One Way Street: A Tribute To Aerosmith (album review) ... Aerosmith should be worried about competition!

Style: hard rock, heavy metal, classic rock, tribute
Label: Shrapnel
Year: 2001
Home: n/a

Members: Joe Lynn Turner, Tim "Ripper" Owens, Jeff Scott Soto, Whitfield Crane, Glenn Hughes, Bobby Kimball, Jack Russell, Doug Pinnick, Robin McAuley, John Corabi, Fee Waybill ~ vocals
Doug Aldrich, Al Pitrelli, Reb Beach, Steve Lukather, Blues Saraceno, Bruce Kulick, Stevie Salas, Craig Goldy, Richie Kotzen, Elliot Easton, Waddy Wachtel ~ guitars
Jeff Pilson, Tony Franklin, Carmine Rojas, Michael Porcaro, Tim Bogert, Jason Scheff, John Alderete, Jimmy Haslip, Marco Mendoza, Jimmy Bain, Phil Sousson ~ bass
Carmine Appice, Eric Singer, Frankie Banali, Pat Torpey, Rick Morotta, Tony Thompson, Aynsley Dunbar, Brian Tichy, Vinnie Colaiuta, Gregg Bissonette, Vinny Appice ~ drums
Derek Sherinian, Paul Taylor ~ keyboards

Additional: David Glen Eisley, Alex Ligertwood ~ b. vocals
Bob Kulick, Bruce Bouillet ~ guitars
Scott Walton ~ keyboards

With guitarist Bob Kulick producing & former Yes member Billy Sherwood doing some engineering, this is an all-star tribute album in every way. As for the musical way ... some tribute albums call upon bands to submit tracks by a particular artist or to submit songs that come under a theme. Other tribute albums, quite often with Kulick in the production chair well by choice or label favorite, take the different & more exciting approach of bringing together musicians & randomly pairing them up to record a single track. The unpredictability factor is exponentially increased, as while we may know how a certain musician, such as a recognizable singer or guitarist, is with a certain backing band or producing their own music, the question now is how are they with musicians they may or may not know, with someone else producing & with someone else's material that may or may not be a good fit? The outcome isn't always pretty, but certainly interesting. In this case the album on the whole has as many highs & lows as any other tribute album - tribute albums generally being like concept albums in that the idea is often better than the uneven output - but at least here you can never predict what will come next & more than once the outcome is shocking & sometimes on par with the original songs. That being said, should a tribute album aim to be better than the originals it is copying or is that even a silly question to ask, let alone egotistical? Or, should it aim for duplication of known songs but with different musicians in an attempt to recreate the original song? Or, should it aim for reinvention of old songs & brave bold new directions? Or, should a musician try to be like who they are copying, dulling down their own style, versus putting their own style on the song molding it to them instead of them to it? It's hard to answer any of these questions. Sometimes a song is copied so well one believes imitation is the best approach, other times reinvention creates startling effects & makes that approach the winner. Should one aim for better? That's probably never the goal, but let's be honest that Marilyn Manson improved upon "Tainted Love" with his own stamp on the Soft Cell electro-pop version, which greatly improved upon the now forgotten disco original. This is certainly a case for reinvention & for remolding the song to one's style. Though, the real answer probably comes down to how good the song is. Did the musicians, whatever their approach, create a good song worthy of a few listens? That's ultimately the goal of music & if achieved then all is well. Sometimes a project like this is laced with the goal of duplication, but here with Kulick there's no such requirement or at least while there is some imitation Kulick is as open to experimentation, making sure only that the style of music remains hard rock or heavy metal. The best songs on this album are those where imitation is second to taking the song as one's own. The differences rate higher than the imitation in this setting ... which, to note, is not always the case with tribute albums where a band that's not very good plays other people's songs not very good. The forgotten early 80's hit, originally recorded by the Joe Perry Project, "Let The Music Do The Talking" features dueling guitars all courtesy of Al Pitrelli of Trans-Siberian Orchestra/Savatage in one of his rare recordings playing slide guitar, with regular musical partner Joe Lynn Turner of Rainbow on vocals. JLT is nothing like Aerosmith's Steven Tyler & that might be what makes this a strong track as comes off as a bluesy rock romp far different than it's original. A third guitar even gets overdubbed in one of Al's more under-rated recording moments. A highlight of the album. The obscure "Round & Round" features a thick guitar solo by Reb Beach of Winger & now Whitesnake that's heavier & more technically challenging than Aerosmith have ever been. He is a little experimental like Joe Perry tends to be, but with a more unified sound. Perry often gets lost in the world of overdubs & guitars cascading against each other losing sight of where the solo is going. Beach keeps it in focus & between him & Pitrelli create two standout tracks. Tim "Ripper" Owens puts in some slightly distorted vocals for a raunchy take on that end of the song, but not raunchy in the way Aerosmith is. Eric Singer contributes a strong drum part, but bad mixing sadly put the emphasis on the high-hat when it would be better to hear more low-end. "Cryin" features Jeff Scott Soto who might be the most close in vocal match to Steven Tyler with all the little nuances found in the original vocal line. It's a spooky vocal interpretation & others I've played this track for agree. Move over Steven, we have a successor for your weary voice. Though on guitar it's all the trademark Bob Kulick overindulgent thick guitar rhythms that don't always work well. "Kings & Queens" is completely transformed by Glenn Hughes' tenor vocals that give it almost a Genesis a la Peter Gabriel feeling against Paul Taylor's piano lines & Steve Lukather's restrained guitar. Another must hear. "One Way Street" with vocalist Doug Pinnick, like "Kings & Queens", is given a surprisingly new life & one that is very funky. It sounds nothing like Aerosmith & worth hearing. Non-essential listening includes "Eat The Rich", which is a bit of a tongue-in-cheek song but here done seriously & ends up sounding like an imitation but heavier with bassist Jeff Pilson & current Whitesnake guitarist Doug Aldrich. But, tongue-in-cheek turned into heavy wannabe raunchiness falls on its face for so many reasons. The classic "Rats In The Cellar" sounds like an undistinctive garage band doing a cover in their garage, while "Living On The Edge" is a bit of a psychedelic rock take on a pop song that doesn't go anywhere & probably is another garage band trying to be something they're not. Dream Theater's Derek Sherinian on keyboards does little for the imitative "What It Takes", while under-rated guitarist Blues Saraceno turns in some smooth lines on "Angel" by it's all by the book for the rest of the song. "Lord Of The Thighs" sounds like a wannabe black metal song with vocalist Whitfield Crane, but all is weighed down by the obligatory appearance of producer Kulick's brother Bruce on guitar but his riffs don't match the heaviness that the song is reaching for. In the end this is a better tribute than average. The guitarists & vocalists to no surprise dominate & the Kulick trademark guitar sound is laced all over the place, to its detriment & cluttering. The diversity of old & new, familiar & not so much, songs is a nice bonus. Of note Kulick has also done tributes to Queen, Kiss, Alice Cooper, Cher, Shania Twain, Iron Maiden, Beatles, Christmas & Frank Sinatra. This Aerosmith tribute might be one of his best.

Hughes/Thrall ~ Hughes/Thrall (aka debut) (album review) ... Hugely enthralling!

Style: hard rock
Label: Epic
Year: 1981
Home: n/a

Members: Glenn Hughes ~ bass/vocals
Pat Thrall ~ guitar/guitar synthesizer

Additional: Peter Schless ~ keyboards
Frankie Banali, Gary Ferguson, Gary Mallaber ~ drums

Pumping 80's synth keyboards ... sometimes it works & spawns a whole new style, i.e prog & new wave, sometimes it's an unnecessary clutter that turns what could be some great solid rock into some heavily dated sounding AOR rock. This somewhat forgotten release by H/T is marred only by the over emphasis on the keyboards ... & guitar synthesizer, which isn't much better. Considering half of H/T is a guitarist one expects more than melody lines dominated by synth guitar with the actual guitar buried in the mix by a producer who knows better, i.e. Andy Johns of the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Free, etc., leaving too much emphasis on the instruments that shouldn't be emphasized. Albeit, the bass & amazing vocal foray are really what charges & drives the album & even more so with this mix. For bassist/singer Glenn Hughes of Deep Purple, & now the popular Black Country Communion, & guitarist Pat Thrall from the Pat Travers band & Al Di Meola this pairing came at an opportune moment personally & musically. Thrall had yet to cash in on his growing name recognition while Hughes had spent five years languishing in drugs & depression following a single solo album & the death of his bandmate Tommy Bolin. The time was ripe for both of them to break free of their chains, while their respective styles & background make it a union full of potential for some interesting hard rock. The fact that the potential didn't pay off in the long-run as probably hoped is just more sad than anything & isn't necessarily anything but a cloudy reflection of the music. In the short run it's quite delightful in a sneak up on you sort of why. Months of rehearsal & songwriting went into creating this release with a keyboardist & trio of drummers including Frankie Banali of future Quiet Riot. Given the participants the resu;t is a surprisingly low key unglamorous affair ... its even hard to call this rock guitar album but instead feels like a radio friendly somewhat pop rock album. It feels almost as if Thrall isn't quite sure of himself & is erring on the side of caution instead of hanging loose, turning in little pieces instead of any heavy riffs, & trying to sound like what's on the scene than having any sound of his own. Hughes is out front with his bass steadily thumping away & really making the songs what they are. While it's hard to believe he was out of music for awhile as his vocals are amazingly great & in top form & stretched out in many different direction sounding like so many of his influences. His tuneful screams, a la Graham Bonnet, are particularly delightful (i.e. "I Got Your Number"). Check out the vocals on "The Look In Your Eye" & "Muscle & Blood" & the David Lee Roth-esque "First Step Of Love" & finally understand what the buzz around him is about. Sadly, the lyrics aren't anything particularly special beyond average rock prose. On first listen many will probably find Hughes/Thrall an uninteresting release, if not a bit too Asia-esque or of the era. I did. It's far from exciting ... or at least takes a few listens to get there. It doesn't match expectations but that might be its selling point. It comes from a different direction & thus has nothing to live up to because the expectations don't apply. It's one of those releases that seeps under your skin on repeated listens & the hard rockers (for example, "Muscle & Blood") suddenly rock harder & it'll be quickly obvious that there's absolutely no filler among the nine songs. It's tight & will leave one wanting more. For fan of Hughes singing or those wanting an introduction to him this release should not be missed. Thrall has done better, but his playing here has been compared to Allan Holdsworth while others have said this is the same vein that Billy Idol would tap into. Potentially. Demos were made for a follow-up but were scrapped due to bad sales & the pair split after a short tour with Santana & Ratt. Another attempt at follow-up was started in 1997, but in 2008 Hughes withdrew from the project saying a decade was too long for any musical project & would return to the scene with the outstanding all star Black Country Communion.

Whitesnake ~ Greatest Hits (hits comp) (album review) ... Can't stop this snake from biting!

Style: hard rock
Label: Geffen
Year: 1994
Home: n/a

Members: David Coverdale ~ vocals
Mel Galley, John Sykes ~ guitar/b. vocals
Micky Moody, Dann Huff ~ guitar
Rudy Sarzo, Neil Murray ~ bass
Tommy Aldridge, Aynsley Dunbar, Cozy Powell, Denny Carmassi ~ drums
Claude Gaudette, Jon Lord, Don Airey, Bill Cuomo, Alan Pasqua, David Rosenthal ~ keyboards
Tommy Funderburk, The Fabulosa Brothers, Richard Page, The Big 'Eads ~ b. vocals

Guests: Steve Vai ~ guitar
Glenn Hughes ~ b. vocals

There are numerous albums in the Whitesnake catalog that are great purchases but their Greatest Hits is a great starting point & for many might even be all that's ever needed. This collection lives up to its name with all the MTV certified hits until 1994, plus unreleased mixes and recordings that never made it to an album. The one problem is that it's a hits collection not a career retrospective. In the mid-70's singer David Coverdale formed the White Snake Band that toured two albums before the name was combined into a single word. Under the new name Whitesnake formally debuted in 1978 & included Coverdale's former bandmate from Deep Purple keyboardist Jon Lord. This early line-up was more blues & progressive covering B.B. King & Bobby "Blue" Bland songs. After a break Coverdale reformed the line-up in 1982 with the sound moving more towards the hard rock that was dominating the scene. They'd get their first hit with "Here I Go Again", setting the tone for what would follow with hard rock sex-laced power ballads to find their biggest success with the creation of MTV & the dominance of lots of sexy models along with Coverdale's own Robert Plant-like good looks. The band would go through regular line-up changes with Whitesnake eventually becoming Coverdale's own personal set of rotating chairs, though the sound would largely remain the same to the present day. Whitesnake has always featured some great musicians who have been greatly responsible for making the band into what it was, but they were never able to share the spotlight, thus, outside of diehard fans, for all intensive purposes David Coverdale is Whitesnake. If you like one you'll probably like the other. After 1989's Slip Of The Tongue the hits stopped, the recording slowed down with only three studio albums through 2011, Coverdale did a solo album ... basically the same sound but less flashy & more ballady but where he cut his hair short & like other musicians who did the same found little commercial success ... joined with Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin for the quasi-successful Coverdale/Page & basically tried to stay alive in a music scene that turned its back on 80's hard rock. The thing about Coverdale is that he's largely never varied the Whitesnake sound after 1982. One might even call the post-1982 Whitesnake a different band than earlier outings. It's also the hit making band & pretty much all that's featured on this album. Though there is some unreleased tracks from the Jon Lord line-up this is primarily a look at the later hard rock era. This is good in the sense that if you like that era you'll like the whole album as there's a uniformity to the music and not disjointed as some compilations are, but if you want to hear the diversity of Coverdale that's largely not going to happen. Some of the unknown tracks are clearly not hits, so you will get both highs & lows, if that matters & if anything just reflects the fact that for certified greatest hits Whitesnake basically has few. If you don't like Whitesnake with its Robert Plant-esque vocalist but with a darker rasp ... doing the music many of us wish Robert Plant had done ... you probably won't be turned on to them as you might with a career retrospective. There's other compilations that are a more authoritative though the intense career boxset has yet to be released, but Greatest Hits is the most easy to find.

Sin-Atra (album review) ... A good try, but full of sin!

Style: heavy metal
Label: Armoury Records
Year: 2011
Home: n/a

Members: Bob Kulick ~ guitars/b. vocals
Brett Chassen ~ drums/b. vocals
Billy Sheehan ~ bass
Doug Katsaros ~ keyboards

Additional: Andrea Becker ~ b. vocals

Guests: Ritchie Kotzen ~ guitar
Devin Townsend, Glenn Hughes, Geoff Tate, Dee Snider, Tim “Ripper” Owens, Robin Zander, Eric Martin, Joey Belladonna, Franky Perez, dUg Pinnick, Elias Soriano, Jani Lane ~ vocals

Guitarist Bob Kulick, brother of Kiss's Bruce Kulick, has created a second career producing an ongoing series of cover/tribute albums, such as for Metallica & Aerosmith, featuring many of his musical friends in unusual one-time only line-ups. The talent has never been less than top rate though the results have been mixed. In previous efforts Kulick as set up a different band for each song making every song star-studded & unique, but in his newest tribute executive producer duties have been handed over to others, including Ronnie James Dio widow Wendy Dio, allowing him to front a band that is featured on every track with only the vocalist changing on each song. With a single band the sound is much more even from song to song than on past albums, which often ended up feeling like compilations with some line-ups stronger than others, but at the same time having a single band removes some of the unexpected diversity that previous tribute albums offered. Here each song is the same distorted guitar chugging. Even the inclusion of keyboard created horns, however odd at times, doesn't really make much of an impact though it's an interesting inclusion & when songs do stand out for their arrangements its often due to this inclusion. Sadly, the great Billy Sheehan is on bass but there's not much space given over to him to play in the upfront quasi-lead style he's known for, let alone giving the arrangements any breathing room. The songs themselves are untouchable classics, so essentially, the success of Sin-Atra lies wholly with the arrangements & singers. The vocalists, culled from the metal world, are under particular scrutiny as they are all performing in a musical style & with a band that doesn't match their known styles/bands. At times the result almost feels like an audition recording where everyone is straining to let their musical personality shine in the best way. Sadly, it's quickly noticeable who is straining, who has the pipes & who doesn't & who should stay within their usual musical context because their weaknesses become incredibly obvious. Not every voice is suited to every musical context, though one might want to think otherwise to be fair. Highlights include Devin Townsend of Strapping Young Lad (i.e. "New York, New York"), Eric Martin of Mr. Big (i.e. "Lady Is A Tramp"), Tim "Ripper" Owens of Judas Priest/Iced Earth ("Witchcraft") & Glenn Hughes of Deep Purple (i.e. "I’ve Got You Under My Skin"). The lesser known Franky Perez of Scars On Broadway puts in a real highlight with "High Hopes", probably because the album itself is a bit of a joke & Perez is one of the few to not take his rendition too seriously. More of the songs should have been treated with the same attitude & the highlights would have outweighed the lows. The worst songs suffer from over-the-top singing &/or poor arrangements, witnessed in "It Was A Very Good Year" with Dee Snider of Twisted Sister that sounds uncannily like an industrial version of Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir". What might have made this better would be more melodic arrangements offering something behind the singers outside of just a rush of chords & muddy riffs. The album also features "Fly Me To The Moon" with Robin Zander of Cheap Trick, "Love & Marriage" with Elias Soriano of Nonpoint, "Strangers In The Night" with Joey Belladonna of Anthrax, "Summerwind" with Geoff Tate of Queensrÿche, "I’ve Got The World On A String" with dUg Pinnick of King’s X & "That’s Life" with Jani Lane of Warrant & the one outside guitar solo with Ritchie Kotzen of Poison/Mr. Big. Thankfully, no sign of "My Way". If you're a Sinatra fan will you like this? Probably not. Metal fan? You'll love the playing which is good if not always interesting & if your favorite singer is here - probably, though you may also find yourself laughing ... but, kudos to Bob & company for at least trying.