Release Date: 23 March, 1999
Audio CD
Tracks
- The House Is Rockin'
- Crossfire
- Tightrope
- Let Me Love You Baby
- Leave My Girl Alone
- Travis Walk
- Wall Of Denial
- Scratch `N' Sniff
- Love Me Darlin'
- Riviera Paradise
- SRV Speaks - (previously unreleased)
- The House Is Rockin' (previously unreleased, live)
- Let Me Love You Baby - (previously unreleased, live)
- Texas Flood - (previously unreleased, live)
- Life Without You - (previously unreleased, live)
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Rating 5.0
Stevie Ray Vaughan goes "pop"!Stevie Ray Vaughan's fourth album sees him emerging healthy, happy and cleaned up of the worst drug and booze fuelled excesses of his rock 'n' roll adolescence. Of course, there are good things and bad things, from a rock icon's perspective (and his fans'), about growing up. In Step is the record of a man getting comfortable with himself and his achievements, with all the positive and negative connotations that brings.
At this point the argument "can white men play the blues?" has been won hands down; Stevie Ray Vaughan sounds like a man who knows it - his guitar tone is by turns rich and beautiful (Riviera Paradise) fulsome and commanding (Travis Walk; Wall of Denial) and cheeky (Cross-Fire) but never genuinely throaty or bitching, as it is for the duration of Texas Flood, Couldn't Stand The Weather and the celebrated early live sets (it is my considered view, for instance, that everyone on this planet should be afforded the opportunity to see Stevie Ray Vaughan Live at the El Mocambo).
Indeed, at times SRV's famous Stratocaster, Number One, sounds positively compressed - odd for a man for whom fingers, strings and tubes were some sort of holy trinity, and digital processing more akin to an offending angel to be cast from the firmament.
For its part, Double Trouble is on song, and beautifully recorded - and as a pop record this is certainly Stevie Ray's most accessible entry, but if you're a raw blues tone freak like me, you may find it somewhat uninvolving.
Make no mistake: this is a great record, and worthy of sitting in any collection, but for my money Stevie Ray Vaughan's first two albums mentioned above and the outstanding, posthumously released, The Sky Is Crying are better ways of remembering the man who famously said:
"Tune low, play hard, and floor it. That's technical talk."
Olly Buxton
Blues MasterThis recording warrents purchase just to hear "Riviera Paradise", an instrumental masterpiece that shows a side of Stevie Ray that I fear many will miss. The track is one I find myself playing over and over again. "In Step" also contains two other very strong tracks in "Leave My Girl Alone" A slow, driving blues tune that keeps the listener fastened in. The other track is "Wall of Dennial", which is more straight forward blues. If you can only have one SRV CD, this is IT!I'm embarrassed to admit that the first time I heard Stevie Ray Vaughan, I had my eyes closed "watching" MTV before they found reality shows more popular. He was alone, lip-synching something in garish lighting, but the song was HOT. I was fortunate enough that when this album was released, Stevie and Double Trouble promoted it in its entirety at the Arizona State Fair "in the round". People from five years old to 70 were rocking to the music; in my experience, only an Elvis Presley concert crowd matched this crowd's reaction. Stevie got a standing ovation for "Leave My Girl Alone". When I later got the album, I realized he sounded in concert as right-on as he did on the album. I have other of his CDs now but this is the best. Eric Clapton has said he didn't know where those hot licks of Stevie's came from (high praise); B. B. King said Stevie was "one of his children"; the producer of Austin City Limits on PBS said Stevie's concerts (old repeats) are the most requested. For the uninitiated. buy this CD, and you will find out why. |
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