DVD
Jeff Beck’s Rock ’n’ Roll Party: Honoring Les Paul
Eagle Rock Entertainment
ALBUM
Jeff Beck’s Rock ’n’ Roll Party: Honoring Les Paul
ATCO
Jeff Beck’s latest release, Rock ’n’ Roll Party,
is just that—a loud, fun-filled celebration
of the music, life, and legacy of Beck’s biggest
influence, Les Paul. For two nights
last September, Beck descended
to the underground stage of the Iridium
in New York City where Paul held court
almost every Monday night right up until
his death in August of 2009. Backed by the
Imelda May Band, Beck chose to interpret
a collection of tunes made famous by Paul
in addition to rockabilly and early rock ’n’
roll tunes that inspired him as a youngster.
Both nights were shot and recorded for
independent CD and DVD/Blu-ray releases,
with the CD featuring 20 songs and
the DVD/Blu-ray adding seven more and
some cool bonus features to the mix.Dressed in blue—reminiscent of the cover to Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps’ self-titled album—Beck kicks off the DVD with “Baby, Let’s Play House,” a tune made famous by Elvis Presley during his Sun Sessions. Standing in front of several small Fender combo amps, Beck tears into his blonde Gibson L-5 with the unbridled power of a teenager and a Zen master’s touch. Rhythm guitarist Darrell Higham strums his Epiphone Jumbo acoustic with gusto and totally cops a ’50s vibe in both look and sound with his vocals that channel Bill Haley. The rhythm section of Al Gare on bass and Stephen Rushton on drums gives the tunes a solid foundation without becoming too heavy handed. Early on, Beck digs into “Train Kept A-Rollin’,” a staple from his years with the Yardbirds. The tone on Beck’s solo is so fuzz-laden that you would think Paul Burlison himself sliced up the speaker cones with a rusty knife.
Playing the Mary Ford role to Beck’s
Les Paul, Imelda May gives an intensely
understated performance on “Cry Me a
River.” The tune begins with Beck playing
a chord melody intro that is equal
parts Wes Montgomery and Joe Pass.
His jazz fills fill the spaces between May’s
phrases perfectly and makes me want to
hear him stretch out on more jazz tunes.
They switch gears to head into Ford
and Paul’s signature song, “How High
the Moon.” To replicate the overdubbed
vocals on the original, May sings to some
pre-recorded tracks while Beck’s guitar
plays a solo that combines his signature
tone with elements of old-school bebop
that serve as the most direct tribute to
Les Paul’s style and catalog.The special guests—Brian Setzer, Gary “U.S.” Bonds, and Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews—do exactly what guest players should, they add to the energy without stealing the show. Setzer does a great job playing the Eddie Cochran role on “Twenty Flight Rock” and then returns for the blowout finale of “Shake, Rattle, and Roll.” On the DVD, Beck mentions in an interview that he invited Bonds to sit in on “New Orleans” after he heard Bonds was playing around the corner.
The DVD and Blu-ray version contain some excellent bonus features that were clearly directed at the guitar nerds that hang on Beck’s every note. The included 30-minute interview with Beck touches on everything from his first memories of hearing Les Paul’s music to a meeting arranged by Billy Squier that led to a lifelong friendship. You can tell that the interviewer hadn’t spent much time locked away in her bedroom trying to figure out the bridge to “Cause We Ended as Lovers” as the questions were a bit clichéd and over-rehearsed. Luckily, Beck’s irreverent personality kept things interesting.
Also included is a short video of Beck in what seems to look like an attic at his English estate where he goes through some of the highlights of his guitar collection. Make sure to check out the story behind the “TeleGib” that involved trading the Fender Esquire that he used in the Yardbirds to Seymour Duncan and some (momentary) regret. He also touches on the white Strat he used on Wired—which was a gift from John McLaughlin—and a plastic Maccaferri that came by way of Jimmy Page. The other included features are a behind the scenes montage from the Iridium shows and some vintage footage from a mid- ’80s Billy Squier show where Beck and Paul jam through a few blues tunes.
Beck clearly wanted to pay tribute to Les Paul and the early rock axe-slingers that made him want to pick up the guitar. And you can hear the lineage that goes from early American rock ’n’ roll over to the British blues artists and back again. It’s hard to imagine another living artist who could accurately and authentically pay tribute to Les Paul, his music, and the spirit of innovation that he represented.
Reverend Vernon Reid Totem Series Electric Guitar - Shaman
Silos features six presets, tap tempo, one full second of delay time, and three voices—two of which are styled after bucket-brigade and tape-delay sounds. In the $150 price category, it’s not unusual for a digital delay to leave some number of those functions out. And spending the same money on a true-analog alternative usually means warm, enveloping sounds but limited functionality and delay time. Silos, improbably perhaps, offers a very elegant solution to this can’t-have-it-all dilemma in a U.S.-made effect.
A More Complete Cobbling Together
Silos’ utility is bolstered by a very unintimidating control set, which is streamlined and approachable. Three of those controls are dedicated to the same mix, time, and repeats controls you see on any delay. But saving a preset to one of the six spots on the rotary preset dial is as easy as holding the green/red illuminated button just below the mix and preset knobs. And you certainly won’t get lost in the weeds if you move to the 3-position toggle, which switches between a clear “digital” voice, darker “analog” voice, and a “tape” voice which is darker still.
“The three voices offer discernibly different response to gain devices.”
One might suspect that a tone control for the repeats offers similar functionality as the voice toggle switch. But while it’s true that the most obvious audible differences between digital, BBD, and tape delays are apparent in the relative fidelity and darkness of their echoes, the Silos’ three voices behave differently in ways that are more complex than lighter or duskier tonality. For instance, the digital voice will never exhibit runaway oscillation, even at maximum mix and repeat settings. Instead, repeats fade out after about six seconds (at the fastest time settings) or create sleepy layers of slow-decaying repeats that enhance detail in complex, sprawling, loop-like melodic phrases. The analog voice and tape voice, on the other hand, will happily feed back to psychotic extremes. Both also offer satisfying sensitivity to real-time, on-the-fly adjustments. For example, I was tickled with how I could generate Apocalypse Now helicopter-chop effects and fade them in and out of prominence as if they were approaching or receding in proximity—an effect made easier still if you assign an expression pedal to the mix control. This kind of interactivity is what makes analog machines like the Echoplex, Space Echo, and Memory Man transcend mere delay status, and the sensitivity and just-right resistance make the process of manipulating repeats endlessly engaging.
Doesn't Flinch at Filth
EarthQuaker makes a point of highlighting the Silos’ affinity for dirty and distorted sounds. I did not notice that it behaved light-years better than other delays in this regard. But the three voices most definitely offer discernibly different responses to gain devices. The super-clear first repeat in the digital mode lends clarity and melodic focus, even to hectic, unpredictable, fractured fuzzes. The analog voice, which EQD says is inspired by the tone makeup of a 1980s-vintage, Japan-made KMD bucket brigade echo, handles fuzz forgivingly inasmuch as its repeats fade warmly and evenly, but the strong midrange also keeps many overtones present as the echoes fade. The tape voice, which uses aMaestro Echoplex as its sonic inspiration, is distinctly dirtier and creates more nebulous undercurrents in the repeats. If you want to retain clarity in more melodic settings, it will create a warm glow around repeats at conservative levels. Push it, and it will summon thick, sometimes droning haze that makes a great backdrop for slower, simpler, and hooky psychedelic riffs.
In clean applications, this decay and tone profile lend the tape setting a spooky, foggy aura that suggests the cold vastness of outer space. The analog voice often displays an authentic BBD clickiness in clean repeats that’s sweet for underscoring rhythmic patterns, while the digital voice’s pronounced regularity adds a clockwork quality that supports more up-tempo, driving, electronic rhythms.
The Verdict
Silos’ combination of features seems like a very obvious and appealing one. But bringing it all together at just less than 150 bucks represents a smart, adept threading of the cost/feature needle.
EarthQuaker Devices Silos Multi-generational Time Reflection Delay Pedal
