The former guitarist for Toto and studio player with a resume the length of a metropolitan phone book comes to the Christmas season for 2003 with your basic studio-dog supersession. It's kind of in the vein of Merry Axemas and Ho Ho Hoey, only it's more a jazz-fusion thing split between vocals and instrumentals, and the liner notes are full of notations like "cool chords" and "1st take first real session 5/4, no click..." You have to get to the album's first original, five cuts in, called "Broken Heart for Christmas," before you get to anything that's more like rock. Still, a lot of folks like this kind of thing, especially when done by brand-name musicians like Lukather, Edgar Winter, Eddie Van Halen, Steve Vai, Larry Carlton and Sammy Davis Jr. Yes, Sammy; they rack up his version of "Jingle Bells" and lay a contemporary sheen over it. The other original, "Look Out For Angels," is a midtempo rocker with a musical debt to Steely Dan, though not so much lyrically. The album kicks off with "Joy to the World" in a fast jazz shuffle, goes into a workout on "Greensleeves" and includes a "Carol of the Bells" that has a bit of that TSO crunch. "Winter Wonderland" is a swing rendition with Edgar Winter on vocals, and the album tapers off with slower fare like "Silent Night" and a plain guitar version of "The Christmas Song."
SantaMental, Steve Lukather and Friends (Bop City)
The former guitarist for Toto and studio player with a resume the length of a metropolitan phone book comes to the Christmas season for 2003 with your basic studio-dog supersession. It's kind of in the vein of Merry Axemas and Ho Ho Hoey, only it's more a jazz-fusion thing split between vocals and instrumentals, and the liner notes are full of notations like "cool chords" and "1st take first real session 5/4, no click..." You have to get to the album's first original, five cuts in, called "Broken Heart for Christmas," before you get to anything that's more like rock. Still, a lot of folks like this kind of thing, especially when done by brand-name musicians like Lukather, Edgar Winter, Eddie Van Halen, Steve Vai, Larry Carlton and Sammy Davis Jr. Yes, Sammy; they rack up his version of "Jingle Bells" and lay a contemporary sheen over it. The other original, "Look Out For Angels," is a midtempo rocker with a musical debt to Steely Dan, though not so much lyrically. The album kicks off with "Joy to the World" in a fast jazz shuffle, goes into a workout on "Greensleeves" and includes a "Carol of the Bells" that has a bit of that TSO crunch. "Winter Wonderland" is a swing rendition with Edgar Winter on vocals, and the album tapers off with slower fare like "Silent Night" and a plain guitar version of "The Christmas Song."
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