Contraband - Contraband
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Free Music Notes for Contraband
Free Music Review: Pleasant if uneventful hard rock
Hit: 3 Stars
You've gotta take a chance sometimes. A cover that catches your eye, a musician you know from another band or even a tip from the guy behind the counter. Sometimes it works (like when I bought Yngwie Malmsteens Trilogy have never heard of the guy just because the cover caught my 16 year old eye) and sometimes it doesn't (when the guy at my local metal emporium suggested Morgana Lefays' Sanctified album - yuck).
In the case of Contraband the cover caught my eye and upon checking the back cover I noticed Michael Schenker was the guitarist and so picked this album up cheap. And the result is somewhere in the middle of my Malmsteen and Morgana Lefay experience. Because in many respects this album is very much down the middle.
Ultimately this is a project band - the personnel are Michael Schenker on guitar, Bobby Blotzer of Ratt on drums, Tracii Guns from LA Guns on guitars, Vixens' Share Pedersen takes care of bass duties while Shark Islands' Richard Black is on vox. The music played is middle of the road generic hard rock in a late 80's style with no jagged edges and with nice production values especially since the budget probably wasn't that huge.
The songs themselves are mostly written for the band by various nobodies, though Dan Huff is in the mix somewhere and there is a Bowie and an Ian Hunter cover and Richard Black at least gets a co-write credit on a couple of numbers. His vocals aren't too deep, nor is he a sugar coated high end squeeler and they do fit the music rather well. Most of the tracks float by the listener - this is perfect background music in a sense - and there is a major sense of G rated fun even on tracks entitled Loud Guitars, Fast Cars, Wild Wild Livin' and Good Rockin' Tonight. Rarely do things bite and the mellower numbers aren't brilliant microcosms of human experience but then neither are they hurl inducing cliches. Schenker and Guns on guitar do some nice work though the restraint forced on Schenker here feels weird because even when his own band MSG courted hard rock there was always a sort of metallic European grandeur to tinge his playing. Here that's washed away, like he was playing stupidly and simply. But it's still Schenker so his axe shading is still pleasing to hear.
Coming out as it did in '91 this album is probably rarely seen nowadays and it's market is certainly very much a niche. But if you are a fan of the more hard rock aspects of MSG or just if you want a curio that while not brilliant, certainly isn't bad, then you could do worse than pick up this collaborative group effort.
Free Music Review: dodgy
Hit: 2 Stars
This album did nothing for me, a big disappointment from my favorite axeman Tracii Guns, and his mates. Sounds like a bad '80's disco. 2 stars is being generous.Free Music Review: Not that original, but still a fun album
Hit: 4 Stars
It seems like this band and album should have been more successful at the time. Supergroups like Damn Yankees and Bad English were selling tons of albums, so why not Contraband? It's not due to a shortage of talent. With Michael Schenker and Tracii Guns on guitar, they were already ahead of the game. Vixen's Share Pederson and Ratt's Bobby Blotzer provided the rhythm section. Shark Island vocalist was a relative unknown, but wasn't any less talented.
The band's 1991 self-titled debut album is not that far removed from the typical hard rock/hair metal of the day, but it was still pretty good. The musicianship was high quality, and Black's vocals injected plenty of swagger. Perhaps the problem was that Contraband leaned closer to barroom rock than the slicker AOR practiced by Bad English and Damn Yankees. Overall the album is quite enjoyable, if not totally original. It's quality hard rock from start to finish, including a couple of fun covers of Mott the Hoople (All the Way from Memphis) and David Bowie (Hang on to Yourself).
Whatever the reason, Contraband never seemed to catch on, and broke up not long after releasing this album.
Free Music Review: Contrary to belief
Hit: 3 Stars
the sum of the parts isn't always as good as the parts by themselves. On paper this looks like a great band from the heyday of hair bands. You know most of the band: Michael Schenker [guitars-MSG], Bobby Blotzer [drums-Ratt], Tracii Guns [guitars-LA Guns], Share Pedersen [bass-Vixen], and Richard Black [vocals]. Originally released in 1991 this CD caught my eye because of the line-up, but failed to meet my expectations. The songs are well crafted, but there is little left to the imagination. Some of the songs are excellent covers [All the Way From Memphis-Mott the Hoople & Hang on to Yourself-David Bowie], while a few are originals like "Bad for Each Other" and "If this is Love". You see the members and you expect more than you get. This doesn't have the hard edge you'd expect from the bands the members are from, but the sounds are okay. If you can find this as an afordable CD its an interesting piece in a music collection. I wonder if different producers could have helped or if this was just a way to draw attention to Richard Black. An interesting, but seemingly mundane release.