The man The voice The guitar
jlandon033 wrote:Hey everybody,
This is really good dialog we have going here. To piggyback off of what Andrew said I too do not care much for the latest release either. I don't paint with quite a big a brush though because I thoroughly enjoyed Blue Guitars (& The Hofner Bluenotes to a lesser extent). However the Santo Spirito Project was a complete wash out for me. The movie's are ok but I dare say I'll never watch them again, the soundtrack's where very underplayed with only one song I really like (Somewhere Between the Moon and Stars), and the regular songs cd was absolute re-tread. I think someone said the CD took 4 days to record and it sure sounds like it.
There is a part of me that thinks Chris kind of suffers from an inferiority complex and that the overall acclaim that he richly deserves but often does not receive really bothers him. I seem to remember way back in the day right after the Road To Hell and Auberge albums that Chris in an interview stated he was really frustrated that the opportunities for collaborations and soundtrack work just never materialized. I think this may have been part of his motivation to start writing his own movies so he could do soundtrack work. It's kind of like he is trying to create his own reality instead of letting it come to him naturally. It seems forced. It's kind of like when he was a rock guy he would always name drop Joe Walsh as his original inspiration. Now that he has made the blues his forte he names Charlie Patton as his original inspiration.
I listen to a sports talk radio station here in Dallas a lot and they talk about other stuff too. One of the subjects they talk about is music and whether once a band/artist gets to a certain age do they have it in them to make another good album. Has Chris reached the tipping point? What do you guys think? I'm kind of a music collector so I have so much music to listen to. My point is my most recent way of judging if I am really digging on an Album is if I just want to listen to it over and over (like I did when I was young). The only albums I've done that with lately are the last two Noel Gallagher albums and the last War On Drugs album. I've not felt that way about a Chris Rea release in some time.
Joe
Hi Joe,jlandon033 wrote:It's kind of like he is trying to create his own reality instead of letting it come to him naturally. It seems forced. It's kind of like when he was a rock guy he would always name drop Joe Walsh as his original inspiration. Now that he has made the blues his forte he names Charlie Patton as his original inspiration.
Joe
Hi MRB,Drum sound has been poor for the last two decades or so. Think the last time it was good was in song "You must follow" in original La Passione album.
As I mentioned before, for me it is the other way around: I value The Delmonts CD and Santo Spirito soundtracks as something really innovative for Chris and I consider The HBN 2 CDs and Santo Spirito songs CD just a cheaply made addition to the cores of these projects to make them seem more commercially attractive.ace of hearts wrote:To be fair I've enjoyed the main Hofner Blue notes Cd (Not so much the Delmonts Cd's shadows style) And the main CD in Santo Spirito, but the soundtracks didn't do it for me.
Chris is a good songwriter and his chord progression and changes in songs are fabulous. Chris has the ability to allow a song to build up and progress into a full crescendo of music and lyric.
Hi Joe,jlandon033 wrote:Interesting comment by Andrey in that he doubts that Chris would or possibly even could write a song like Ace of Hearts ever again. You may have a point here. If any of you have ever walked into a guitar store or guitar expo you will walk past a vast sea of guys playing blues licks. This may sound like heresy but playing the blues is so much easier than composing a catchy pop and rock song. It's a very easy habit to get into when you sit down to play guitar to just start knocking off blues runs. This may be where Chris's head is now and he would have to strip back quite a few layers to arrive back to a place mentally where he could compose some of those pop/rock masterpieces of the past. Secondly he may not even want to compose songs like that ever again. I'm not sure based on a litany of comments by Chris that he has much regard for those songs. I think he sees a lot of them as compromises. It is very weird that Chris spent most of his career creating music he sees as a compromise which is the very music the most of us love the most. Very enigmatic.
Hi Elangelo,elangelo wrote:So we still had a couple of years when Chris didn't make any compromise and still produced beautiful music. Not forgetting "Blue Guitars", of course.
I also had been thinking over it a lot, and I assume Chris has been trying to appear reasonable, regardless of his inclinations. He cleasly saw that nobody would understand his playing pre-war blues licks straightforwardly and he found Joe Walsh and Ry Cooder, slide-guitarists of his age or close who were long since present in the shobiz and their records were easily acessible and comprehensible while being allegedly influenced by the old blues legends that Chris took inspiration from.If Robert Johnson and Charly Patton were his main influences back then I wonder why Chris did not use just a few licks in this style on his first records.Instead his early playing sounded a lot like Joe Walsh and Ry Cooder