Mike's Music Madness

A few music reviews:

Brad Paisley - "Play"
Country artist Brad Paisley? Yup, you're on the right blog. I read about this one in a guitar mag. It's a mostly instrumental outing by Mr. Paisley and I have been wanting to get some more country music so I figured "Why not?".

Solid, good-feeling music with strong country music sensibility but more than enough smoking playing and creative tunes to keep me from getting bored. I really like Brad's soloing / melodic sense. He gets really sweet, awesome tone with those Telecasters too. He does tributes to surf music, jazz, da blues and a mish-mash of everything else too. All with a country tinge.

But EASILY the best thing about this excellent CD is track 13 "Playing With Fire". That is one... BAD... ASS!!!! track. Brad burns, shreds and sings on that freaking guitar! I would put that track up there with Eric Johnson's "Cliffs of Dover". (That song comes to mind since Brad cops a semi-EJ vibe for it.) I was laughing with sheer joy listening to it for the first time. I was already liking this CD a lot before this one came on. Now I love it, even with the sappy love song final track (which is actually pretty dang good).

I put this review first since I am really glad to see this sort of thing done. It's very nice to see a high-profile country singer come out and do such an odd thing as an instrumental album. And to have it be a solid-sounding CD on top of it... that's just icing on the cake.

Of course, there's a really big down side about my liking this one. It made me realize that I don't own a Telecaster or even a Tele-copy.

Boston (self-titled)
Great classic rock CD. Catchy tunes, awesome guitars and vocals. Excellent drums & keys too. I don't care as much for "Hitch A Ride" or "Let Me Take You Home Tonight" but 6 really good songs out of 8 equals a great album to me.

Tom Scholz' tone is just incredible, it amazes me like few guitarists can. Tom, Neal Schon from Journey and Brian May all hit notes that are just indescribable. Just oozing with masterful tone.

Planet X - "Quantum"
I took a long time to buy this one because Tony MacAlpine left the band and I love his playing on the first two PX CDs. Now I'm kicking myself for waiting!

This is just SICK (read "amazing") rock fusion from keyboardist Derek Sherinian and Virgil Donati on the drums, plus a bunch of awesome guests. Brett Garsed does an amazing job on most of the guitar tracks, with the legendary Alan Holdsworth doing the honours for two of the tracks. Brett's guitar solo on the first track is worth the purchase of the disc all by itself.

Prime Mover: This is instrumental Dream Theater on crack. In a good way. IMHO, Derek Sherinian's solo CDs' output kills DT in every way since 2000.

Paul Gilbert - "Silence Followed By A Deafening Roar"
Pablo Gilberto is just freaking awesome. An instrumental CD with great playing... blah, blah, blah... It's Paul Gilbert! And it has a track titled "Paul vs. Godzilla"! What more do you need to know? Go get it.

Or you suck.