Customer Reviews

Scenario

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

this music was released in 1983, listening to it today, all the innovation (technically and electronically) is still there. you begin to wonder either di Meola is a genius who developed something still new today after 22 years OR our present crop of musicians are not doing much these days. none the less, i give 5 star for the innovation.

by the way, i love di Meola's electronic phase as much as his acoustic phase.

This was the last of Mr. di Meola's recordings for Columbia. He had sold millions of copies in the late 70's, with his ground-breaking jazz/fusion recordings like "Elegant Gypsy" and "Splendido Hotel". However, in 1983, fusion was stylistically 'old news'. Many jazz artists had been dropped from major labels by the mid 80's.
"Scenario" is a very strong musical effort. The music is somewhat of a departure from the previous ones, although a natural progression as well. Featuring a generous amount of synthesizers, the album, in my opinion, genuinely reflects the state of instrumental music of the 1980's. The sound is much more relaxed, focused, and in some cases romantic than previous works, but still had the distinguised finger prints of Mr. di Meola. The songs are also much more diverse and ethnic than ever before, and display musical characteristics that continue to persevere in his music today.
With all being said, i'd have to say that this is the weakest of the Al-bums. It, however, was an unfortunate inevitability that Al was dropped from his label. What was FORTUNATE, however, is that he went on to make great recordings throughout the 80s, like "Soaring Through A Dream" and "Tirami Su".
You could hardly go wrong with this music: It is very gentle and adventurous music. As always, the key to listening to good music is to find out for yourself whether or not the music is good for YOU. For me, however, it is great, and I don't think you can go wrong with this one.

This album kicks serious butt! Like anything I buy, the first few listens didn't excite me. But wait a week or two, and when I pick it up again, I find some seriously good music. The music doesn't have as much fire and virtuosity as previous albums have but it is a very nice spin on the 80's fasination with keyboards and synthesizers. The project over-all is very good. In particular, I found that Sequencer, Mata-hari, Cachacha (don't bother correcting the awful spelling) and Island dreamer, are probably the best cuts but it is all good. The reviewers who didn't like this probably shouldn't bother coming to this site. The music is great, don't listen to the spoil sports.
Enjoy some creative music from the master.

I have all of Al's CDs and thought that this one is my least favorite. But then I played it one day after not hearing it for a couple of years, and found that I like it a lot. It is best to listen to it without insisting that it should sound like his earlier work. That way it can be accepted for what it is. If I lost my copy of it, I would definately buy another one.

~

Memorable music resonates with its setting. For me, Scenario will forever be remembered with long twilight drives across the northern Nevada desert, a cold Coors at hand, blasting down I-80 as fast as my old Bronco would go, stereo cranked up, headed for dinner & bed in Battle Mtn. 90 miles in not much over an hour, when the roads were dry. A crawling, white-knuckle nightmare when Emigrant Pass was icy.

Al Di Meola! Master of the singing, stinging, stretched-sustain guitar line, soaring over Tony Levin's amazing, architectonic ground-bass. I played this record a lot back then, in the early 80's, then mostly forgot it. Exhumed a box of old cassettes TOD, and rediscovered Scenario. It's still wonderful. I'm not a big Di Meola fan, but he pushes all my buttons on this one. Highly recommended.

Happy listening --

Peter D. Tillman

I cannot understand the reaction of the two reviewers below. I have all of Al Dimeola's CD's, as well as his side projects, and his collective body of work is truly astonishing. If you follow his career from the early days through his later works, his development and evolution are quite apparent. This CD is no exception. There are some intense pieces here, such as Sequencer, for which he released an interesting video--I'm not going to tell you its one of the top 10 Jazz Fusion disks ever recorded, but if you are an Al Dimeola fan, you should not pass this one up.

Considering the charged up nature of his previous album to this it was only natural that Al DiMeola,fusion guitar hero of the late 70's would change up his sound this time around. In those three years since he recorded that album the way in which even jazz fusion was produced had changed drastically. The sound of analog synthesizers had been replaced by more rigid sounding digital ones and the sound of the genre was becomming more and more involved with their textures-moving it towards the sound that would become new age. Considering the type of musician DiMeola was his music at this point could've easily drifted that way. But with the addition of Bill Bruford and Phil Collins,both rock drummers with a great deal of interest in fusion as well as keyboard maestro Jan Hammer one was pretty much guarenteed a full,beefy sound.

Mostly this album consists of more flowing numbers such as "Mata Hari","African Night","Island Dramer" and the title song. These compositions rely on Eastern melodic ideas (often on the microtonal side) rather than Western ones and overall compositional strengh is somewhat sacrificed for straight out musical ideas. Sounds like a gas to make for sure but sometimes not as memorable as it could be. Interestingly enough the strengh of the album seems to come when the tempo goes up and the digital keyboards and LINN drums come in. The spirited electro sounds of "Sequencer" is an amazing example,especially when Jan Hammer colors the music with his wonderfully harmonized,trademark rock guitar like synth soloing. "Hypnotic Conviction" and "Calliope" follow suit for a very adventurous,electronically inclined sound to close out the album.

There's a lot of people who give this album a bad rap mainly because it has an early 80's sound in parts of the production. My take on it is this: 80's styled production didn't work all the time especially if it stood in for strong songs. But sometimes,especially in cases like this where the musicianship outweighs compositional sense a lot of the time those same elements can actually add to a sense of craft and melodic/harmonic ideas. And also they serve to give this album a stronger rhythmic element to enhance dancibility. So in the end this is not quite the masterpiece that an album such as Splendido Hotel by any means but it does qualify as a neglected gem in DiMeola's vast catalog and worth picking up and enjoying on CD if you should be lucky enough to run across it the way I did.

Scenario came out in 1983, but the sound is up-to-date, innovative, and without a doubt Al Di Meola's best electronic-fusion outing (all instrumental of course), especially with Jan Hammer as guest keyboardist. Sure, the early Al D recordings were good, and featured Al playing super-speed demon guitar, but Scenario is of a different breed -- the songs actually have melodies and are played slower so you can relish the sound. This is good driving music and just plain old good Al D to kick back to.

MUCH BETTER THAN EXPECTED

Released in 1983, this could be considered Al DiMeola's sixth solo studio album. It is 40 minutes long (limited to the standard length of an LP). The sound quality is very good, especially for a CD released in the early 1980's.

This really isn't a solo album. It is more of a duet with Jam Hammer. You can hear Hammer's influence all over this thing. He also wrote and or cowrote most of the compositions on this CD. There are the early signs of what would become the Miami Vice theme music, complete with the Rowland drum lines.

Although Hammer is all over this CD, this is definitely DiMeola's record. Hammer doesn't dominate like he did on the previous DiMeola record or like he did with Jeff Beck, Neal Schon or Jerry Goodman.

With this CD coming out in the 1980's, when many former jazz-fusion artists went to Sunday Brunch lite jazz, I didn't expect much from this. But, there is a lot of good stuff here. I disagree with others that this sounds like many of the other crappy soft jazz albums of the 1980's.

DiMeola still has an innovative sound. But, he changes it around and updates it a little, so this album does not come of a poor rehash of his earlier albums. At the same, time he doesn't force changes. It all sounds like a natural progression.

This CD may not be as good as his first four, but it does have some great tracks. I really like the opening track, and the Hammer tune, Sequencer if very good. The CD does have some slow spots throughout, which is why I don't give it 5 stars.

Phil Collins, Bill Buford and Tony Levin are also credited as being on this CD. But Collins only appears on one track and Buford and Levin on another. None them seem to make any impact on the music, and it really isn't apparent they are on the CD.

This is mostly just duets with Hammer and DiMeola playing multiple instruments on each track.

I wish I had read the review below before I puchased this. His other albums are so GOOD! This is clearly a casualty of that horrible disease known as "the eighties".