This month reviewer, Andrew Scott, goes to his own CD collection and pulls from the shelf, L. A. Guns and their collection of music, “Acoustic Gypsy Live”. This live concert was recorded on released in 2011 for our listening pleasure.

 in being a fan of this band since the late 1980’s, this find was going to be a treat for this reviewer. This was even with the fact that a lot of band members have left and have been replaced over the years as well as unhealthy splits where the music world now has two versions of this band touring and releasing music. This inception of L. A. Guns is lead by Tracii Guns (Founder, Guitar) along with Jizzy Pearl (Vocals), Chad Stewart (Drums), Danny Nordahl (Bass) as well as special guests, Teddy Andreadis (Keyboards), Muddy Stardust (Guitars) and Doni Gray (Vocals).

There were a lot of the favorites for songs on this disk and for nostalgic reasons there was great anticipation in hearing them acoustically. Unfortunately for this reviewer, this collection of live music did not live up to the excitement.

To be fair, this version of L. A. Guns does feature a different singer than the one I was used to so I listened to this collection many times to make sure what I was hearing was not affected by this. There are many times that the singer, Jizzy Pearl, sounds like he is taking these songs and over singing them. There are many times that it sounds like these pieces of music are being screamed out especially on tracks “One Way Ticket”, “Never Enough” and “Rip and Tear”. Surprisingly the vocals are continued to sound like this on the selections, “Dreamtime” and Decide”. These were songs that were originally recorded with Jizzy Pearl. With the limited range that was shown, the covers of “Love Hurts” (Nazareth) and “These Arms of Mine” (Otis Redding) were very ill-advised.

Musically, “Acoustic Gypsy Live” does succeed in making these songs sound excellent stripped down. It would be difficult to take these songs and make them sound familiar yet difficult when the listener is used to a certain presentation yet the music is perfect for this.

Below is information for both versions of this band and you decide as the listener.

For more information please see:

http://lagunsofficial.com/

http://laguns.net/

Rating: Two Guitar Picks out of Five

Andrew Scott is a published international author, reviewer and radio show host.