AL DI MEOLA PROJECT: KISS MY AXE

Every time I pick up a CD at my local library that I haven’t seen before I wonder if it came from a patron’s donation; was the result of an employee whose personal tastes influenced my tax-dollar’s spending decisions; or if the record industry lost another racketeering case and had to dump some more of their stale inventory as a “public service”. I’m not sure which applies in this case, but if it was a library employee who decided that spending my tax dollars on this thing was a wise decision, I want that person fired.

Al Di Meolo is unquestionably an outstanding musician, and his prowess at picking guitar strings ranks him up there with music’s greatest legends. But this album is one of the most boring things I’ve heard in a long time, and that’s saying something considering I’ve logged a half-dozen one star album reviews in less than a year.

The guitar playing is great of course, but the setup pretty much ensures the overall experience is going to be disappointing. A half-naked chick on the cover, an album title that would have been more fitting for Van Halen or Twisted Sister, and an introduction in the liner notes that boasts of Di Meolo’s “speed”, “intensity”, “guitar heroics”, “power and fury” on this “most intense electric album in ten years” had me salivating in anticipation of an onslaught of Latin-flavored jazz ferocity. Well, that was a mistake.

The most salsafied track is the naughtily (and misleadingly) titled “Erotic Interlude” with some peppy Latin percussion and an upbeat tempo. But that’s about it. The rest of this album consists of a dozen tracks of the some of the smoothest, most precise, and unimaginative jazz I’ve ever heard out of this guy. There’s nothing here that stands up to the promising written introduction in the liner notes. I’m left wondering if this was not only a castoff copy from the record label, but was also the result of a manufacturing error that left someone else’s CD booklet inside of a Di Meolo jewel case. If that’s true then this all makes a lot more sense, but I sort of doubt it.

Fortunately the master would recover from this and put out the much more adventurous ‘World Sinfonia’ just a couple years later, and he seems to have stayed away from this kind of lounge-act smoothness on most of his records since, but this is one for the dustbins and suburban library shelves, not for your collection (or mine). Two stars just because that means ‘for collectors only’ and I’m sure Al has fans that hoard everything he’s ever released. They might dig this but I didn’t.

peace