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Pat Boone, Metalhead
11 years ago
General
PAT BOONE IN A METAL MOOD: NO MORE MR. NICE GUY
http://www.amazon.com/In-Metal-Mood.....f=cm_cr-mr-img
enthusiastically reviewed by Roochak
I've had this album and Paul Anka's ROCK SWINGS in my ears for the last few days, and while both albums, recasting contemporary pop and rock songs for swinging big bands, are testaments to the art of the arranger, the contrasts are striking.
While Anka has reinvented himself as a Rat Pack era Vegas headliner with a single-minded devotion to 4/4 swing, Boone, I think, has more fun with his set list, playing to and against his own whitebread image, especially on his faux-reggae version of Alice Cooper's "No More Mr. Nice Guy" and a frighteningly sincere version of Metallica's "Enter Sandman."
Boone worked with a dozen different arrangers, and the album's stew of rock, jazz, and Latin rhythms wants to have something for everyone. "Smoke on the Water" (its asinine lyrics enunciated clearly, for once) is recast as a mambo, and Ritchie Blackmore shows up to play a guitar solo on his own 1969 hit. Van Halen's "Panama" is recast as a big band salsa number, with Sheila E. among the percussionists and Merry ("Gimme Shelter") Clayton wailing away on background vocals. "Stairway to Heaven" is done, mercifully, as a jazz waltz, and AC/DC's "It's a Long Way to the Top" sounds great as a roaring swinger with a down and dirty saxophone duet.
Unlike the Anka album, a crossover project that bridges the gap between '80s and '90s pop and big band swing with surprising ease, the Boone album is one of those polarizing musical artifacts that listeners will either love or hate; you'll hear it as a wonderfully open-minded experiment with its own built-in camp value, or you'll hear it as a personal insult. You won't be indifferent to it.
http://www.amazon.com/In-Metal-Mood.....f=cm_cr-mr-img
enthusiastically reviewed by Roochak
I've had this album and Paul Anka's ROCK SWINGS in my ears for the last few days, and while both albums, recasting contemporary pop and rock songs for swinging big bands, are testaments to the art of the arranger, the contrasts are striking.
While Anka has reinvented himself as a Rat Pack era Vegas headliner with a single-minded devotion to 4/4 swing, Boone, I think, has more fun with his set list, playing to and against his own whitebread image, especially on his faux-reggae version of Alice Cooper's "No More Mr. Nice Guy" and a frighteningly sincere version of Metallica's "Enter Sandman."
Boone worked with a dozen different arrangers, and the album's stew of rock, jazz, and Latin rhythms wants to have something for everyone. "Smoke on the Water" (its asinine lyrics enunciated clearly, for once) is recast as a mambo, and Ritchie Blackmore shows up to play a guitar solo on his own 1969 hit. Van Halen's "Panama" is recast as a big band salsa number, with Sheila E. among the percussionists and Merry ("Gimme Shelter") Clayton wailing away on background vocals. "Stairway to Heaven" is done, mercifully, as a jazz waltz, and AC/DC's "It's a Long Way to the Top" sounds great as a roaring swinger with a down and dirty saxophone duet.
Unlike the Anka album, a crossover project that bridges the gap between '80s and '90s pop and big band swing with surprising ease, the Boone album is one of those polarizing musical artifacts that listeners will either love or hate; you'll hear it as a wonderfully open-minded experiment with its own built-in camp value, or you'll hear it as a personal insult. You won't be indifferent to it.
And if youre gonna get Rat Pack, then stick with the original Rat Pack (Sinatra, Dino, Sammy Davis Jr....except for Joey Bishop :P)
But let me know if you want "Sinatra & Jobim", which is sure another great classic!
The lyrics are a straightforward description of something that actually happened.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?li.....E1F11306ED8EC9