Saturday, June 15, 2013

*** Guitar Battle - Song Writing Is More Important Than Good Musicianship. Heard It 1,000 Times, Yet?

This album basically sounds like a bunch of musicians, really good musicians even, just got together and said, “Hey!  Let’s wing it on a couple classic songs and call it an album.”  I can definitely vouch for that they did not match the power of the original recordings.  And, maybe that is due to poor recording equipment, I don’t know.  This is obviously a low budget recording, and the folks that made it probably had no money to spare on making it.
Guitar Battle is anything but classic renditions of classic songs.  At other times, it seems that they just want to turn up the cheese factor with the guitar solos.  I know in certain instances people like John Coltrane where able to create amazing albums in this manner, but that is not the case with this one.
I should also mention that before he was the famed John Petrucci, the afore said musician plays on this one with lackluster.  As far as it concerns me, this is some of his worst recorded work, and should only be purchased for those looking to complete a collection, and not bought by folks expecting a good album.
John was never a great improviser.  Likewise, though when play with Dream Theater he has improvised, but I will state that these improvisations even in Dream Theater, which I will have you know is one of my favorite bands, never impressed me.  Likewise, I don’t feel that John Petrucci evolved much beyond the skill with which he played with on Guitar Battle.

What I will say for certain is that John is a great song writer, and a tremendous musician, but only so long as he does not venture far from the written music page.

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