Michael Schenker is an enigma. No doubt about it. Countless
\nepisodes of absenteeism throughout his days with UFO and notable
\nbouts with band members, including Phil Mogg and Graham Bonnet,
\nhave only cemented this reputation over the years.<\/p>\n
My Michael Schenker story, in the last five years, includes him
\ncanceling two tours at the last minute for sketchy reasons that
\nwill probably never be accurately told as I found myself sitting on
\nbotched travel itineraries due to his whimsical shifts in
\ncharacter. So, as I found myself in Las Vegas a couple of weekends
\nago overlapping his recent gig with the new millennium version of
\nthe Michael Schenker Group, I naturally swore off my moratorium of
\nanything to do with the guy and took in the show.<\/p>\n
Now, I can just hear the jeers being tossed my way for my shift
\nin character. Why, might you ask would I do such a thing?<\/p>\n
The answer is simple, really. It has as much as anything to do
\nwith the material found on side one of the Michael Schenker Group’s<\/p>\n
MSG<\/i> album. This was Schenker’s band with the all star lineup
\nincluding Cozy Powell playing drums, Paul Raymond performing
\nkeyboards, Chris Glen commanding bass guitar duties, and Gary
\nBarden handling the vocals.<\/p>\n
And yes, listing Barden last was intentional as I normally find
\nhis vocals to be of average quality, realizing that there are quite
\na few MSG fans out there that are polarized on the issue. But hey,
\nthis album works wonders for several reasons; most notably it’s for
\nSchenker’s ability to craft some of the most wicked guitar solos of
\nthe era weaved in between the harder crunch of guitar and softness
\nof the keys. “On And On” exemplifies this claim in its finest
\nfashion and as far as I’m concerned, is a track I could easily
\nlisten to over and over. Barden is at his best on this track
\nprobably because he is forced to harmonize over a complex
\nSchenker\/Raymond-led mixed-tempo arrangement. And for the
\nnon-plussed Barden sentiment I’ve just shared, I have to admit that
\nI can truthfully only imagine his voice singing on this track.<\/p>\n
While Barden’s lyrical composition on the opening song, “Are You
\nReady To Rock” will confuse nobody, Schenker more than makes up for
\nthe shortfall with his accelerated riffing. The same can be said
\nfor the makeup of “Attack Of The Mad Axeman.” It’s here where Cozy
\nPowell most noticeably rises to the challenge with a marching
\nback-beat that gives Schenker the foundation to lay his serpentine
\nsolos intermittently through the effort. When Barden is required to
\nharmonize in the middle of the song, it comes across rather forced.
\nEven Stephen Stills’ guest appearance on “Never Trust a Stranger”
\ncan’t bail out Barden’s inability to carry a soft tune.<\/p>\n
Rest assured, though, this is Michael Schenker’s band and he
\nplays guitar. And on this album, very little of his playing can be
\nidentified as anything other than a resonation from his soul. As
\nfar as I’m concerned, Schenker is one of the few guitarists out
\nthere, past and present tense, who can actually force a vocalist to
\ntake a back seat to his playing with his creative
\nstring-bending.<\/p>\n
It’s for this reason that I “flaked” and resisted the temptation
\nto honor my self-imposed isolation from Michael Schenker in a live
\nsetting. Creative fretwork — call it my guilty pleasure.<\/p>\n
\nMSG<\/i> is an album that has gone overlooked in the metal genre
\nlargely in the same way that the early 80’s version of the Michael
\nSchenker Group was overtaken by MTV and the Hollywood hair
\nexplosion a couple of years after the band’s formation and release
\nof this album.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":26558,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6080],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-37798","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-michael-schenker-group","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37798","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\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=37798"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=37798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}