Classic rawk reviews – Heart vs. Foreigner vs. Don Airey

Classic rawk reviews – Heart vs. Foreigner vs. Don Airey

HEART
Fanatic: Live from Caesars Colosseum
Frontiers

2012 saw Heart release their fifteenth studio album, “Fanatic”, and a subsequent North American tour which saw them being filmed at the Caesars Colosseum in Windsor, Ontario by AXS-TV, and which is now available for your viewing and listening pleasure.

It’s out as a Blu-ray, DVD and as a deluxe CD/DVD, but I’ve only got the audio for review, so you’ll just to have to wait and see for yourself as to how time has treated them. For me, that’s a good thing, as I’ve seen too many seventies bands in the last decade, and like my memories to remain untarnished.

As befitted a tour with a new album to promote, there is a swathe of new material on offer, which might come as a surprise to people who’d forgotten that Heart existed. There are five here, including the title track which opens the show, along with ‘Mashallah’, ’59 Crunch’, ‘Dear Old America’ and ‘Walking Good’. But apart from them, the newest song is from the eighties, so that’s nine gems to choose from.

The MTV hits are present and correct, if rearranged, so that’s ‘Alone’, ‘What About Love’ and ‘These Dreams’ taken care of, but they go right back to their debut for ‘Crazy On You’, as well as tunes from “Little Queen”, “Magazine”, “Dog & Butterfly” and “Bebe Le Strange”. It’s a great live album, and the “new” Heart are firing on all cylinders, so if you’ve forgotten all about them, reacquaint yourself now.

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FOREIGNER
I Want To Know What Love Is – The Ballads
earMUSIC

“Just in time for Valentine’s Day earMUSIC releases “I Want To Know What Love Is – The Ballads”, 14 tracks previously never released on one album of FOREIGNER’s best and most timeless ballads” Isn’t that nice of them? Oh, hang on, you want me to pay for it? Gits.

And I love that phrase “previously never released on one album”. Which translates as there is nothing new here. Which would be fair enough if this was a budget release. But it isn’t, and there is even a “2CD Special Edition-digipak”. It’s right annoying as I’m a huge Foreigner fan, but this sort of thing really does annoy me.

Oh, and these are recordings from the Kelly Hansen era, so if you’re a forty something looking to give your love life a boost with a revisit to the the title track, well Lou Gramm isn’t here. Again, I think they’re great with Hansen, but you can get a 2 CD best of for a few quid less than this. However, there is a UK tour in the offing with Europe and FM, so doubtless the suits wanted some “new” product available.

Musically, it’s impeccable, with some of the greatest AOR tracks ever, and with a raft of tracks from their most recent studio album, 2010′s comeback album “Can’t Slow Down”, it might prompt some folk in that direction.

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DON AIREY
Keyed Up
Music Theories Recordings

Wow! And wow again! Have a look at that cover. Now this is a bloke who has inhabited the world of rock for centuries, with the likes of Rainbow, Ozzy and Deep Purple under his belt. You’d think he might have seen a record sleeve during that time. But, apparently not, as this has been knocked up by a PageMaker user from 1986.

As with his last solo album, this sees the Deep Purple keyboard player recording with a core band of former Persian Risk vocalist Carl Sentance, along with drummer Darrin Mooney who has played with Gary Moore amongst others, guitarist Rob Harris and jazz bass whizz Laurence Cottle . There are also some guest performers including the late Gary Moore (one of the last times that Gary Moore recorded a guitar part), Graham Bonnet, Simon MacBride, Alex Meadows and Tim Goodyer.

But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. He’s not a great songwriter. So it’s the instrumentally bits that come out best. Which is why I enjoyed the old chestnut ‘Blue Rondo A La Turk’ and a remake of Rainbow’s ‘Difficult To Cure’ that come out on top. Of the other tunes, ‘Solomon’s Song’ is a standout. All of the musicians are straight out of the top drawer, so there is no slouching there, and I’m sure they all had a ball recording it.

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