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Avalon: The Richie Zito Project


Jez

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Have had this since last week. What do ya reckon for an 'All Star' project. Starts off really well for the first half with some excellent tracks - 'Oh Samantha' with Jo Williams especially. 'Blue Monday' (Georgio Moroder & Hugo) gets the 'Turkey Of The Year' award for it's awfulness. Utter Crap and out of tune in a lot of places (Oh how I laughed in pain!!). One of the worst AOR tracks I have ever had the displeasure of hearing.How did this one get past the 'Quality Control' - Awful.

The rest. I like the opening Hugo track 'Blue Collar' and the JLT sung 'Is He Better Than Me' is also pretty good. Of The 2 Eddie Money tracks, 'Nightmare' is pretty average although the 2nd one 'I Put My Life...' is a little better. Richie Kotzen's 'Forever I Will' is eeerrrr OK without exactly getting the pulse racing. The Danny Vaughn song doesn't exactly inspire,The 2 Bardowell tracks vary - the first 'I Can't Forget You' is decidedly average, but 'Good Things Take Time' is a great track with one of the best choruses on the album. The 2 Eric Martin tracks I like as well - very good vocal performance on both.

 

So for me - not a masterpice by any stretch of the imagination. Production is OK, but for a top notch producer of his time not great either. There are Some very good tracks with Jo Williams, Eric Martin, Philip Bardowell and JLT, but a lot of filler as well. I must highlight again that god awful 'Blue Monday' track that still has me nearly laughing out loud in shock horror.

 

6 good songs out of 11 - Not terrible, but not great either. Another supposedly great AOR disc that doesn't deliver the goods. Where have I heard that before.

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I will comment shortly... but I have to admit I turned if off the first time I heard it after the first 3 songs. :) I'll try again soon and comment... but it's definately not sounding like my sort of thing.

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I'm disappointed by this disc... The tracks by Eric Martin are cool, and 'Oh Samantha' as well, but it's almost all for me ! The song 'Nightmare' by Eddie Money, is in fact a Prism cover (from the controversy 'Beat Street' album...), but the original version is soooo much better IMO... For me, Avalon suffers from a lack of cohesion... This album is like a kind of patchwork with no clear sense. It's the danger with an 'All-Star' project. It's not a bad disc, but it's far from a classic...

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Avalon is basically album filler tracks covered by great singers set to below average production. This seems to be, at the outset anyway, Prism's Beat Street dusted off and re-packaged. This was an overall disappointment to me, being a big fan of Hugo, Eddie Money and Joseph Williams-era Toto. "Oh Samantha" is probably the best song here. The Hugo tracks sound more like Triumph B-sides than the Journey-style AOR of his first two solo albums. The production is thin like his 3rd Fire in the Night release. The Eddie Money contributions sound like album tracks, not singles. A song I hoped would rescue the CD was Danny Vaughn's Avalon. It is nowhere as good as the other Avalon he recorded with Gary Hughes and just didn't deliver the home run I was expecting. The Philip Bardowell songs aren't bad, and the Eric Martin material is okay, but nothing really stands out. After hearing Sunstorm, the Joe Lynn Turner cover of "Is He Better Than Me" can be rephrased as "Is Sunstorm better than this"? To that, the answer would be Yes.

 

With so many better releases to spend your money on this fall, I would definitely take a pass on this one. Get Slamer, Sunstorm or the new Final Frontier instead.

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What Koogles says makes 100% sense. It does just sound below-average (b-sides and leftovers) and the quality of song is obviously of a very standard nature. Also, like Jay said you can pretty much listen to the whole thing start to finish okay, with only a few real terrors ('Nightmare' being the worst, IMO).

 

It's pretty harmless, but I can honestly say I more than likely will not spin it ever again, due to it's averageness. I always have been and always will be a sucker for tracks like 'I can't forget you' - BY FAR my fave track off the album. I will pluck that off this and put onto my Ipod and forget about the rest of the disc. :)

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Good to know !! Thanks, guys !! :P

 

I was just about to buy this one, but I better save my money and get something better. :)

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  • 3 years later...

I thought the Eric Martin and Philip Bardowell tracks were quite good. 'I Can't Forget You' is a wonderful track and my favourite on the album. The Joseph Williams track 'Oh Samantha' is quite nice as well.

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  • 6 years later...

I've not played it in over 10 years, so that tells you all you need to know. That Hugo track is still bloomin' awful though ;)

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