FLASH

Another album which suffers a lot from the eighties typical production, a production style which was very characteristic of a lot of albums produced during that decade, a decade of "artificial sounds", drum machines, excess in the use of synthesised sounds, reverb, and a "plastic sound", if a thing like that could be defined in some way. A lot of albums from that decade sound like very "sophisticated" things, with more emphasis in how the musicians looked at that time using the fads in their clothes and hairdos more than in the music authenticity. Look, posing and image above musical quality.

Well. This album unfortunately is another typical "product" of that decade. Jeff Beck obviously dislikes this album, and I can understand why. He said that this album was more a record company product and that the time of the recording of this album was a very unhappy time for him. Apart from his very good guitar playing, which is very much recognizable from him, this album does not sound as a Jeff Beck album. The only song which deserves a good commentary is "People Get Ready", a song from 1965 composed by Curtis Mayfield and originally recorded by him with the band "The Impressions". A song Beck recorded for this album with Rod Stewart on lead vocals, which, despite the very eighties drums sound, still shines by far as the best track on this album. The rest of the songs, most of them composed and produced by Nile Rodgers (at that time one of the most sought after record producers, and one of the founders of the Disco band "Chic" in the seventies, one of the few Disco bands which I like from that musical era) really sound more suitable for "Chic" than for Beck. Other tracks sound like recorded by some Arena Rock bands with a lead singer which sounds a lot like GTR`s Max Bacon or the lead singer from the band "Europe" (whose name I don`t remember now).

Another very good musician from the sixties and seventies who unfortunately had to listen to the "fad whims" of some of the record company executives of the eighties, and found his work marred by them.