David Gilmour - 'David Gilmour'
1978

Rating: 6/C

When I reviewed David Gilmour's 2006 album, 'On An Island', I identified a sense of calmness as the defining element of the album. It seems as if Gilmour was an equally calm bloke some 28 years before 'On An Island', which probably explains a thing or two along the line, especially why all the attempts at Water-y darkness on those last two Pink Floyd albums never sat that well.

Gilmour's distinctive guitar tone and his gorgeous, soaring solos are all over this album, as is his rather nifty and soothing voice. That's the good news. On the other hand, the album fails to deliver any really incisive moments or hooks, instead serving as a sort of very high-grade aural candy. From the ethereal opening instrumental, 'Mihalis', through 'Cry From The Street', which has some tasty blues-rock licks and a more organic and bluesy solo than is usually the case in Pink Floyd, the somewhat hard-rockish opening of 'Short And Sweet', the sinuous-and-sinewy licks on 'Raise My Rent', the somewhat intent and hypnotic pulse of 'No Way', which transforms briefly into something rather huge and a trifle noisy, the shivery, tricky playing on 'Deafinitely' to the closing song, the wistful 'I Can't Breathe Anymore', nothing here is less than immaculately arranged and played, or much more than professional and just a little dull.


The Eiderdown Stuffing-Bottomline: Gilmour explores more straightforward soundscapes and rocking guitar lines than is the norm with Floyd, but his sound is so much a part of the later Floyd eithos that the association is hard to shake off. The album comes across as background music, but it's a gorgeous, quality backdrop with the inspiring soloing and high standards of general execution and production one associates with Gilmour.

Tribe Of Gypsies - 'Dweller On The Threshold'
2006

Rating - 10/A

All of a sudden, I am awash in covers of Van Halen's 'Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love'. The oddest is probably the bluegrass version on the Strummin' With Devil tribute. The most downright embarassing was Velvet Revolver's sub-pub band rendition at the Rock N' Roll Hall Of Fame induction ceremony. Listening to that last tragedy, where the least Van Halen-esque guitarist of his generation plays a song that is just a little too far beyond his range, aided and abetted by a man who used to be an ersatz grunger and has now moved on to be a faux hard rock singer, it's all too easy to shake one's head sadly and conclude that the great days of real hard rock are over. It's all downhill in a barrel now, with nothing but cheesy nostalgia-wanking and parodesque eclecticism to look forward to.

And then there's Tribe Of Gypsies. A little over halfway through their latest album, the Lovecraftian-titled Dweller On The Threshold, the band trots out a cover of that Van Halen classic that had me not just shaking my head amusedly or worse yet, cringing, but grooving along, a big goofy grin plastered over my furry face (I need a shave). Like everything on this album, it's ballsy, rockin' and brilliantly played - and it has a solid dose of Latin music running through it! What amazes me is that ToG have mixed in those Latin elements - the percussion, a general sense of added grooviness, and even some Spanish vocals in the chorus without producing something that sounds like a novelty version. Instead, it's a compelling, valid reading of the song by a band that both loves the original and is confident enough of their own musical identity to take the song into a couple of new places.

Oh, it also helps that ToG guitarist/bandleader, Roy Z (producer to the Metal Stars) is a kickass lead guitarist. I know him as the chap who gave Bruce Dickinson and Rob Halford their best-sounding solo albums, as guitarist/songwriting partner and producer to one, and just producer to the other, and definitely a guitar whizz in the grand old dino tradition. I was aware of his own band, Tribe Of Gypsies, all these many years since they provided back-up on Dickinson's Balls To Picasso album, but I just never got around to checking them out until now. My loss.

With the singer from John Bonham's band on vocals, and a crack squad of musicians doing the needful, ToG are the very epitome of great rock music - they can groove, they can get pretty heavy, then can go soft and soulful, and the music is always full of melody, attitude and hooks. Their music keeps getting compared to Santana, and that's perfectly fair, if you bear in mind the Santana of the first three albums, which were basically hard rock being adulterated by Latin music and hints of jazz (as opposed to the more forthright fusion elements Santana moved onto immediately thereafter). The groovy, soaring instrumental 'Flying Tigers, Crying Dragons' could be a modern answer to 'Singing Winds, Crying Beasts' of Santana's Abraxas album in more ways than just the title. 'Hola' merges some pretty heavy riffing with Latin rhythms and Spanish chants, and a fiery guitar workout by Roy Z in a manner that's just a little remniscent of things like 'Soul Sacrifice'.

But there's a lot more to the band beyond the Latin/rock crossover. The songwriting is as versatile and accomplished as the musicianship. 'Ride On', 'Desolate Chile' and 'Hands To Eternity' are great, groovy rockers with huge riffs and hooks, the ballads 'Halos', 'After The Summer' and 'Never Will Be Mine' are filled with poignant melodies and heartfelt vocals, without wimping out and compromising on the groove. The funky grooves and gospel touches on 'Stop Bombing Each Other!' make for an instant anthem that the Woodstock crowd only wish they could have written. And, needelss to say, Roy Z just brings the juice everywhere, always serving the song and stretching out where it's appropriate - which, fortunately is enough times to satisfy the unreconstructed guitar freak that dwells on my threshold.

The Eiderdown-Stuffing Bottomline: A brilliant slab of hard rock shot through with Latin grooves and great guitar playing. The songwriting and musicianship are equally impressive, there's a bit of everything, from driving rockers and soulful balladry to mind-blowing instrumental workouts - what else do you need to call an album a Perfect Ten? Not a thing.

Jeff Beck - 'Blow By Blow'
1975

Rating: 9/A

This album's a real grower, but you've got to have an intrinsic interest in virtuoso guitar soloing and a liking or at least tolerance for groove-based fusion and cheesy synth sounds to really get into it.

Having got those caveats out of the way, I have to say that I really love this album. It's Jeff Beck's first all-instrumental venture (with one or two very minor qualifications), and it pretty much set the pace for the rest of his career. Given some of the triter blues-rock material ventured by the second Jeff Beck Group or the Beck/Bogert/Appice combo, the instrumental route is probably the best fit for Beck. He's not that great a songwriter, and doesn't seem to retain collaborators long enough to build solid songwriting partnerships, but he is a very, very good guitarist and a true musician, more so than a handy provider of riffs-and-solos for a hitmaking rock combo. He's just too independant for that role. Also, as far as I know, this is one of the earliest all-instrumental albums to issued by a rock artist aside from those Shadows albums, and it certainly blazed a trail that several guitar heroes of varying degrees of actual interest have followed.

For a soloist-orented intrumental album to succeed and be more than wankery, at least one of several factors have to be present - compositional strength, musical originality and a solid backing team. All of that present here, or carefully compensated for. Never the most prolific composer, Beck does contribute a fair share to the group compositions here, puts down one solely-composed track and offers well chosen covers of The Beatles and Stevie Wonder to fill things out. The music's certainly pioneering enough in its own way - one of the earliest fusion records to be essayed from the rock side of the tracks, and one in which there are serious doses of funk and a touch of disco in addition to the jammy, free-form jazz influence. Actually, I think of this album as nearly being all-out funk, because funk is just jazz played much faster and more excitedly, with more emphasis on groove. Check, check, check and check. From that perspective the backing band is a mixed bag. The drummer Richard Bailey is a mighty solid groover, and keyboardist Max Middleton holds down the structures and backing tracks for Beck to perform his explorations over, even if his keyboard patches can sound a little dated and tinny at times. His solo breaks are always tasteful and deft as well, without stealing the limelight. Bassist Phil Chenn isn't bad at all, but I think he lets the side down a bit by playing a purely supportive and restrained role. Still, no one listens to albums by guitar legends to critique their bassists' skills, so enough of that. The rhythm section succeeds in laying down some pretty sleek grooves which give Beck enough rhythm to ride on, but also enough space to fly in to essay what appears to be an awkward phrasing, and that's what counts.

Beck's reggaefied cover of The Beatles' 'She's A Woman' gives him the chance to play some soulful, sometimes blues-tinged lines. It's also got a small talk box interlude with someone mouthing the main lyrics to the song, hence the not-entirely-instrumental tag. It's a novelty moment to be sure, but the playing on the song is strong enough to make it only minorly amusing. Stevie Wonder's 'Cause We've Ended as Lovers' gives Beck another chance to smoulder in ballad mode. I love the phrasing on this song - Beck does convey that ballady melody well enough, but he always eschews the cheesy power-ballad tricks, making note choices and phrasing decisions that elevate the tune to a completely different level from the populist lighters-out statement it could have been in a lesser musician's hands. His self-composition 'Constipated Duck' takes a syncopated and oddly gawky groove/riff and lays great flaming gouts of guitar glory all over it. 'You Know What I Mean' is another great funky, nearly disco, workout. 'Freeway Jam' taps into Beck's bluesy roots, and the album closer, an epic jam called 'Diamond Dust' even lets producer George '5th Moptop' Martin flex his orchestral muscle a bit, which he also does on the multilayered fusion workout, 'Scatterbrain'.

Some of the jams don't have a really distinctive hook, but there's always something intriguing and cool happening, either a really good groove, some tight ensemble playing or - most important - some breathtaking fretwork by Beck. Beck really delivers the goods here, playing fast, slow, bluesy, jazzy, tender, ferocious, excited, laid-back and whatnot, displaying the level of proficiency and inventiveness on his instrument of choice that shows you why that annoying phrase 'guitar hero' was actually invented.

The Eiderdown-Stuffing Bottomline: Funky, jazzy, groovy guitariffic glory. The accent is on grooviness, but the slower bits are great too, and the reggaefication of The Beatles adds to the sense of variety. Even the more generic jams are illuminated by the presence of Jeff Beck playing at the peak of his powers. Good groovin', good playin' - who needs Rod Stewart?

Jeff Beck - 'Jeff Beck's Guitar Shop'1989

Rating: 7/B

Jeff Beck's a really good guitarist - maybe he's even as good as everyone says he is - but his discography is rather uneven and patchy. His seminal hard rock outfit, the one with Ron Wood and Rod Stewart, only lasted two albums, and he doesn't seem to have stuck with one line-up or one direction for very long ever since. Also, he has a somewhat damaging, in my estimation, love for electronics, whether it's the 80s synth-pop of Flsah or the 90s electronica of Who Else. Despite all this, he has cut more than a few nifty albums from time to time, and this particular album is a good introduction to his moderately-eclectic, but largely blues/hard rock informed sound, and a certain combination of kinda-boring professionalism and constant artistic growth at his chosen instrument. Truth and Beck-Ola are much more visceral, the fusion albums possibly more sophisticated and exciting, and you may even fancy hearing a seasoned rock guitar hero dabbling with techno, but this is as good a Jeff Beck 101 piece as there is.

The band consists of Mr.Beck accompanied by Zappa-sideman Terry Bozzio on drums and keyboardist/bassist Tony Hymas. While keyboards don't overwhelm the sound, they do tend to give the album a bit of a plasticky, 80s sound at times, and the drum sound is just too studio-polished for my tastes, but this is an 80s artefact and you have to learn to mentally edit out some things to get to the music at the heart of a lot of 80s releases.

The title track has a bombastic, yet broken-up drum pattern that I have never ever warmed to, and a keyboard motif that just adds to the annoyance, but Beck is in fine form and the spoken-word bit which describes the features of a guitar with car-sales-pitch type hype is pretty amusing. For me, though, Savoy is where Jeff Beck gets down to business with a far more organic riff and groove and solos that show that time has only added nuance and technique to his patented trademark blues-rock soloing. Behind The Veil is a reggae-ish song with Beck playing figures on his guitar that would not have been out of place as a song by The Police (although Sting would have played them himself and made Andy Summers hit jazz chords at random intervals instead). Big Block begins with a driving mid-tempo bassline-led groove over which Beck plays some really smoking bluesy licks. The song gets a touch of drama as well, as Hymas' keyboards lend a touch of menace that reminds me of Tony Martin-era Sabbath, only less cheesy. I'm not a huge fan of heavenly sounding atmospherics but the delicate, tender melodies on Where Were You, played almost unaccompanied on a clean-tone electric except for some chordal backing on keyboards, are seriously sublime and haunting. And it's short too, so the prettiness doesn't have a chance to devolve into boredom! Stand On It is again driven by a great, chunky riff that makes me wish the original Jeff Beck Group could have stayed together and honed their songwriting skills to the point where riff and leads like these could have been found on heavy-rotation classic songs to rival Led Zep's, rather on relatively obscure releases like these which are doomed to be heard only by classic rock stalwarts and guitar solo addicts. Before I start getting too dewy-eyed with admiration and regret, the boys fuck things up with a rather repetitive workout which, like the title track, has a spoken word thing looping around. This time it's something laudable but annoyingly preachy and repetitive about how no one is doing anything to save Mother Earth, and a A Day In The House is where I'll usually nod off for a bit or wander to the loo while playing this album. Two Rivers is a slow, melodic track but I don't remember much about it. Then fortunately for us, Jeff Beck tears into another ferocious, speedy riff and the concise but powerful rocker Sling Shot kicks butt and shuts down the shop.

And there you go!

The Eiderdown-Stuffing Bottomline:The cold professionalism can't hide Beck's gift for crunching riffs, memorable melodies and great solos.