summer album of the week: 05/30/09
jeff beck: wired (released may 1976)
Brit rock guitar hero Jeff Beck explored jazz fusion on the brilliant (and, in fact, superior) Blow By Blow in 1975. On Wired, he conquered it wholly by teaming with members of the two primary Mahavishnu Orchestra lineups (keyboardist/drummer Jan Hammer from the first, drummer/keyboardist Narada Michael Walden from the second) and re-enlisting George Martin to produce. From there, Wired sung with gloriously noisy and anthemic pride, from the wildfire guitar/synth duet with Hammer on Blue Wind to a wondrously bluesy reading of Charles Mingus’ Goodbye Pork Pie Hat. Walden’s Love is Green, one of Beck’s few acoustic excursions, brings the album to an unexpectedly wistful close. But the rest of Wired screams to screamed from open windows on late summer afternoons.
I am a native Kentuckian and freelance journalist who has been writing about contemporary music for the Lexington Herald-Leader since 1980. I have not a lick of honest musical talent myself, just a pair of appreciative ears for jazz, folk, blues, bluegrass, Americana, soul, Celtic, Cajun, chamber, worldbeat, nearly every form of rock 'n' roll imaginable and, when pressed, the occasional tango and polka.