A few of my favorite underrated albums

Today as I am continuing ripping two songs of every artist we own on CD into iTunes on our computer, I came across a few albums that I considered underrated for as brilliant as they were. While I’m sure I could find many, many more than just these five, I thought this would be a good place to begin. In chronological order:

• Mind’s Eye by Vinnie Moore 1986
• The Road to Hell by Chris Rea 1989
• What A Crying Shame by The Mavericks 1994
• Teatro by Willie Nelson 1998
• I Am Shelby Lynne by Shelby Lynne 2000

Vinnie Moore, Chris Rea, The Mavericks, Willie Nelson and Shelby Lynne: which one of these artists/groups is not like the other? Out of the five, the one that probably is the most distant from the other four is Moore and is where I will begin my comments.

Mind’s Eye by Vinnie Moore: I remember when this album came out, I actually bought it on vinyl. At the time, I was purchasing mostly cassettes, but for some reason, I bought it on vinyl. I recorded it off at a neighbor’s, who still had a record player, I think. He actually had reel-to-reel tapes too, and then I wore out the tape (Memorex, I think) by playing it in the car that summer and the next couple of summers. Moore is labeled “a shredder,” which seems to have come to mean a guitarist that is all flash and no substance like Yngwie Malmsteen or Joe Satriani or Steve Vai. However, I believe Moore not only was an incredible guitarist, but also an incredible musician in his own right — something I think he more than proved on his second solo album “Time Odyssey,” where he played a variation of Air on a G String and Piano Concerto No. 5 by Johann Sebastian Bach. But this first one was the one that started it all — for me and millions of other guitar fans and players everywhere. For more information on Moore and what he’s up to now, including touring with the supergroup UFO, visit his site: www.vinniemoore.com. According to his MySpace site: www.myspace.com/vinniemoore, his first professional work in the music business was with Pepsi, where he was featured in the this commercial:

(Note: I don’t mind posting a commercial for Pepsi, since my late grandfather worked for them for over 30 years).

The Road To Hell by Chris Rea: I don’t even know how I discovered this album. I might have been listening to Rock 107 in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre at the time, but I’m not sure. I just know that as soon as I heard the album, I loved it. His sound, both his vocals and his guitar, are very distinctive to me. I’ve since learned he is British. The best tracks on this album, from what I remember, are the title track, “Texas” and “Daytona.” Below are videos for the title track and “Texas.” The only YouTube videos I could find for “Daytona” weren’t the best, with the one incorrectly connecting the song with NASCAR. From what I learned elsewhere, Rea liked Ferrari Daytonas and that’s why he wrote the song. For more on what Rea is up to now, visit his site: www.chrisrea.com, although I found more biographical information about Rea at a fan site here: www.chrisrea.nl.

What A Crying Shame by The Mavericks: I’ll be honest I don’t know if this is my CD or the wife’s or if we both had copies and we got rid of one of our copies, so it might be either one of ours. Regardless of whose it is, it is a phenomenal record, and may not be as underrated as I like to think it is — as I have discovered that it went platinum. However, I don’t think it’s an album a lot of people may remember, with the biggest hit, the title track, climbing to No. 25 on the Billboard country charts in 1994 when the album came out and may get lost with Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson and the like who were “big” that year. The Mavericks were led by Raul Malo, who later was married for a short time to Trisha Yearwood.

Teatro by Willie Nelson: I think I heard this on WXPN, www.wxpn.org, from Philadelphia, which played a lot of alternative music usually, and when I say alternative, meaning not Pearl Jam and the like, although they’d play them occasionally too, I mean a little bit outside the mainstream. In fact, at one time, before I realized how much space it took up on our memory-deficient computer, I even had a WXPN-ish playlist with all the albums and songs that we bought either as a result of hearing the artists or groups on WXPN or fit into the category of what XPN sounds like. Before I deleted them, I think I was up to about 500 songs from I don’t know how many different albums. But I digress…back to this album. It was produced by Daniel Lanois and presented a different side of Willie Nelson to me (not that I was entirely opposed to him because I always loved “Mama Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys,” especially in the “The Electric Horseman,” which is one of my favorite movies). I think it probably presented a different side of Nelson to a lot of people. The only track I could find on YouTube was this one with he and Emmylou Harris singing on what looks like the David Letterman show:

For more information on Nelson’s latest projects, visit his site: www.willienelson.com.

I Am Shelby Lynne by Shelby Lynne: From what I understand, this was Lynne’s breakthrough album, after being pigeonholed as country, for a number of years — not that she lost the country moniker or feel, but definitely became more pop after this. This was the start of her breaking out into the mainstream, that from what I understand has led to some really good albums since then. Unfortunately, I must sadly admit I don’t have any of them, but I’m certainly thinking about checking them out after relistening to this album. For more information on Lynne, visit her site: www.shelbylynne.com, where new music from her new album Just A Little Lovin’ with covers of Dusty Springfield (another of my favorites) songs and a new song sounded divine. I would have embedded a YouTube video, but UniversalMusicGroup wouldn’t let me, but maybe I can at least provide this link to their video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9XmaxuYSOM, where you can watch the video for the song “Your Lies”.