This week's listen is decidedly older on the time scale. (to be honest one reason is that funds are limited after dropping cash on bar review courses and paying off the extortion from my law school) But Eric Johnson came about rather fortuitously. In the early 1990's I was in the Navy stationed in DC. A friend who had seen and heard Johnson on the local scene in Texas noted that Johnson was coming to town. We went to the show and within a week, I had purchased this disk.
Certainly Johnson is a guitarist in the light of last week's Joe Satriani mold, with a couple of significant differences. First, Johnson has a better singing voice that Satriani, which is fortunate since Johnson has more vocal tracks than instrumentals. Second, given his Texas roots, the music has more of a cleaner sound, there are fewer guitar effects, but that doesn't detract from Johnson's technical skill. Third, I like the diverse styles of music on the disk, perhaps the extra diversity of influences makes the disk more palatable in that regard to non-guitar people.
I wish that I had seen Eric Johnson and Joe Satriani on the G3 tour oh so many years ago in order to compare their live work, but that opporutnity is somewhat available on the G3 Live In Concert disk.
My favorite tracks are all in a row at the start of the disk.
Cliffs Of Dover--straight ahead guitar instrumental with some blistering work by Johnson. The sounds are clean and free of embellishment. Johnson brings some speed and it makes for some fun. But the whole piece works together because there are some parts of melody and composition that hold Johnson's solos together.
Desert Rose--A neat love song without the more ballady aspects. The lyrics are simple, but so are Johnson's vocal styles, so it fits well. Even my wife likes this song and she generally hates most guitar heroes'
High Landrons--Johnson's Texas roots shine through here with song about the peace of the Texas back country.
This is a good disk for someone looking for something a little different, but with a need for some diversity on the disk.
