Customer Reviews

Larsen-Feiten Band/Full Moon

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Most of you will probably know Neil Larsen and Buzz Feiten as session musicians from Rickie Lee Jones' debut Chuck E's In Love. At the time these two (Neil keys and Buzz guitar) were some of the best cats around.

Here they got together with Lenny Castro - percussion, Art Rodriguez - drums, Willie Weeks - bass and Larry Williams, Kim Hutchcroft, Chuck Findley, Bill Reichenbach, David Sanborn, Jim Horn - horns. With Tommy Lipuma and Al Schmitt turning the knobs nothing can go wrong.

What else you need to know? Sunny jazz rock feeling (more rock than jazz), warm air, wind, the waves, pretty girls, good looking guys, terrific music. Here you get both albums as one cd. What are you waiting for? Get it!!!

This is a double CD, with tracks from two separate CD's--The "Larsen Feiten Band" which is about $40 as a Japanese Import) and "Full Moon" another pricey and unavailable CD. So this particular CD is a huge bargain.

The music style is jazz and pop. The instrumentals feature a haunting melody line shadowed by guitar, usually syched with the organ or synthesizer, or in some cases, a few miliseconds after the lead notes. The instrumentals also feature a musical chorus, which I find unusual, and some terrific guitar work.

I will never understand why they did not enjoy the musical success they deserved.

For those of you who don't much about the band, I'll offer some history.

Buzz Feiten was a studio guitarist for among other bands, Stevie Wonder. In the mid 1970's he joined forces with Neil Larsen and formed a band called "Full Moon" who recorded an incredibly classic and great album of the same name, with some personnel of Paul Butterfield Blues Band (after his untimely death). The album was critically acclaimed but did not enjoy commercial success, and was jazzy, rocky and poppy. All in all, a terrific sound.

Neil and Buzz recorded a series of albums together with Neil Larsen being the name artist, and after that played out, recorded these two CD within a year of each other.

The sound has something for everyone. It is jazzy, has pop vocals, and some great rock guitar licks.

This particular CD has some great highlights including:

FULL MOON

"Phantom of the Footlights," a pop jazzy song with some great licks and hooks.

"The Visitor" an instrumental featuring the multi-talents of Neil Larsen on organ and synthesizer.

"Hero's Welcome" Another Neil Larsen haunting instrumental.

LARSEN FEITEN BAND

"Who'll Be the Fool Tonight" A pop vocal song with a terrific melody and some catchy hooks. Great guitar work by Buzz.

"Danger Zone" Another pop song, with a jazz matrix.

"Further Notice" A Neil Larsen melody/instrumental which, as usual, as a haunting melody and chorus.

"Aztec Legend" Yet another Neil Larsen melody.

The music is great and this is a bargain of a CD.

I feel somewhat reluctant to give anything that features Buzz Feiten less than five stars, but I have to do it on these two CDs. Buzz alone is as always a 5 plus. The two Neil Larsen solo albums are the best place to hear both Buzz and Neil at their best. And that's exactly why I had to give these a four. The two Neil Larsen albums are pure instrumental albums. The songs and the Buzz smoke. The two albums under review here are half instrumental, half vocal. And that's the problem. The instrumentals are great, but the vocal songs are on the weak side, because of lame lyrics and lame singing.

Let me correct some of the earlier reviewer's history. Buzz Feiten popped on the scene in the summer of 1969 as the 17 year old guitar player for the Paul Butterfield Band, replacing Elvin Bishop. He played on the vastly underrated "Keep on Moving", where in my opinion and the opinion of many others (all the studios that were hiring him in the 70s and 80s and 90s), he blew Bloomfield and Bishop out of the water (listen to the solos on Walkin By Myself and Where Did My Baby Go, plus the comping on No Amount of Love to hear why). He was hands down the best guitar player to play at Woodstock, and received no recognition because Butterfield was not featured in the movie. That Buzz Feiten, quite possibly the best guitarist of his generation, remained largely unrecognized except among studio musicians who could recognize talent, is one of the travesties of post-Woodstock pop music.

Also, Paul Butterfield wasn't dead when the excellent first Full Moon album was made. He was making one great and one average album with his new band, Better Days. The first Full Moon album, like these two, were mixes of vocal songs and instrumentals. It's better simply because either Gene Dinwiddie or Phillip Wilson (I forget which one sang) was a much better singer than either Buzz or Neil.

This one features both the Larsen/Feiten Band from 1980 and Full Moon with the duo from 1982. Plenty of great jazz rock with good songs and musicianship.

I have had BOTH of these in LP form...yes, vinyl, for years and years. Bought The Larsen-Feiten Band back when it came out, because I had heard the track, "Who'll Be The Fool Tonight", on the radio. It's a great tune, funky, rock/jazz music, & the singer has a great sounding voice. To my delight, the entire LP was awesome, a mix of instrumentals, and tracks with vocals. It turned out my favorite track was one of the instrumentals, "Further Notice"!!!

A few years later, while browsing in a record store, I spotted "Full Moon", it's the exact same band! And again, it's another album of instrumentals, and tracks with vocals. I enjoyed it equally as much as Larsen-Feiten!! If you're a fan of bands like Steely Dan, and The Doobie Brothers (especially the Michael McDonald era), you'll enjoy this CD of both these albums!!

An underrating band, which there were more of them and that they were still together making CD's. Great CD.

I really enjoy the music of Neil Larsen and purchased this CD unheard. There is only one song that is strictly Larsen and it is great. The rest of the album is enjoyable, but not so memorable or special. I wish Neil Larsen would do another solo album.

i SAW THIS BAND IN IT'S ORIGINAL FORM, PLAY AT THE WOODSTOCK PLAYHOUSE WHEN i WAS A KID.

tHEY BLEW ME AWAY.For some reason I never picked up the LP.

Now I find, that CD's are like 50 bucks.

The same thing happened with another woodstock based album,

Happy and Artie TRaum.

This album is huge bucks if you can find it.

Since the masters obviously exist somewhere, why are CD's so expensive?