Guns N' Roses - Use Your Illusion I (1991) (MFSL UDCD-711)

GUNS N' ROSES

Use Your Illusion I (MFSL UDCD-711)

Genre: Rock
Format: FLAC + cue + log
Released: 2007
Label: MFSL
Number of Discs: 1

Line Up :

Axl Rose - lead vocals, piano
Slash - lead guitar
Izzy Stradlin - rhythm guitar, backing vocals, lead vocals (track 2)
Duff McKagan - bass, backing vocals, lead vocals (track 10)
Matt Sorum - drums, percussion
Dizzy Reed - piano, organ, keyboards, backing vocals

Steven Adler - drums, percussion (track 1)
Howard Teman - piano (track 10)
Shannon Hoon - vocals (track 13)
Johann Langlie - keyboards, drums and sound effects (all in track 14)
Josh Richman - speech (track 4)
The Waters - backing vocals (track 4)

Track Listings:

1. "Right Next Door to Hell" (Axl Rose, Izzy Stradlin, Timo Caltia) – 3:02

2. "Dust N' Bones" (Slash, Stradlin, Duff McKagan) – 4:58

3. "Live and Let Die" (Paul McCartney, Linda McCartney) – 3:04

4. "Don't Cry (Original)" (Rose, Stradlin) – 4:45

5. "Perfect Crime" (Rose, Slash, Stradlin) – 2:24

6. "You Ain't the First" (Stradlin) – 2:36

7. "Bad Obsession" (Stradlin, West Arkeen) – 5:28

8. "Back Off Bitch" (Rose, Paul Tobias) – 5:04

9. "Double Talkin' Jive" (Stradlin) – 3:24

10. "November Rain" (Rose) – 8:58

11. "The Garden" (features Alice Cooper) (Rose, Arkeen, Del James) – 5:22

12. "Garden of Eden" (Rose, Slash) – 2:42

13. "Don't Damn Me" (Rose, Slash, Dave Lank) – 5:19

14. "Bad Apples" (Rose, Slash, Stradlin, McKagan) – 4:28

15. "Dead Horse" (Rose) – 4:18

16. "Coma" (Rose, Slash) – 10:14

Anyone who's into Metal has an opinion about this band. Some like them. Some hate them. Some worship them. And for some, GUNS 'N ROSES was the band that got them into Rock/Metal. I am one of these people. Frankly, if I hadn't heard "November Rain" all those years ago, I probably wouldn't be writing this review. This band warped my frail virgin mind and made me appreciate guitar riffs and wailing solos. But enough about me, on with the review.Unless you've been living under a rock for the past 17 years, you would know that this band plays balls-to-the-wall Hard Rock. With their debut album, they gave the Rock world a kick in the face, and made it dangerous again.v In 1991, GUNS 'N ROSES released 2 albums worth of material, "Use Your Illusion I" and "Use Your Illusion 2". They kicked out their original drummer, Steven Adler, due to drug related problems, and replaced him with the drummer from THE CULT, Matt Sorum. The rest of the band stayed intact, with Axl on vocals and on piano occasionally, the rhythm and lead guitar team of Izzy Stradlin' and Slash, and bassist Duff McKagan. Also new to the band is Dizzy Reed, playing organs and/or piano on certain tracks.This album features both extremes in terms of songwriting. On one hand, this album contains what I believe is the greatest GUNS 'N ROSES songs ever written, the groovy and swinging "Dust And Bones", with Izzy singing with his extremely nasal and cool voice; the thrashy and metallic "Perfect Crime", and the beautiful epic that is "Coma". On the other hand, it houses my least Gun songs EVER, namely the sappy drunken cowboy ballad "You Ain't The First". I gotta give props to the band though. This is an honest break-up song, compared to all the ones on MTV/Much music, where the poor guy/girl that got dumped begs the person who dumped him/her to take him/her back. And another sappy ballad, "Don't Cry", that was recorded TWICE, for each of the "Illusion" albums.......Once was enough, boys.Guitar wise, this contains amongst the band's best riffs and Slash's coolest solos. How can you not feel the groove in "Dust And Bones"? How could you not want to just thrash your room while listening to "Garden Of Eden"? "The Garden" shifts out of its two moods, one of them that seems to invite you to a dream, the other one daring you to get out of the nightmare you're stuck in. And the nylon-stringed guitar solo at the end of "Double Talkin Jive" is beautiful. Also, I gotta give props to Izzy. The man never got his due as a rhythm guitarist. He laid down the foundation for most of Slash's solos, and the riffs he came up with and played just plain ruled! And Duff, whose bass riffs can unfortunately only be heard on certain songs, because the guitars drown them out. It's weird. The only two members that most people mention from GUNS 'N ROSES are Slash and Axl...The rest deserve credit too, you know!!!!!!"Coma" STILL kicks my ass after all these years. The song is about a man who's in a coma (hence, the song title) and is contemplating whether or not the world is worth living in. You get lots of different points of view, lyric-wise, Axl Rose playing (singing) the parts of the person in the coma, and that person's friend, and the entire song, riffs, lyrics, samples, makes you feel both men's ordeals about the "Coma".

 

Jeff Beck - Wired 1976 (MFSL UDCD 531 Gold Japan)

Perpetual Flame (2008)

Genre: Rock, Jaz-Rock, Fusion 
Format: Ape+ cue + log
Released: 1976 
Label: Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab
Number of Discs: 1

Line Up :

Jeff Beck - Guitar, Guitar (Acoustic), Bass
Wilbur Bascomb, Jr. - Bass
Max Middleton - Clavinet, Rhodes piano, Keyboards
Jan Hammer -Drums, Engineer, Synthesizer, Remixing, Producer

Richard Bailey - Drums

Ed Greene - Drums
 Narada Michael Walden - Drums, Piano

Track Listings:

1. Led Boots

2. Come Dancing

3. Goodbye Pork Pie Hat

4. Head For Backstage Pass

5. Blue Wind

6. Sophie

7. Play With Me

8. Love Is Green

Jazz-rock fusion music has no greater exponent than Jeff Beck, whose latest album, Wired, demonstrates how vital this genre can be. Even more important, Wired presents Beck in a context that finally satisfies both his uncompromising musical standards and commercial necessity.
Beck's first group, the Yardbirds, was the most inventive of the early Sixties British blues bands and is now credited with producing three of the most important electric guitarists of the past ten years -- Eric Clapton, Beck and Jimmy Page. Both Clapton (with Cream) and Page (with Led Zeppelin) became famous after leaving the Yardbirds. But Beck remained a relatively obscure figure. This despite the fact that the hits following "I'm a Man" -- "For Your Love," "Shapes of Things," "Over Under Sideways Down," "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" -- were all powered by his brilliantly manic lead guitar. In comparison, Clapton was an extremely conservative stylist and Page, merely a technician. But Beck's guitar work was visionary: "Shapes of Things" shows his mastery over raga-style guitar solos and multitracking, ideas which were in their infancy at the time. Beck experimented with blues progressions, using feedback and other distortion techniques to push the electric guitar's expressive capabilities into new areas, as well as developing rock and R&B styles along the same lines. After leaving the Yardbirds, Beck made a classic solo album, Truth, with a band which included Rod Stewart and Ron Wood. Page, meanwhile, formed his own band, Led Zeppelin, whose music was a variation on Beck's concept (compare the versions of "You Shook Me" on Truth and the first Led Zeppelin album). He returned two years later with a jazz-accented R&B outfit based around keyboardist Max Middleton and singer Bob Tench. Their two albums featured a lighter, more progressive guitar style. But Beck was still not satisfied and tried a brief, disastrous fling into heavy metal with the ex-Vanilla Fudge/Cactus rhythm section of bassist Tim Bogert and drummer Carmine Appice. Last year, producer George Martin reunited Beck and Middleton for their greatest collaboration, Blow by Blow, which became Beck's best-selling solo album and established him firmly in the jazz-rock hierarchy. But Beck was only developing ideas he'd been playing with for years. On Wired, Beck invites a direct and favorable comparison with John McLaughlin (with whom he toured last year) by collaborating with ex-Mahavishnu keyboardist Jan Hammer and his band. Martin didn't score any of the horn arrangements because Hammer's synthesizer fills all those spaces, but the album is better recorded and has a much fuller sound than Blow by Blow. Middleton's contribution is still essential -- his one song, "Led Boots," opens the album at its hottest pace and it's definitely enhanced by the interplay with Hammer's keyboards and Beck's guitar. Hammer's synthesizers work from Middleton's clavinette base, and Beck stitches runs in between. Beck wrote no songs for this record in order to concentrate on his playing, but he dominates the album conceptually. You can tell "Head for Backstage Pass" is bassist Wilbur Bascomb's song from the bass solo that kicks it off, but from there it's all that Beck/Middleton Metal Motown Machine. Drummer Narada Michael Walden contributed four songs, three of which sound like they could have easily come from the Blow by Blow sessions. "Sophie" shows the distance between McLaughlin's cerebral meandering and Beck's incisive, witty compositional ability as the song moves from an introspective theme to an incredibly hard-edged composition. Hammer swings here in a sweating, un-self-conscious ride of pure joy that needs no guru for inspiration. Hammer's "duet" with Beck, "Blue Wind," builds phased rhythm guitars against the tension of those slogging, perfectly imprecise drums into an anthem pitch with furious overhead. Beck's cover of the Charles Mingus ode to Lester Young, "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat," is an unlikely if not unappreciated inclusion that seems to understated to clock in as more than a tentative exploration of an already well-covered tune, but Beck's soloing, as usual, carries it off with some bizarre phrasing and adventurous distortion. Many of Beck's older fans claim he's toned down to play this music, but listening closely, you can hear all the fire and imagination that has characterized every phase of his career. Wired is the realization of a style Beck has been working toward for years, and should finally attract the recognition he deserves. - John Swenson, Rolling Stone, 7/29/76.

 

Sting - The Dream of the Blue Turtles 1990 [MFSL UDCD528]

Sting

The Dream of the Blue Turtles 1990 [MFSL UDCD528]

Genre: Rock/Pop
Format: WV + cue + log
Released: 1985
Label: Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab / UDCD-528
Number of Discs: 1

Line Up :

Sting - lead vocals, guitar, bass guitar, double bass, keyboards
Omar Hakim - drums
Darryl Jones - bass guitar
Kenny Kirkland - keyboards
Branford Marsalis - saxophones
Dollette McDonald, Janice Pendarvis - backing vocals

Pete Smith, Elliot Jones, Jane Alexander, Vic Garbarini, The Nannies Chorus, Rosemary Purt, Stephanie Crewdson, Joe Sumner, Kate Sumner, Michael Sumner - additional background vocals
Danny Quatrochi - additional background vocals, synclavier
Eddy Grant - congas (track 7)
Frank Opolko - trombone (track 2)

Pete Smith and Sting - Producers
Pete Smith and Jim Scott - Engineers
Max Vadukul and Danny Quatrochi - Photography
Michael Ross and Richard Frankel - Art direction and design

Track Listings:

1. If You Love Somebody Set Them Free

2. Love Is The Seventh Wave

3. Russians

4. Children's Crusade

5. Shadows In The Rain

6. We Work The Black Seam

7. Consider Me Gone

8. Dream Of The Blue Turtles, The

9. Moon Over Bourbon Street

10. Fortress Around Your Heart

The Police never really broke up, they just stopped working together — largely because they just couldn't stand playing together anymore and partially because Sting was itching to establish himself as a serious musician/songwriter on his own terms. Anxious to shed the mantle of pop star, he camped out at Eddy Grant's studio, picked up the guitar, and raided Wynton Marsalis' band for his new combo — thereby instantly consigning his solo debut, The Dream of the Blue Turtles, to the critical shorthand of Sting's jazz record. Which is partially true (that's probably the best name for the meandering instrumental title track), but that gives the impression that this is really risky music, when he did, after all, rely on musicians who, at that stage, were revivalists just developing their own style, and then had them jam on mock-jazz grooves — or, in the case of Branford Marsalis, layer soprano sax lines on top of pop songs. This, however, is just the beginning of the pretensions layered throughout The Dream of the Blue Turtles. Only twice does he delve into straightforward love songs — the lovely measured "Consider Me Gone" and the mournful closer, "Fortress Around Your Heart" — preferring to consider love in the abstract ("If You Love Somebody Set Them Free," one of his greatest solo singles, and the childish, faux-reggae singalong "Love Is the Seventh Wave"), write about children in war and in coal mines, revive a Police tune about heroin, ponder whether "Russians love their children too," and wander the streets of New Orleans as the vampire Lestat. This is a serious-minded album, but it's undercut by its very approach — the glossy fusion that coats the entire album, the occasional grabs at worldbeat, and studious lyrics seem less pretentious largely because they're overshadowed by such bewilderingly showy moves as adapting Prokofiev for "Russians" and calling upon Anne Rice for inspiration. And that's the problem with the record: with every measure, every verse, Sting cries out for the respect of a composer, not a pop star, and it gets to be a little overwhelming when taken as a whole. As a handful of individual cuts — "Fortress," "Consider Me Gone," "If You Love Somebody," "Children's Crusade" — he proves that he's subtler and craftier than his peers, but only when he reins in his desire to show the class how much he's learned."Reviews by Stephen Thomas Erlewine"

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