VINNIE MOORE
I received the CD, sat down to have a gander at the sleeve. I've been aware of Vinnie Moore's work for many years (more on that later). The blurb starts "Seems like just yesterday I was on a plane to San Francisco to record my first record". This first clumsy sentence heads the way for phrases like "At 21 I found myself in a position where I was an inspiration to others" and ends with dedications to just about everyone in gushing manner. His native town is Delaware in Philadelphia, explains the cloying cheesiness of the whole style of writing.
Back to my earlier point. Let me take for a trip in my time machine made of cardboard, mirrors, zinc, lemons, copper wire and a transformers wristwatch. It's the 1980s. 1986 or there abouts. There are an awful lot of chaps who play ROCK! guitar. Yngwie Malstreem, Joe Satriani to name but 3 of the many. Malstreem was undoubtedly the God of the screaming smoking ROCK! guitar. He was the fastest and most furious shredder on the scene. The trouble is Loads of others popped up with similar style and technicality. Rock became so utterly saturated with interchangeable axemen, a lot of people just got sick of it and went into a long hibernation in the melodic rock starved winter.
This new album of Vinnie's, simply called COLLECTION' more than reflects the feelings I had then and still do. While there is absolutely no dispute on the brilliance of his playing, I find the whole thing a bit bland. I like a bit of variety in my albums, a change of pace. now if they'd cast their nets wider and stuck on a couple of tracks from his UFO albums with (shock horror) vocals it would've broken it up nicely and stop me drifting off to thinking about the pub. It's like when you go to your first biology lesson, the excitement, the tingling anticipation of learning about blood and sex then getting a 2 hour lecture about trees. Stare out the window at the pigeons pecking round the playground. All the tracks just seem to melt into each other without much to make you pay attention. Track number 8 LAST ROAD HOME is quite refreshing. It's an acoustic Spanish type affair. If we'd had more of it's ilk peppered throughout, it would make for a much better album.
To old steadfast fans of the shredmerchant, this will no doubt be a great album, an essential addition to the collection, to the rest of us it'll probably just stay as a pompous peacock display of the technical ability of Mr Moore, an exercise in rock by numbers.
All in all I think I'll stick to Steve Hackett!