I must agree with Mr. Fielder on this one. Listened to it and never played it again. Don`t remember anything from it and the record is for sale now. Maybe if you are a real keyboard or Wakeman fan it could be your cup of tea.
Read on!
Snow big thing
Rick Wakeman: “White Rock” (A&M AMLH 64614) **
Album review by Hugh Fielder
FILM SOUNDTRACKS generally don’t make good albums and I’m afraid this one is not an exception to the rule. I thought that Rick Wakeman’s soundtrack to the film ‘White Rock’ (no, it’s not a film about the caucasian answer to black soul, it’s a personal close-up on the winter Olympics) worked splendidly in the cinema. He’d obviously thought hard about fitting his music to the visual images on screen and his results go a long way towards contributing to the film’s success.
But sitting down listening to the music in front of your own hi-fi is a different sky-jump altogether. What compliments the pictures of the skiers, ice hockey players, bobsleds and downhill racers doesn’t make a satisfying meal on its own. If I can turn the analogy round a bit, it’s rather like watching the Marx Brothers on television with the sound turned off: you watch out of interest for a while but without the verbal slapstick you’re attention soon starts to wander.
Rick has actually re-recorded bits from the eight tracks which make up the soundtrack album in an attempt to give it more substance which shows that even he was aware of the problem, but he hasn’t overcome it. What you get are eight pieces packed full of Rick’s intricate playing on a multitude of keyboards (he’s the only person on the album with the exception of drummer Tony Fernandez) but without any real meat to bite on.
Each piece starts promisingly — and in several instances there are some interesting melodies and riffs as on the title track, ‘Lax X’ and ‘Ice Run’ — but fails to develop into anything musically satisfying. All you get are a variety of keyboard colours as Rick’s hands plonk themselves on synthesizers, grand pianos, mellotrons, clavinets, pipe organs and electric pianos. And I’m not knocking Rick’s colouring; he’s a dab hand with the musical paint brush. But without a positive direction for each piece it just becomes so much musical wallpaper. The exception is `Montezuma’s Revenge’ which is Rick’s adaptation of some Hungarian Gypsy music which is a complete entity using all the keyboards mentioned above to produce a jaunty musical sketch. So ‘White Rock’s is simply a soundtrack album and you shouldn’t expect anything more from it. Rick Wakeman fans will enjoy it and it pushes Rick’s future in that direction a good way but it’s not anywhere near the `King Arthur’ class. And if it was it probably wouldn’t make a good soundtrack. So there!
The original music paper this article came from (pictured at the top) is for sale!
Send me an e-mail if you are interested. Send it to: geirmykl@gmail.com
The offer should be 20 $ (US Dollars) to be considered. (This includes postage).
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If you have a large collection of the following magazines, don`t throw them out, but contact me as I would be very interested in these: Creem, Circus, Hit Parader and Metal Edge.
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