Saturday, January 7, 2012

Derek Sherinian "Oceana"


If the name sounds familiar to you, it is most likely from his recent involvement with the supergroup Black Country Communion.  Or maybe you're a fan and know him from Dream Theater, Alice Cooper, Billy Idol, Kiss or maybe his earlier solo work.  The man is a fine keyboardist and a musician's musician. 

Hot on the heels of his work on the tremendous BCC 2 recording, I spot this on a September release sheet and immediately add it to my "buy" list, but before I do, Mr. Kilts sends a copy to me stating "...this comes straight from '78."   And right he was because the very first note I wrote was Jeff Beck & Jan Hammer, who teamed up in the late 70's for some fine jazz/rock fusion.  The next note said Billy Cobham's Spectrum, which also included Mr. Hammer.  So are you catching the theme here?  Since I mentioned guitarist extraordinaire Mr. Beck, let's talk about the guesting axe-slingers on "Oceana"; Tony Macalpine, Steve Stevens, Joe Bonamassa and Steve Lukather (well, that would explain the note saying Toto instrumentals, wouldn't it?).  Not too shabby, huh?  Sherinian has played live with so many outstanding guitarists over the years, such as David Gilmour, Zakk Wylde and the aforementioned Beck, to name a couple more, but it's his long association with drummer Simon Phillips that anchors this album.  The pair co-wrote eight of the nine tracks here and teamed on the mixing and production.  Phillips is also in the "musician's musician" category, playing with everybody from Asia to Whitesnake.  I first heard him on Judas Priest's "Sin After Sin" album back in the WPRK days.  He was the man chosen to replace Jeff Porcaro in Toto after his untimely demise in the early 90's. 

You should be able to see how these threads of relationships have come together for this album.  Follow the Billy Idol thread and you get Steve Stevens, and here is the audio for one of his contributions.  Each song on the record stands on its own merits, and I'm telling you, you could lift just about any passage from the 47 instrumental minutes of music here and plant it under all sorts of radio and TV talk or sports shows (hey, Jazzman at ESPN, are you reading this?!).  You couldn't do that with the Don Airey record.   

You know, a programmer with a sense of humor at a classic rock radio station could really f*#k with their listeners by mixing some of this into the rotation...

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