| CD REVIEW TSM/SLW Promotions special October 2011, Part 3 : John Pratt – Roadfever – Steve Saluto – Seks |
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Yeah...after a slow starting-up period following the holidays (and the entailing extra work that brought for my other hobby) we're back on full force in “business” of reviewing, so without further ado...here's the next 4 bands in this ongoing series. ----------------------------------------------------- Never heard of American solo artist John Pratt? Not that surprising, as he is actually best known as a career composer (with over 20 years of experience) in television, cable, feature film (he did the DVD trailer for The Aviator, and his most recent score was for the movie Park) and international commercials. Well, actually he fronted the headlining LA act Roxbury Drive during the '80s, and you might know his previous solo outings under the name Firefly, which has seen 3 albums to date (1998's Where You Gonna Run, 2001's After the Fire, and 2003' Automatic) in Europe and Asia, in a line-up centered around Pratt, guitarists John Thomas and Bob Gilles, bassist Ricky Phillips (on the first two albums), keyboardist Michael Alemania, and drummer Ron Wisko...and a musical palate which goes for anything in Melodic Rock, sometimes quite powerful, at other moments quite moody and rather AOR (for a lengthy listening session...John has posted the songs off all 3 albums at his own site (www.) johnprattmusic.com, alongside a bunch of not yet recorded songs). Not surprisingly, some of them (Thomas, Alemania, and Wisko) are also present on the Los Angels based artist's debut solo outing under his own name. Other musicians include pianist Wally Minko (not sure in which songs), bassist Lance Morrison, and percussionist Chris Trujillo. Also, in a couple of songs there's strings additions from cello player Ira Glansbeek and violinists Erlinda Romero and Justin Pratt (the latter John's son, and eh...“B4J” stands for “Bustin For Justin”, so now you know, eh?), and several songs get very ice female backing vocals added by Angela and Kira Alemania, and Deena Russo. The album's songs had been sitting in John's vaults for years, but it wasn't until Summer 2010 that John had his friend and former record label head Phil Quartararo (EMI, Virgin, Atlantic) listen to the songs, and got the inspiring nudge to make a go at giving some of his archive songs a decent recording. So, for the next 7 months John went through his vaults to sift out the 13 best songs, which were demoed over a 3-month period. John then contacted producer Ryan Green, whom he knew from his Roxbury Drive days, and together they went about recording and mixing the album. The end result...well, you just gotta expect some of the best tunes in Melodic Rock! Great lead vocals, happy lyrical content, nice tunes with great guitar and other play, a nice variety in intensities from near-ballad AOR to somewhat more powerful tracks. You can find a couple of songs (or are they just samples?...I'm afraid I didn't stop to check) at (www.) facebook.com/johnprattturnthepage...and those will prove the validity of those last words! 93/100 ---------------------------------------------------- Having first crossed each other's waters during the '80s, British singer Manou Pike ( which you might know from her tenures with Sharper, State Of Mind, Manou, and the Moneymakers Band) and Swiss guitarist/ backing singer David Pariat (honed his skills with several bands, the most recent before forming Roadfever in 2005 being Sideburn) met each other again in 2004, and after a talk about musical ideas decided to form their own band under the name Devil's Daughter, which was re-baptized to Roadfever a year later. The current line-up was completed when first drummer Pascal “Poulet” Bavaud (another Swiss scene veteran, having played with Rash Panzer, State Of Mind, The Persuaders, and Red Eyed Farmers) joined in 2006, followed by bassist Jessie Be (oldest musician in the lot, also Swiss, playing his instrument since 1977 in such bands as Arrow Head, Scrambled Aggs, and Blackswan, among others) a year later. Soon after (since 2008) this line-up could be found playing blistering gigs, and several open-air and indoor festivals in front of enthused audiences. Adepts of both Power Rock and Southern Rock, Manou and David created the 11 tracks we can find on Wheels On Fire, album which was finalized in March 2009. Two months later the band singed an exclusive distribution deal with Irascible Distribution (for Switzerland, the band's home country) who made the album available worldwide through retailers AOR Heaven, and Germany's Rock Papas, whom also came to be in charge of the band's promotion. Following that, the band released a DVD entitled Live In Geneva in June 2010, and went on to support such interesting bands as Rhino Bucket, Eric Singer Project, Little Ceasar, Blackfoot, Uli Jon Roth, and Pretty Maids. Stylistically, the album's songs take us through a crossing of AC/DC (ach, the inevitable AC/DC sound which can be linked to so màny Swiss bands, eh?...some of which actually quite successful, like Krokus, Shakra, Gotthard, Crystall Ball, etc...) with ZZ Top, with some songs balancing more on the Southern Rock end of things...and a female lead singer whom is strongly influenced by the likes of Stevie Nicks, Janis Joplin, Ann Wilson, and Pat Benatar. A combination which sounds very good on paper, and actually does well on album as well! Which leaves me with a couple of burning questions. First...why has this band not broken through internationally yet? The answer to that may simply be that the band was not yet willing to break the boundaries of the German-speaking countries yet...or, that the competition in the field simply did not allow the band to take up its deserved level spot in the current music business world. Another question, which I find much harder to find an answer for, is why the band promote themselves today with an album 2 years old. Perhaps they have indeed not felt ready to break out wider than they had before, and feel the time has only now come to conquer the rest of Europe, eh? After all, bigger bands occasionally take 4 to 5 years to promote a new album (sometimes even longer, but we can safely say that's a thing laid aside only for the biggest bands in the business), and perhaps the band feels the material on their debut album has enough potential to warrant still being used for promotional means? Whatever, eh!? Music by this band (same songs, by the way) can be found on their facebook and ReverbNation pages (they also have their own site (www.) roadfever.ch, but every time I tried to log onto that I got a blank screen on the network pc I use to surf on the Internet...you may be more lucky!). Among those songs also a show of the band's more sensitive side with ballad “Runaway Train”. 84/100 ---------------------------------------------------- Living in Treviso, Italian guitarist Steve Saluto started playing his instrument at the age of 15, at first taking Jazz lessons. Then he heard the solo of Van Halen's “Beat It”, and he switched to making a career in music playing Rock. But far from being one-sided, Steve continued to dabble in Jazz, as well as in Funk and Pop and has played and/or recorded with such diverse artists as Federico Stragá, Danny Losito, Massimo Riva, Elio E Le Storie Tese, Cheryl Porter, Vittorio Matteucci, The Venice Gospel Ensemble, Jeff Berlin, Darryl Jones, Danny Gotlieb, Buddy Miles, and Phil Palmer to name but a few. Following a contribution to 1994 compilation album Ritmi Globali, Steve's debut full-length was playing guitar on The Ribrezzo's 1006 album Primo E Ultimo, after which he started his solo career for good.To date, he's recorded and released 7 albums under his own name [in order of appearance, that would be 1999's Under, 2001's A Different Fire, 2003's All That I'll Be, 2004's Steve Saluto's Fuzzy House, 2006's Rough Beat (the latter two featuring Ritchie Kotzen as guest singer on a couple of songs), 2008's Rust & Gold, 2009's Resurrection...the current one making 8], and his latest group effort, La Famiglia Superstar (which has not stolen its name, as it includes Terry Illous on vocals, Marco Mendoza on bass, and Atma Anur on drums), which released its untitled debut album in 2010. Over the years Steve has also become an in-demand producer and co-write for many young bands (activities for which he erected the Imput Level Productions agency), and the fact that he now owns his own recording facility based in San Baglio di Callalta (near Treviso) only makes things easier, I'd say! For his newest solo outing, by the way, he again made use of Mendoza (whom you may know from having played with the likes of Thin Lizzy, Soul Sirkus, Ted Nugent) and Anur (an in-demand session player whom has lent his talents to the likes of Cacaphony, Greg Howe, Tony Macalpine, and more) although the first is featured on Brown Eyed Soul in the capacity of singer, and bass duties were performed by none less than Doug Wimbish (yep, of Living Colour fame, but also known to have played with Madonna, Mick Jagger, and Annie Lennox to name but a few). With Steve combining Jazzy elements with Funky ones, Mendoza truly shines on these 10 songs, and I have to say that he occasionally sounded a bit like a lower-octave Glenn Hughes...which, in my book of favorites, is about the biggest compliment I can make to a singer! But really, although Mendoza gives away the best of himself here, the staring role is for Mr. Saluto, whom is indééd a fantastic guitarist worthy to be included into that secluded list of axemen which also features the likes of Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Tony Macalpine, Vinnie Moore, and more of that ilk (you get the picture, right?). I'm afraid to say I've found no songs off the new album posted at either Steve's own website (www.) stevesaluto.com, nor at his facebook or MySpace pages...oh wait! Whadduh mistakuh to makuh...the song “United As One” càn actually be found on the latter! Well, I suppose the album will be available through your usual trusted online sales sites as well, so that's where you could listen to 30-second excerpts of all songs, I hope. Yeah, and then I need to correct that latter supposition into “...of all tracks...”, because the album closing title track is really an instrumental! Darn good one too! At any rate, I would've hated to know about this album, and have had to miss it somehow! Wónderful album, and more than deserving of the inclusion into my personal “Best Albums Of 2011” lists! 98/100 ---------------------------------------------------- Hey, with a bandname like that, you're sure to expect Glam/ Sleaze Rock, right? Well, you would be darn right, but for once the formation of the band was not rooted in a base want for easy female conquest! Well, maybe that was on Rock Hart's mind anyway when he started the idea of the band in April 2009...but the main though came from a desperate reaction to radio in America being dominated by Pop and Hip-Hop in those days, and the young singer set out to remind people what Rock stardom was all about, back in the '80s! Because what does the average (wo)man think when imagining Rock stars? They think of flamboyantly dressed, over-the-top individuals who go against everyday norms, right? Well, that was exactly what Hart had in mind to do! So he moved to the US epicenter of Glam and Sleaze Rock, the city of Los Angeles...only to find that the scene there is ruled by people who've already made it in the business, and that young upstarts like himself hardly get a chance to do anything else but play the occasional covers night...certainly not to do their own thing! So he directed his attention to the world's hotspot for his preferred musical genre, and 6 months after having moved to LA he again moved, this time to Norway, from whence bands such as Crashdiet and Hardcore Superstars ruled the current European Glam scene. As soon as he arrived in Oslo, he started writing songs and began looking around for his future musicians. One day in early 2010 the threesome of Gash A Lean (rhythm guitar), Tad (bass) and Savage Thrilla (drums) moved up, wanting to form a Hair Metal act...so Hart informed 'em about his own ideas, and it so happened they concurred with what the threesome had in mind themselves! Now, the search could begin for the shredding lead guitarist to fulfill Hart's ideas completely. Meanwhile Hart had made friends with Julian Angel of Beautiful Beast, and running short of time to find their own lead guitarist with a recording session coming up, he asked the latter to be a guest on the album. So it happened, and Angel recorded lead guitar on 12 of the 13 songs on the album. While still in the studio, Tad invited a friend of his, one Charles McMillan, to come play guest lead guitar on an extra track. As soon as he started shredding to the album's bonus track “Give It Up”, Tad and Hart looked at each other and knew, that this bloke was to be the perfect addition to the band! As you can tell from the release date posted above, Harder Than You was released almost half a year ago, and since then it's been getting positive reviews from around the globe (SleazeRoxxmagazine even went slightly a-raving, and AOR is to feature a song of the band on their Nov. 2011 covermount compilation CD), with debut single “On The Inside” already played on numerous radio stations worldwide. Follow-up single “Charlemagne” went the same way. Seks recently went on a small tour with Hollywood Vampires, and has already played to nearly full-capacity venues in Oslo. In early 2011, Shred Rock Records (with distribution through major labels Island/ Def Jam) will bring the band to an even wider public thanks to the inclusion of a song on their Metal Warriors compilation album. But Hart's vision is one of taking a step at a time. He knows that in order to remain in people's minds, you need to build up gradually with nice tunes. And nice tunes is what this band indeed has. Good lead vocals too, and the harmonic backings (brought by everyone else in the band except the lead guitarist) are too die for...but also a point of occasional personal eye brow raising. One of the guys happens to have this somewhat high pitched voice, which he uses on some of the songs (mostly so in the second half of the album) in a rather ridiculous way, spoiling the song in the process. My only advice to the band : keep the backings harmonic without those over-the-top high pitches, and you're safe! Thumbs up for the sensitive ballad “Hangin' On”, by the way. For a short listening session, check out the 4 songs posted at (www.) facebook.com/seksband (get a whiff of that over-the-top high pitch from “Rock Me”). The band's page at ReverbNation has the same music, but also includes 3 videos (which I regrettably could not open on the network pc I use for all my Internet research). Although a good band as such, I feel the occasional mistake with the backing vocals warrants a punishment, and that's why Harder Than You only gets... 78/100 Tony. |
