Walking In Circles is a fun blues album, with the majority of the tunes highly danceable, instrumental oriented and radio friendly. The Alastair Greene Band reminded me of George Thorogood And The Destroyers on tracks like Drunk Again. Alastair’s background is working in a few cover bands doing Cream and Clapton songs as well as performing with the Alan Parsons Live Project. That knowledge makes the more experimental sounds of Walking In Circles all the more accessible.
This album really shines on the tracks featuring distorted harmonica solos by Mitch Kashmar, who is currently touring with WAR and appears as a special guest on the album. The Albert Collins’ cover of the classic Don’t Lose Your Cool distorts harp almost into feedback range as Alastair’s strong jam swings to the drum beat.
That great distortion sound is also heard on guitar. Alastair uses a number of classic blues amps for recording including a Fender Blues Junior and a modified 1970 Fender Super Reverb amp. His Eric Clapton model Fender Stratocaster sizzles with some hot slide guitar licks on Alastair’s cover of Hound Dog Taylor’s Give Me Back My Wig. And it’s not all about guitar either. I loved the classic background vocals and tenor sax solo thrown in by Alastair on the swing kid blues tune Look Out Baby.
Get Out Of My Life, Woman has been covered or sampled by everyone from Jerry Garcia to Public Enemy! The song was written by Allen Toussaint and originally performed by New Orleans soul artist Lee Dorsey who helped pioneer the funk genre. The Alastair Greene Band cover features the multitalented Kashmar’s piano thrown into the mix with the bass line brought up and then fading out with a long guitar instrumental.
Say What You Want begins with a bit of a Bow Wow Wow “I Want Candy” drum beat. (According to Wikipedia this tom tom drum beat was inspired by ritual music from the African tribe of Burundi!) This song has an interesting mix like everything is going in and out of stereo channels in time to the beat of the tremolo guitar. This experimentation makes sense given Alastair’s influences, Johnny Winter and Joe Satiriani.
Label: Riatsala Music
Myspace: www.myspace.com/alastairgreeneband
Web site: www.agsongs.com
