Reviews
 Keep It Simple
Van Morrison
Roger McGuinn @ the Huntington IMAC, Long Island, NY - April 4, 2008
Emily Saxe @ the Allen Room/Jazz at Lincoln Center - April 5, 2008
Another Country
Tift Merritt
Be Your Own Pet
Get Awkward
Paul McCartney – The McCartney Years (DVD)
Juno – Music from the Motion Picture
Various Artists
Yes - Their Definitive Story
Day and Night Driving
Seven Mary Three
InterMedia Arts Center 2/2/08
Huntington, NY
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This disk could have been so good. Les Paul is older than Methuselah, and cooler than Elvis, so a tribute/duet album featuring his playing is a conceptually brilliant idea that could have rocked the music world.
I don’t want to kick this off sounding like a curmudgeon, so let me say straight off that this is a very interesting CD release. It is one of the best things we’ve heard with Les Paul’s name on it since Gibson started to mass-market his solid body guitar design, or at least since the 60’s. That being said, some golden opportunities were missed here. You would think that a record featuring Les Paul would truly feature Les Paul, but it is almost impossible to discern whether or not he’s even playing on some of these tracks. Furthermore, it would have made stylistic sense to rely on guitarists whose careers are associated with the Les Paul guitar, but this doesn’t happen. Instead, we hear a lot of Fender guitars (Eric Clapton) played by a strange variety of performers (Neil Schon? Richie Sambora?? Please.) Where is Jimmy Page? Why not ask Dickey Betts to pair up? Plenty of people have appeared on Santana records in the past few years, so why couldn’t Carlos return the sentiment and contribute his own classic Les Paul sound?
There is some great music on here, but not much that any old fans of Les Paul would recognize. Sting and Joss Stone do a great job singing “Love Sneakin’ Up On You” as a duet, and Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Edgar Winter’s syncopated take on “Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo” is cool, but this owes more to the drum rhythm than the guitar playing. Two tracks feature vocals by the (very) late Sam Cooke (!!!!), and the vocals on both are so incredibly good that they completely distract from the album’s alleged purpose. These two songs alone completely justify the purchase price of this disk, but just where is Les Paul?
Some tracks are just flat out terrible. A hip-hop rendition of Paul’s signature tune, “How High the Moon” is particularly horrible, with completely irrelevant vocals by someone named Alsou, accompanied by a rhythmic production that completely ‘pulverizes’ the song’s subtle chord changes. Worse, they edit out the guitar solo, making Paul’s presence virtually useless! And what about Peter Frampton? If you’ll recall, the abysmal single that effectively (and deservedly) ended his tenure as a superstar was called “I’m In You.” So then, out of 400 billion possible songs, why does he choose to cover Atlanta Rhythm Section’s bland and dated “So Into You”? What is up with this “In(to) you” thing? Is it a fetish or something?
I don’t deny that Les Paul’s image could use a bit of updating, but are hoary rock and roll standards the way to do it? Even if this were okay, wouldn’t it have been a good idea to actually let Les play most of the solos? It is his name on the album, and judging by his regular appearances at New York’s Iridium, he can still play like the hell out of his guitar. Here, he seems like a no-show at his own party. So much could have gone right but ultimately, Les Paul seems to have been treated as an afterthought by the album’s production staff, and that’s too bad, because any guy older than Methuselah and cooler than Elvis deserves better.
Grade: 
 
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