Customer Reviews

Strange Pleasure / Out There (Mlps)

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What makes up the blues or rock blues cd that one dearly enjoys and treasures? In my case it is a blues or rock blues cd that includes a fantastic voice or voices, the electric guitar as the most often featured lead instrument, highly-skilled lead guitar playing, additional excellent instrumentation, including excellent harmonica and organ playing, thoughtful or intriguing blues or soul inspired lyrics, blues or rock blues songs and song arrangements that I much enjoy and highly appreciate, and very clear sound quality that adequately separates the various parts. After listening to Strange Pleasure/ Out There, I am disappointed to report that Strange Pleasure/ Out There does not meet my high expectations in order to qualify as a blues or rock blues cd that I dearly enjoy and treasure. Jimmie Vaughan certainly is an excellent lead guitar player. The lead guitar playing is the highlight of this two cd set. The guitar playing provides good background sound if you are in a different room and not really listening to the lyrics or vocals. The backing instumentation is certainly good enough. Some of the songs incude good harmonica and organ playing, although not as many songs do as I would like. The sound quality of Strange Pleasure/ Out There is excellent with clear separation between parts. So what are the primary sources of my disappointment? My largest disappointment is that Jimmie Vaughan has only a barely satisfactory, not a fantastic, singing voice. The disparity between his excellent guitar playing and his barely satisfactory voice presents a problem for the listener. In any given song Jimmie Vaughan may first play an outstanding guitar part and then turn to a vocal part that is only sung with a barely satisfactory voice. As the listener, I can first feel my excitement build due to his excellent guitar playing, then I next feel disappointment with the vocal part that follows. The other qualities of Strange Pleasure/ Out There that I am disappointed with concern the songs themselves, their lyrics, and their arrangements. Nowhere on this two cd set does it advertise Strange Pleasure/ Out There as blues or rock blues music. However, we have reason to expect blues or rock blues music since Jimmie Vaughan earlier played lead guitar with the Fabulous Thunderbirds, a blues and rock blues band. The songs and their arrangements on Strange Pleasure/ Out There do have an overall very general blues or rock blues feeling about them when they are first casually heard. However, a closer listening to each of these two cds makes it very difficult to classify this music into any particular musical genre. Strange Pleasure/ Out There is best characterized as a general collection of music. Most of the song lyrics on Strange Pleasure/ Out There are neither especially thoughtful nor particularly intriguing. Finally, and most important of all, I DID NOT FIND ANY SONGS OR SONG ARRANGEMENTS ON STRANGE PLEASURE/ OUT THERE THAT WERE HIGHLY APPEALING TO ME. Thus I will fairly award Strange Pleasure/ Out There a two star rating. I do not like Strange Pleasure/ Out There. Perhaps some other person with very different or significanly lower expectations for their music might enjoy this two cd set. My overall recommendation is that you NOT BUY Strange Pleasure/ Out There unless your musical tastes are very different than mine and/or are not as fully developed and refined as my own.

John