Steve Morse - Major Impacts 2

*=Staff's pick	Wooden Music Where Are You? Errol Smith* Cool Wind, Green Hills Organically Grown 12 Strings On Carnaby St. Zig Zags Abracadab Tri County Barn Dance* Air On A 6 String Motor City Spirit* Ghost Of The Bayou* Leonard's Best*

Genre	Instrumental	-	Vocals
Tracks	13	Steve Morse	Guitar
Runningtime	51 Min.	-	Guitar
Label	Magna Carta	Dave LaRue	Bass
Release	24 Feb. 2004	Van Romaine	Drums
Country	USA	Steve Morse	Keyboards
Similar artists	---

It is in an innovative way Steve Morse displays what bands that have had a major impact on him. The guitarist that has played with bands like Deep Purple, Kansas, Dixie Dregs as well as he has done music on his own, and he makes instead of a cover album - that is the usual way it is done - an album with songs influenced and in the vein of his impacts.
I like it more this way since it gets more interesting to hear the influences within the music rather than songs that we all heard before so many times simply played straight of with perhaps in best cases a personal twist to them.

It is easy to hear where the influences comes from right from the beginning in those tracks influenced by those artists which music I am familiar with from earlier and listen to myself, like with Errol Smith and its Aerosmith groove and the southern sound in Leonard's Best with a Lynyrd Skynard inspirational theme. And when I look at where the other tracks are influenced from it gets in most cases to hear spontaneously the sources from where the music is inspired from.
The influences are gathered from bands like: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, The Who, ZZ Top, Genesis and Emerson, Lake & Palmer to mention some and along with some inspirational musical styles Steve Morse serves an intriguing album.

What I like mostly about this album is that Steve Morse has the ability to hold his guitarplaying back, it is superb guitarplaying, and no "in your face damn how good I am with my guitar playing a hundred thousand notes per second". That can easily be the case with instrumental album and in the end it can get tiring to hear when there are no vocals to be found. Steve makes a complete whole feeling with the music where the guitar is the main character backed up by bass and drums without that the guitar is over-shining. The guitar does the talking without being overdone in any way, it is nothing fancy, just good solid work.

The music is soft and soothing and is perfect music to play in the background or while driving car, it is nothing that gets you too excited or wild but it feels mature and natural as it is captivating but not more than that you start to stamp your feet or nod your head a bit.
Major Impacts 2 is a really good album in small portions since I loose patience when there are no vocals, a couple of tracks at the time is highly enjoyable but for me a full album is a little too much, but those with more patience than me will probably like this album much more.

Production	Vocals	Compositions
7	-	6

Summary
5 chalices of 10 - Thomas