Customer Reviews

Awakening

5 star:		(3)
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Narada Michael Walden gained fame in the 80's as the hitmaking producer behind Aretha Franklin and Whitney Houston.His third solo album 'Awakenings' finds the multitalented drummer in his first rush of musical nirvana.The music here is quite diverse-"The Awakening Suite" plus "The Awakening" itself are full flegded forrays into jazz fusion of the kind he might've made with the Mahavisnu Orchestra."Give Love A Chance" and "Will You Ever Know" offer two beautifully arranged ballads for the bedroom brigade."Love Me Only" starts the CD off with a very nice dance-pop tune while the hit "I Don't Want Nobody Else (To Dance With You)" is hyperkinetic uptempo funk of the first order,with even a little rock guitar for spiciness.The brash "They Want The Feeling" dives even further into the funk-rock mode with more pleasant dance music such as "Listen To Me" and "Full And Satisfied" to round out this set.
Like Norman Connors before him Walden was already proving himself a superb assembler of musical talent with guests such as Carlos Santana,The Pointer Sisters,the Brecker Brothers,Hiram Bullock,Greg Phillinganes and Angela Wimbush permeating this album.But Narada is always the focus and thankfully on all tracks he makes excellent use of his drum kit.A musicians album with hit potential-no wonder Clive Davis was so interested in this guy.Highly recommended.

I'm glad this album got released on disc, because my album version got warped in the heat of my garage. "Awakening" is the best track overall instrumentwise, with one of the best guitar solos ever, by Carlos Santana. "Listen to me" is one of my favorite NMW singles, and I think I it features Wayne Henderson (Crusaders) on trombone solo, or at least it sounds like him. Browse through the artist credits on any of his cds, and you can understand how he made consistenly great albums.

With the new century comes the possibility of getting Narada's records on cd. I am certainly not going to complain about that, because I am one of his big fans.

This album is 22 years old but it is a must have for anyone that enjoys music of quality, and generally speaking, what I call pop soul. The cast is impressive, since you have Santana, Hiram Bullock, Ray Gomez, Jay Graydon, Greg Phillinganes, Wayne Henderson, Bobby Lyle, The Brecker Brothers and the Pointer Sisters (just to name the most famous) performing here and there on this collection.

The tracks are all TOP, except perhaps the too disco "I don't want nobody else", which I have never liked. As mentioned before, Narada is surrounded by outstanding musicians with which you could hardly go wrong and the result is probably his second or third best album. Narada sets his personal style (I have never heard anybody do something similar again, unlike today's habit to clones [and clowns] : Britney-Mandy Moore-Spice-Backstreet-N'sync, etc) and the music flows very naturally from the beginning to the end. The journey is extremely short (40 minutes), but remember that this was originally a vinyl, and that such a playing time was common because of the support's limitations.

Enough said. If you came to this page you probably don't even need to be convinced. "pah-pah, listen to me", get it before it is no longer available.