There is an inherent danger whenever any guitarist thinks that
\nthey can naturally play the blues, then record an album to prove
\nthey can do so. The danger is that they often lack the emotion and
\nthe spark, both of which are essential to the genre. Stevie Ray
\nVaughan had it; George Thorogood has it.<\/p>\n
Richie Kotzen, on the other hand, doesn’t have it – and that’s
\nwhere his latest solo album
\nBi-Polar Blues<\/i>, goes terribly wrong. Without the soul to put
\nin the emotion, your efforts are to waste – and this disc just
\nsmacks of what could have been.<\/p>\n
Kotzen – who once seemed like he had found his niche in the
\nglam-rock band Poison until he got bounced from the group – makes a
\nfew key mistakes on this disc. First, he tries to do damn nearly
\neverything himself. He plays every single note except for drums on
\nfive tracks and bass on two. Unfortunately, it’s rare that someone
\ncan accomplish such a feat without spreading themselves too thin
\namong all the bases they try to cover, and
\nBi-Polar Blues<\/i> sounds as thin as a saltine at times.<\/p>\n
A bit harsh, perhaps? Think of it this way: in the late ’80s,
\nKotzen was one of the young guitar wonderkids who were being hailed
\nas the next Eddie Van Halen. On this disc, Kotzen rarely sounds
\nlike he’s come ready to kick some serious axe. In fact, the
\nmeatiest solo he whips out comes on “The Thrill Is Gone” – and that
\nsong just doesn’t seem like it calls for a lesson in pentatonic
\nscales. Other times, the guitar work pales in comparison to what
\nthis guy can do on the six-string. I won’t even go into the bass,
\nkeyboards and drums. I’ll talk about the vocals in a minute.<\/p>\n
What Kotzen would have been better off doing on
\nBi-Polar Blues<\/i> is hiring a crack band who could work magic
\nwith this music in their sleep, allowing him to concentrate on some
\nfantastic guitar work. I know the old saying about too many cooks
\nspoiling the broth, but sometimes you’ve got to have additional
\nhelp in the kitchen.<\/p>\n
As for the vocals, I found Kotzen’s singing to be a little bland
\n– not bad, but like his heart wasn’t really into this material. If
\nhe insists on acting as lead throat and lead guitar, he really has
\nto make his vocals sound more powerful. Otherwise, there’s no shame
\nin bringing in a vocalist.<\/p>\n
Problem number two on
\nBi-Polar Blues<\/i> is the choice of covers. Now, I’ll freely
\nadmit I’m biased when it comes to “The Thrill Is Gone”; although he
\ndidn’t write it, that track will forever be B.B.King’s, at least in
\nmy mind. Two other tracks, “Tobacco Road” and “They’re Red Hot,”
\njust seem to be odd selections – and both have been done by other
\ngroups, David Lee Roth and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, respectively.
\nThe difficulty is that you can do only so much with these numbers
\nbefore it sounds like you’re filling time – namely, “They’re Red
\nHot”. Of the covers, Kotzen does do a respectable job on “From Four
\nTill Late,” an old Robert Johnson cut.<\/p>\n
The originals on
\nBi-Polar Blues<\/i> suffer from the same half-hearted emotion
\nthat the covers do; it’s not until late in the album that Kotzen
\nseems to turn on the juice and make things interesting. Tracks like
\n“Burn It Down” and “No Kinda Hero” prove that there still is
\npromise in the young man’s future, while the instrumental “Richie’s
\nBoogie” proves that he can still make the house rock.<\/p>\n
Granted, Kotzen has been through a lot musically, including hard
\nrock falling out of commercial fashion. But if artists like Joe
\nSatriani and Gary Hoey have been able to roll with the punches,
\nKotzen should have been able to as well.
\nBi-Polar Blues<\/i> is not the album that is worthy of putting
\nKotzen back into the spotlight for good reasons, but there’s enough
\non the disc to suggest that he still has an ace up his sleeve. If
\nonly he had chosen to play it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25182,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6200],"rating":[5619],"class_list":["post-36387","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-richie-kotzen","rating-rating-c"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36387\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36387"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36387"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}