NMC #293 JOHN 5 - Season Of The Witch

[Yngve J. Chapleen]

by Yngve J. said to him, "Get up! Pick up your guitar and play." Chapleen

JOHN 5 AND THE CREATURES - Season Of The Witch

Digipak ℗ 2017 (March 3)

GUITAR SHRED INSTRUMENTALS

1. Black Grass Plague

2. Now Fear This

3. Tripple D

4. Making Monsters

5. Here's To The Crazy Ones

[Jon]

This is really good, there's even a little hoedown thrown in. Not sure how this will go over since it's all instrumentals, but I don't have a problem with instrumental albums. No, sir. 

[Scott]

John 5 is good...  real good!!  And I too can get into some instrumentals but they have to be special and these are nearing that, but not quite there for me. Though I'll admit the hoedown piece did gran attention most.  Doesn't he have some unreleased material with David Lee Roth or somebody like that?  Now that would be very interesting...

[RJhog (Admin)]

The vocals on this thing are amazing.  Lyrics too.  But I just cannot figure out what he's trying to say in Tipple D.  I truly believe it's a misprint with the "r" left off.  The overwhelming feel of melons just wouldn't leave me the whole time she was singing.  

I'm not a lover of instrumental albums.  I do own a few, but it's just not something that appeals to me on any kind of a regular basis.  I do like the occasional instrumental.  Switch 625 is a good example.

Dude is obviously talented.  I saw this a while back, and I'd love to see it come to light:

John 5‘s official tenure with David Lee Roth only lasted one album, 1998’s DLR Band. But he says that recently, the two recorded an album that has yet to see the light of day. You can listen to the interview below.

“[Roth and I] did another record just recently,” he told Jude Gold of Guitar Player‘s No Guitar Is Safe podcast, “you know, now, I guess, a couple of years ago, or a year ago. I would just go to his house and I’d write these songs with him, and he would say, ‘Let’s go into the studio.’ So he would go to Henson studio and record these songs. They came out…They’re so good. They’re so good. And we’ve got Gregg Bissonette playing drums on it, and I played the bass, and they’re really great songs.”

John 5, who has also worked with Rob Halford, Marilyn Manson and currently Rob Zombie‘s guitarist, said that Roth “loves the record. But he’s doing Van Halen, which is doing great, too. So we’ll see what happens in the future.”

Splitting his time between Roth and Zombie soon proved to be a bit tiring. As he recalled, John 5 recorded his guitar parts first, without a click track because Roth “wanted that natural feel.” But when they brought in Bissonette to play drums, “the engineer was, like, ‘Well, we’re really gonna need click.’ And I’m leaving for a tour with Zombie in, like, 40 hours. So [Dave] called me and he said, ‘John, you’ve gotta come in and record the whole record again with click’ […] And I said, ‘Dave, I’m going on tour in, like, 20 hours.’ [He said] ‘You’ve gotta do it. You’ve gotta come in and redo these guitars on the whole record.’ Anybody else, I’d be, like, ‘You crazy,’ but it’s Diamond Dave, and so I was, like, ‘Okay.’ So I went in there — I was exhausted — and I played this record to the click — everything; all the harmonies… everything.”

Back in 2012, John 5 said that he had worked on an acoustic album with Roth that contained “lots of cool, crazy jazz chords” and “50 or 60 overdubbed guitar tracks with all this harmonizing and other weird stuff going on.” It’s unknown as of now whether this is the same project or something different.

So this is okay, just not something I'd spend any cash on.

[Yngve J. Chapleen]

Typo fixed, and you are extremely funny RJhog. (borderline hilarious).

The lengthy paragraph where you talk about the images these Instrumentals invoke in you while listening to the music is my favorite part of your post. Not that the rest isn't compelling, but that part just kills it.

Yeah, it will be interesting to hear John 5 play with Dave again. If there is one thing Dave is famous for, it's his uncanny talent to pick THE right guitarist for his projects. Of course, the expectations in that department will haunt him forever.  (Once you go Van Halen, you can only do Two Helen's.)