit silly, but after listening to their way of making covers, I think I'll have to look for some more of their original material.
The two Allan Holdsworth albums sounded like Allan Holdsworth again. Though perhaps a notch or two below Sixteen Men of Tain, they still were a good one-and-a-half hours of fusion guitar played like he had sold the devil not only the souls of himself and his family members, but also the family pets, the dentist, the stock-broker and the lady who puts the discount stickers on the fruit in the local grocery store. If I had his skills I would end world hunger. Or at least make half of the guitarists who listen to my playing quit their instruments in disgust and the other half to pick them up and practice 'till their fingers bled.
Then we get to the only real disappointment of the bunch. Zero Tolerance for Silence by Pat Metheny was an experience I wouldn't really recommend to anyone. Fourty-five minutes of guitar wankery on two channels with nary a trace of melody or any real attempt at song-building. Apparently the man is considered one of the jazz-guitar greats, but on this album it just doesn't show. (Or I'm just not civilized enough to see why...)
So all in all quite a nice haul. 9/10
Some more about the books a bit later.