There are some things in life that can only be described as, “It
\nseemed like a good idea at the time.” You know: that sudden urge to
\nget a tattoo, buying that Milli Vanilli album, putting New Coke out
\non the market. I’ve gotta stop here; the list is getting too
\npainful.<\/p>\n
Joe Lynn Turner, who perhaps is best known for stints as the
\nlead vocalist for Rainbow, Yngwie J. Malmsteen’s Rising Force and
\nDeep Purple, could also fall under this blanket with his recent
\nalbums of cover versions of hard rock classics. It’s not that an
\nalbum like
\nUnder Cover 2<\/i> does any disrespect for any of these songs,
\nbut one has to wonder if we really needed new versions of these
\nsongs. Like my daddy always told me, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix
\nit.” (No, wait, he told me, “If it ain’t broke, you didn’t hit it
\nhard enough.” But I digress.)<\/p>\n
I have two basic problems with this disc that I’d like to get
\nout of the way, before we start talking about the tracks
\nthemselves. First, I would have liked to have seen some credit to
\nthe other musicians on this album; there are absolutely no credits
\ngiven. (I couldn’t even find any information during a brief scan of
\nTurner’s official Web site.) Second, if you print a track listing,
\nthe least you should do is follow the order that is printed – or
\nchange the printing to match what’s on the disc. After about five
\nsongs, I gave up trying to play verbal checkers with the list, and
\ntossed it aside in disgust.<\/p>\n
As for the covers themselves,
\nUnder Cover 2<\/i> is hit-and-miss for most of the album. Some of
\nthe versions are right on the money, like Bad Company’s “Movin’
\nOn,” Whitesnake’s “Fool For Your Loving” (though the harmony vocals
\nare sadly missed) and Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back In Town”. You
\ndo have to sit back and admire a job well done.<\/p>\n
Other times, you have to wonder what Turner and crew were
\nthinking, like on the extended jam on The Beatles’s “Helter
\nSkelter”. Three words: annoying as hell. Likewise, something is
\nlost in the translation of Foreigner’s “Waiting For A Girl Like
\nYou,” though I can’t quite put my finger on what’s wrong with
\nTurner’s rendition. And, honestly, did we really need another
\nversion of Steppenwolf’s “Born To Be Wild”?<\/p>\n
What is puzzling about Turner’s recent dip into cover tune land
\nis that he’s a decent songwriter in his own right. One has to
\nwonder why he’s passed on doing his own material in favor of
\nrehashing other artists’ work. In fairness to Turner, albums like
\nUnder Cover 2<\/i> might just raise some interest in the minds of
\nyounger rockers who, say, might not be familiar with a band like
\nFree (Turner covers their song “Wishing Well”). If one kid decided
\nto try and search out the original material of one of these bands,
\nthen I guess that Turner’s experiment is really a success.<\/p>\n
\nUnder Cover 2<\/i> might leave the older rock fans (or at least
\nthose of us who know and appreciate rock’s past) scratching our
\nheads. Then again, maybe this one wasn’t meant for the older
\ngeneration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27962,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7559],"rating":[5614],"class_list":["post-39354","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-joe-lynn-turner","rating-rating-c-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39354","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=39354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=39354"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=39354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}