Various Artists: Various Artists - Freeway Jam, To Beck And Back

Until now, I've stayed away from covering "various artists" albums. It's hard to assess these kind of albums as a whole, when there's so many styles and approaches coexisting on the same record. Usually these records have more the feel of a collection of singles thrown together than an actual coherent album.

Tribute albums are a tad easier to judge as a whole than other kinds of various artists releases; the object of tribute is the unifying theme of the record. On the other hand, they consist of songs you've heard before and it's not likely that anyone is going to outdo the original; if they could, then perhaps the wrong person is being put up on a pedestal. That being said, if anyone still with a beating heart is due for an all-star homage record, that would be British uber-guitarist Jeff Beck.

Jeff Beck was one of the first fusion guitarists I really got into, just a few years after his double-whammy releases of Blow By Blow and Wired, both of which are often held up as two of the best instrumental rock guitar albums for the ages. By then, he had already made his mark in The Yardbirds and as leader of the groundbreaking heavy metal combo, The Jeff Beck Group. I can remember toward the end of the seventies regularly finding Beck at or near the top of the "best guitarists" lists in Guitar Player magazine and being mentioned as major influences for every significant rock or fusion guitarist at that time.

So, it's not hard to conclude that there were a whole lot of budding guitarists in the seventies and eighties doing some serious woodshedding to Jeff Beck vinyls and tapes, deconstructing his solos and getting a handle on his unique blend of blues, rock and jazz. Now some twenty or thirty years later, a handful of these beginners are now something of legends themselves.

One of those disciples, Jeff Richman, got the idea for this tribute record and for each track brought in a different representative of the finest fusion and fusion-inclined guitarists on the scene today---those said woodshedders of decades ago. The rhythm section that Richman supplied consists of Mitchel Forman on keyboards, Stu Hamm on bass and either Vinnie Colaiuta or Simon Phillips on drums. All are long time veterans of the fusion scene.

Article Author: Pico

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