Search - Road :: Road

If you value your money, please disregard the previous revie

Stephen B. Emerel | NE Louisiana | 10/24/2005

(2 out of 5 stars)

"I'll admit it...I really tried to like this disc. The fact that one third of this trio is an ex-Hendrix bandmate, you can't help but have some expectations, but I was pretty let down. My biggest problem is that track one is seriously out of tune. One of the acoustic guitars is seriously off and i have to skip it every time. The fact that someone released something that's this lazy is deplorable. The vocals range from pretty unimpressive to annoying. As an added bonus the production is pretty damn stale and weak even for the day. I have an album by Clear Blue Sky from 1970 and the production is pretty lackluster, but the songs still have a plenty punch an energy played at the right volume. Road just seems to have very little energy to showcase. They had a couple things going for them: The guitar on a few tracks is some super-wah total fuzz freakout, but about a thousand times less impressive than Hendrix (the comparison is unavoidable since the Hendrix connection is probably the only reason to buy this disc). The other compliment is that the music itself is somewhat varied, ranging from slightly Allman Brothers-esque acoustic tunes (these guys could never hope to play half as well), to a couple songs that try to blend psychedelia with somewhat of a more traditional song format approach, straight up rock jamming, to a few quasi-"heavy" moments (some jackass on the net called this Noel Redding's heavy metal band, this wasn't heavy metal even for 1970)...

This is as obscure release for many reasons, and really isn't worth your money unless you're a collector. It's got a few (very few) shining moments, but the rest of the time it falls completely flat. I've bought a lot of obscure 60's and 70's rock titles in my recent rediscovery of hard rock. This is one of the worst ive come across. After hearing this disk I came to realize that something I had read regarding Noel Redding was probably true. Someone (I think in an Amazon review) called Noel the most overrated bassist of all time. After a listen at this cd, i was inclined to agree that, indeed, this man's short-lived success was a case of right place, right time, right haircut. All I can guess is that this album was a very rushed, very drugged-out studio jam that came up far short of anything memorable..."