Customer Reviews

Use Me

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

i was really confused until i found a review on her other cd; this amy lee isn't from evanescence - just to spare you a purchase you may not want. sorry fans of this solo artist - please know i'm not insulting this amy lee; i just want to clear up some confusement. thanx.

ps-i rated it 5 star because i haven't heard it and don't want to assume about music i haven't heard - please know my rating isn't valid.

The sax queen has done it again! Amy Lee's Use Me is the freshest jazz album in years!! I bought Inside the Outside when it was new and wore it out.Now Im doing the same with Use Me. Brite Eyes is AMAZING.Amy plays sax and trombone on this track. Kudos,Amy for a wonderful CD!!!!

This Artist I stumbled upon while searching for Info on Evanescence. Even though it's not, I still find this cd to have many great qualities in sound and I like her style!

Amy Lee goes above and beyond the label of "Smooth Jazz" with this CD - From the opening drum groove of "Use Me", I was hooked! With Sonny Emory on drums, how could she go wrong? Amy lays down the funk HARD on this tune before switching it up to the smooth "Across the Water", and the feel-good pop of "Coming Home". Then she blows me away with some mysterious reggae on "In the Sun". This is followed by the sexy Brazilian feel of "Traz Da Lua" with the sweet vocals of Alice Genereaux and some stunning flute work by Amy.
This CD goes on and on with high-quality grooves and surprises. If you only know Amy from her work with jimmy Buffett's Coral Reefer Band, then you owe it to yourself to check out what she can really do! In my opinion, she is on the same level as Gerald Albright, Dave Koz, Kenny G, and all those other sax dudes. I thought her first CD was quite good, but this one is absolutely stunning!!

Thank you, to all you fans for clearing up the fact the this isn't the Amy Lee from Ev!
I was ready to buy it because I love her voice. However, someone needs
explain this to Amazon, too!! This cd keeps coming up in similar searches for Evanscence.
It's sad that this Amy Lee has to hear so much about the other, but I wish her luck, too.

In school, particularly since I was a musical maladroit myself, I was intimidated by the saxophone. As one who never mastered the recorder(!), seeing fellow students manhandling that giant "J" and actually coaxing sounds resembling music from it amazed me. Anyway, it didn't matter, because it was a jazz-instrument - you know, that weird type of music of the black-beret crowd - or worse, that 50's-type "rock 'n' roll" we children of the 60's & 70's never took seriously. I never thought much about the saxophone.

Then, about 1973 or `74, two things happened for me and my buddies in high school: a saxophone showed up in Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon - instant credibility - and John Anthony Helliwell, a saxophone-player (among other things), was the front man for Supertramp. The saxophone suddenly rocked; it was now our kind of cool.

And "our kind of cool" is what Amy Lee gives us in her second CD, Use Me. Cool, yes, but with a radiant heat sneaking through it. In this follow up to her first solo outing, Inside the Outside, Ms. Lee strays from the soft cell of jazz to explore R&B and even some island influences. She described the CD as "pop instrumental," but she is merely being modest. The ten tracks - six of them she wrote herself - have more than their fair share of artistry - doubly so since her backing musicians are established artists in their own right.

She opens by taming the original bluesy melancholy of Bill Withers' Use Me - the oddly-chosen title track - into quick tempo cheer, Amy follows up with two full-power tunes of real, grown-up music: Across the Water and Coming Home. Music to whistle along with... is there such a thing as "air sax?"

Amy's mellifluous multiple saxophones thread a restrained but punchy tropical/reggae influence through In the Sun - inducing memories of her standout pieces with Nicky Yarling on 1993's Margaritaville Café, Late Night Menu. One and One Make Three, a lyrically haunting piece from Peter Mayer's Green Eyed Radio becomes hauntingly lyrical here, through the "voice" of Amy's alto sax. Peter and Jim Mayer and Roger Guth back Amy up on this offering - as the Coral Reefers continue their internal tradition of supporting one another away from the summertime stage. Yes, that pedal steel on Stevie Wonder's Too Shy to Say is Doyle Grisham - does that steel guitar sound great alongside a sax, or what? - and a good number of the tracks are solidly cemented with a foundation laid down by the percussion of Ralph MacDonald. Peter and Jim appear on many more, too. Amy says of the CRB, "when they are available they are always very happy to work on our individual projects. It's always extremely fun to work on these projects and to learn where each other's `heads are at'."

The remaining instrumentals are the "brite" and bouncy Brite Eyes, and the rather nice Why You Wanna, which is the only piece on the CD which has so far failed to grab me. I told Amy this, and asked her for some background on Why You Wanna. Amy answered that the song was "inspired by my relationship with my husband Steve...written 9 or 10 years ago." Oh, great. She wrote it for her husband, and I told her I didn't like it much. How to win friends and influence people... Well, it didn't grab me in my first few listens...but my tastes change like the weather. This time next month it might be my favorite. Buy this CD and make up your own minds - I've been wrong before. Once. Maybe.

Only two tracks feature vocals, which while in the forefront, neither overpower instruments nor detract from Amy as the focal artist. Let's hope we hear more from Alice Genereux, who flew me to the moon as I listened to Traz Da Lua. Amy has yet to meet Alice, who was only to translate the lyrics into Portuguese to demo for Tina Gullickson or Peter Mayer; "I had Alice record vocals for them to study...to learn inflections, etc. She went into a studio in Massachusetts and laid it down with the rhythm tracks I sent her. When I got her recording back in the mail, I popped it in and just about fell out...WOW. I decided after hearing the first 2 lines I would keep her vocals for the tune." Amy's flute on the song is also wonderfully even and emotional. Geoff McBride (returning from Inside the Outside) does Amy proud with her More to Love - a major complaint here is the background vocal from Nadirah Shakoor is so...background! (Okay; a small personal bias here, because there is little I wouldn't do to listen to Nadirah...sigh.)

Amy Lee's credit is way on the plus side: the nine clear winners on her second terrific CD can more than carry a single straggler song that only I might be stubborn about. So, follow me...shove aside that fear of the saxophone and give yourself a treat. We parrotheads are a loyal lot - and we are duly rewarded and rarely disappointed by Coral Reefers' individual accomplishments. After all, let's remember they are the CRB because they are talented musicians.

There. I made it all the way through without mentioning the liner photos...va va va voom.

Ms. Lee has been an accomplished jazz saxophone player for a long time, but I believe this is her best work yet! It's powerful, sexy, soothing and she shows her virtuoso on every song. Order this CD!! It's guaranteed to please.

Note to people who buy this cd:

This is not the Amy Lee from Evanescence. This is the Amy Lee who used to be Jimmy Buffett's awesome Sax Player.

This album is amazing. Lots of fun. I listen to it often. It is like Jazz, mixed with Reggae, mixed with Fun...

Every track is amazing.

If you are a Buffett fan, you will love this.

I have never even listened to this. I thought it was Amy Lee from Evanescence and I was very wrong.

All you need to do is look at the cover and notice that is not Amy Lee on it. And why would Amy Lee go solo when she's in an amazing band like Evanescence?

It would be funny though if they had a big warning sign on the front that said "THIS IS NOT AMY LEE FROM EVANESCENCE! NOTICE IT IS IN THE JAZZ SECTION!"

Oh well, didn't buy it but I'll give it a 5 anyway, don't want my review of someone I don't know damaging the overall rating.