REVIEWS FROM MY VINYL COLLECTION

Day: March 31, 2022

ULTRAPHONIX – Original Human Music

A teaming together of Living Colour’s Corey Glover, and George Lynch may not be the a partnership you would think of ever happening, but George has been very active in working with a ton of different musicians over the last few years and this one is one of my favourites. I had this vision of a huge funk rock band with George ripping on every song. The reality is quite a lot different. This is a very cool mature record that covers all bases from Prog to Jazz, and RnB to Rock – blurring all the joining lines.

Baptism is a superb opening with an up-tempo groove, and Corey’s voice is pure gold. Another Day has a very RnB feel that’s been slightly rocked up, and George’s solo is so good! Walk Run Crawl has a riff reminiscent of Dokken and is one of the heavier tracks on the album. Counter Culture is a hard track to pin down with echos of psych/jazz and funk, but it’s one of the coolest tracks on the album. Free is a reggae masterclass with a fuzzed out Led Zep style. This is a track that you hope a project like this will come up with.

Wasteland opens up Side 2, and again, new things are tried with different sounds and effects – the overdriven guitar in the chorus is superb. Take A Stand is the highlight of the record with a very Living Colour funky vibe and groove, a superb vocal from Cory with an awesome chorus and harmonies, and George giving it plenty. The groove on Soul Control is seriously cool and Corey’s vocals are wonderful. What You Say is the dark horse of the album, and has a great swing to the groove with George riffing underneath. The album closes out with Power Trip, and the main riff reminds me of King Crimson.

A killer record, and the title “Original Human Music” couldn’t be more on point.

9.5/10 from The Grooveman.

CANEDY, FEINSTEIN, BORDONARO & CAUDLE – Hollywood

If you look at the cover for this you could mistake this for being a Rods album. In ’86 they added a keyboard player in Emma Zale, and a killer vocalist in Rick Caudle, and they called the project Hollywood. That meant Dave “The Rock” Feinstein could concentrate on ripping on the guitar. What the additions did do however was change the whole vibe and sound of the band. The Rods were supposed to be this raw ball of energy rock n roll band, and now they were trying to be this slick melodic rock band. I bet we can all name bands that we thought were good, but they never quite had the songs to make it – well this is one of those albums.

The intros are all really good, and the riffs are there, but the songs just aren’t striking enough. Rick Caudle is a killer vocalist, but the melodies and hooks aren’t quite there. Rock Feinstein is a killer player and he rips in small doses here, but you can’t polish a turd as they say. I guess that’s a bit unfair as it’s not that bad. Ironically, the best track on the album is a cover of Mississippi Queen.

6.5/10 from The Grooveman.