Search - Chris Spedding :: Friday the 13th

Great old songs but brutal production value

05/26/1999

(2 out of 5 stars)

"these songs are so good but sound quality of this live offering leaves much to be desired. hopefully spedding's studio albums like "hurt" and "i'm not like everybody else" will soon become available on cd. in the meantime, i will still abuse my ears with this poor substitute."

"Digital remaster"doesn't always equal "sonic improvement"!

D. Hartley | Seattle, WA USA | 08/03/2000

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Expert guitar chameleon Chris Spedding has worked on so many sessions over the last 30+ years that you could easily play a "Six Degrees of Chris Spedding" game and link him to any other rock musician in six steps or less! Unfortunately, his own studio albums seem puzzlingly rote and flat sounding with 1 or 2 standout songs on each. If there was ever an artist whose career begged for a boxed set(probably a licensing nightmare!), or even a one-disc anthology, its Chris Spedding. The live set "Friday the 13th" comes closest to a "best of" (by pure default), so it is the one Spedding album I usually recommend to people. The showcase song here is "Guitar Jamboree", where Spedding displays his prowess in duplicating the tones of virtually every major guitar hero. The excellent "Counterfeit" is another highlight, actually better than the studio version. The unfortunate news about this CD is the shoddy remastering--there is absolutely no high end, just bass and muddy midrange. The LP is still the sonically superior version (but naturally, tougher to track down). "Four stars" for the content!"