No shortage of things found in the 2 dollar bins at my favorite place to find things. Perhaps the most bizarre out of all of them is the Sin-arta CD. To which Bruce Kulick, former KISSer and now Grand Funk Railroad hack decides to get some of his metal singing buddies to cover songs done by the Chairman Of The Board and I don't Frank would have approved much of it. I only could sat through 2 songs, the OTT New York New York theme done by Devin Townsend and Glenn Hughes giving everybody a headache on the oversung I got You Under My Skin. Kulick did a very good metal Christmas tribute album to which heavy metal heads sang Christmas Carols but this Frankie tribute would have him spinning in his grave. I'm sure Geoff Tate and Doug Pinnick will have better versions but for now it didn't seem like a good time to review it. Even though I found a promo copy in the 2 dollar bins, the release date is March 29 so I got the exclusive on this. Which may not be a big deal after all.
Upon new releases from Richard X Heyman to which i passed on, I ended up getting Angelfire (Radiant) a collaboration between Steve Morse (Dixie Dregs, Deep Purple) and Sarah Spencer and even though Morse gets top billing, it's Spencer that does the domination of songs and arrangement, in fact this is the first Morse album that he sounds subdued and not out front. Spencer's airy vocals comes across like a Sarah McLaughlin, Loreena Mckennitt and Enya and what do I make of it? Is it religious music? New Age? Certainly not rock and roll. I did find myself humming along Everything To Live For, or Get Away. But this is the type of stuff you hear on The Spirit 89.1 although I wouldn't call it praise music.
I have really not heard much of Blackmore's Night, his medieval folk acoustic band all that much and finding his new album Autumn Sky (Spinefarm/Fontana) in the 2 dollar bins was worth listen to even though I didn't expect much but in all honesty it's not a bad album at all. The purists out there have based lead off track Highland for it's rock beats and Blackmore playing electric leads but I came to find that I actually liked the song and for what I heard, Blackmore's guitar playing remains damn good. He obviously enjoys playing this music which kinda reminds me of the old Fairport/Steeleye Span bands of yore and Candace Night sings pretty damn good. Again the purists out there have decried the cover of Celluloid Heroes (done by the Kinks, thought Blackmore was done with rock n roll?) and it may be slight but I can to listen to it. Candace does owe a bit to McKennett in vocal but I must say she's a pretty good singer that doesn't oversing. In fact she wins me over on the beautiful finale Barbara Allen. Even Richie Blackmore's work on the six string is excellent. Bravo!
For albums of note Willie Nelson-Country Winners (Camden/Pickwich 1973) a budget priced 9 song selection of some of Willie's best known RCA stuff (The Party's Over, Night Life, Funny How Time Slips Away). I forgotten how Hello Walls starts out with Willie dueting with the late Pete Drake's talking steel guitar (Drake could make it sound robotic) but then again I didn't realize that I had more than half the songs on the RCA Best Of Willie Nelson Volume 1. Pickwick back in the 70's would license albums from the major labels and then chop off one or two lesser known tracks to sell it at budget prices, a total ripoff if you ask me. But for cheap records, Pickwick vinyl seemed to be a lot better than most of the major labels. I also don't know why I have more RCA Willie Nelson than I do his classic Columbia albums either.
Moody Blues Caught Live + 5 (1977) Three sides live came from a 1969 show and for a band that did things perfectly in the studio they sure were sloppy and loose onstage, heck Nights In White Satin kinda sounds punky to me. The Dream/Have You Heard/The Voyage medley sounds quite dated and whoever is trying to hit the high notes on Ride My See Saw is sadly out of tune (John Lodge behind this?). Doesn't help when Mr. Edge is trying to do a drum solo on Peak Hour and looking buffoonish but I guess that's why I consider that tune to be punk rock too. But for the pluses Gypsy sounds better than it did on the ill fated Live at The Isle Of Wright 1970 album, Never Comes The Day and Tuesday Afternoon rock and even Dr. Livingston I Presume rocks as well. The 5 studio cuts on side four were not good enough for the original albums but Give Me A Little Something is the best out of the bunch with Long Summer Days with a catchy chorus. The five songs would appear later on the London Prelude, which came out in 1987, one of the first CDs that I ever bought. Strange to see Caught Live + 5 issued on London instead of Threshold in 1977 and I remember seeing many copies in the cutouts at Target.
Grades of note:
Steve Morse & Sarah Spencer-Angelfire B
Blackmore's Night-Autumn Sky A-
Willie Nelson-Country Winners B
Moody Blues-Caught Live +5 B
Sin-arta (Armory/Eagle Rock)
It's hard to do a tribute album to celebrate of a legend and many have tried and most have failed. And some should have never been tried at all. Case in point, the new Frank Sinarta tribute album from Bruce Kulick who decided there's nothing to do better than turn the guitars up to 10 and give us the usual outdated hairmetal riffs from the 80s and have former metal heads sing Frank's better known hits. And it fails miserably. Not even Geoff Tate can save Summer Wind from the excessive Kulick riffs and loud drums and cheesy keyboard masquerading as horns. Or have the likes of Devin Townsend, Glenn Hughes, Eric Martin and Ripper Owens who trashes Witchcraft to the point that you wish that The Chairman Of The Board would come out of the grave and fit him with cement shoes. This is so bad, that the best track on the album is done by Jeni (Warrant) Lane and Ritchie Kotzen on That's Life....which was much better done by David Lee Roth. And Billy Sheehan (Mr. Big) played on that track too and on this album but you can't hear him over the screams of the guest singers and overpower Kulick guitars. Even Robin Zander is overmatched by Fly Me To The Moon.
If you're going to cover Frank Sinarta's music and songs you better have a certain respect and know how to approach to sing the songs. And nobody does this on Sin-arta, which just may be the worst album I have ever had the misfortune to listen to. It's beyond sucks, this is a total failure. And a piece of shit too.
Grade F
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