{"id":44500,"date":"2016-05-14T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-05-14T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/starship-trooper\/"},"modified":"2016-05-14T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-05-14T00:00:00","slug":"starship-trooper","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/starship-trooper\/","title":{"rendered":"Starship Trooper"},"content":{"rendered":"

How many Rick Wakeman albums is enough? This is apparently a purely rhetorical question, as All Music Guide<\/a> now lists well over 100 studio albums\u2014not counting dozens of anthologies and live recordings\u2014credited to the former Yes keyboardist and prolific solo artist.<\/p>\n

Complicating matters further, this particular release is only a Rick Wakeman album by the most fanciful stretch of an overeager record label executive\u2019s imagination. Let\u2019s allow Wakey himself to weigh in<\/a>: \u201cCleopatra informed me last year that they were going to issue a compilation of some of the tracks that I had played on as a session musician. They are perfectly legally entitled to do this, so obviously I had no objection. What does need to be made clear, though, is that this is not MY new release. Whilst I always do my very best as regards performance on other people\u2019s productions, they are not my productions. I am simply adding to what is already there. The pieces are not my arrangements, my choices of music or indeed my production and so therefore cannot be remotely considered as \u2018My Album.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

What we have instead, then, is a baker\u2019s dozen of tracks on which Wakeman has played for Cleopatra and its sister label Purple Pyramid over the last 15 years. These tracks are a genuine hodgepodge of originals, covers, reissues and previously unreleased tracks. Credited guests include fellow Yes-men Steve Howe, Tony Kaye and Billy Sherwood, as well as other notables such as Tony Levin, Steve Hillage, Nik Turner, Colin Moulding, Jerry Goodman, Carmine Appice and the inimitable William Shatner. (With no help from the incomplete credits, I was able to deduce that most of these tracks were produced by Sherwood.)<\/p>\n

Many words could be used to describe such an album\u2014mishmash, smorgasbord, potpourri\u2014but the one I eventually settled on here is \u201cpotluck.\u201d As in, many chefs and varied results, with some tasty bits and others that look good at first but may end up tucked in your napkin.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with the best: \u201cThe Great Gig In The Sky,\u201d taken from the 2006 Pink Floyd tribute album Return To The Dark Side Of The Moon<\/i>, is a wonderful, largely faithful rendition highlighted by Wakeman\u2019s rippling piano and tasteful arcing slide notes from Howe. \u201cCrime Of The Century,\u201d from the 2012 Supertramp tribute Songs Of The Century<\/i>, also features some magnificent work from Wakeman, with his fluid piano lines residing at the heart of the song, and an equally pleasing synth solo in the later going. <\/p>\n

Nice but missing something is a cover of \u201cLove Reign O\u2019er Me\u201d taken from 2012\u2019s Who Are You: An All-Star Tribute To The Who<\/i>; this instrumental version is strong enough but feels incomplete with Joe Elliott\u2019s vocals stripped from the mix. Similarly, \u201cCheck Point Karma\u201d from the first Prog Collective album provides a welcome spotlight for Wakeman\u2019s dynamic soloing, but despite this album\u2019s credits, Colin Moulding\u2019s vocal track is nowhere to be found. Which makes it all the more puzzling when they leave in Sherwood\u2019s vocal for \u201cNobody Home\u201d (from another Floyd tribute) even though Wakeman\u2019s superb, jazzy keys are clearly the focal point of the track.<\/p>\n

As for the lowlights\u2026 well. <\/p>\n

\u201cStarship Trooper\u201d is an absolutely bizarre choice to be featured as the title track. Never mind that Wakeman hadn\u2019t even joined Yes yet when the song debuted on 1971\u2019s The Yes\u00a0 Album<\/i>; he doesn\u2019t even show up on this version until the song\u2019s nearly over. To my ears, at least, Tony Kaye plays all the early Hammond parts and Wakeman doesn\u2019t come in until the last three minutes of this 8:34 track. Meanwhile, punnily-cast former Starship lead throat Mickey Thomas seems a decent enough choice to match elfin-voiced Jon Anderson\u2019s original vocal right up until that final segment, when out of nowhere he suddenly chirps \u201cStarship trooper! Woo!\u201d like a hyperactive middle schooler. Chalkboard, meet fingernails.<\/p>\n

Further illustrating the hazards of turning familiar vocal songs into instrumentals, the version of \u201cI\u2019m Not In Love\u201d found here remakes the 10cc classic as elevator music; it\u2019s barely recognizable. Then there\u2019s a bizarre instrumental take on \u201cLight My Fire,\u201d with Wakeman\u2019s synths seemingly set to \u201ccarousel organ\u201d; the whole thing comes out sounding like the score to an acid trip at a carnival. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s also some mildly interesting industrial stuff early on featuring J\u00fcrgen Engler from Die Krupps and a blisteringly weird cut lifted from a Nik Turner album. But the album is really summed up best by the Shatner track \u201cChanges\u201d: overblown, odd, and a bit too clever for its own good, though it does have its moments.<\/p>\n

Finally, while I grant you that only a handful of liner notes geeks like yours truly will actually give them a close read, I can\u2019t let these pass without commenting on one other point. This otherwise comically breathless summation of Wakeman\u2019s voluminous credits over the past half-century (\u201cThe King of Keyboards!\u201d) includes a major gaffe, suggesting that Wakeman and Anderson left Yes after<\/u> 1980\u2019s Drama<\/i> album rather than before it. Close but, well, not really close at all if you ever actually followed the band.<\/p>\n

Starship Trooper<\/i> is perhaps best viewed as evidence of two things: (1) Rick Wakeman is both remarkably talented and remarkably promiscuous in his sharing of said talents; and (2) for record labels, these truly are desperate times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":32730,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6115],"rating":[5619],"class_list":["post-44500","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-rick-wakeman","rating-rating-c"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44500","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\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=44500"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=44500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}