I'd waited impatiently for this CD after seeing all the advertisements and posters in California. Not that I'd heard Craig's first solo CD, Acoustic Highway, but I'd heard that it had been well received - and being someone who likes to listen to almost-any well played acoustic guitar, and who also has a well- battered copy of Red Octopus stashed away somewhere among the old Pink Floyd and Led Zep vinyls, I thought that this was obviously a CD for my collection.
It took ten minutes to set the CD free from its super-strong shrink- wrap. Why can't CD manufactures take cigarette packs as an example, and include a tear-strip so that you don't have to fight to get the music out? I guess they've all given up smoking...
So we have the CD out of its packaging. The cover illustration shows Craig, one naked knee showing through a tear in his otherwise-immaculate blue jeans, playing a shapely acoustic guitar against a backdrop of howling grey wolves, the planet earth and a tree-filled skyline. The sleeve notes are full of words like "dazzling" and "virtuosity" and "celebration of planet earth". And messages to extra-terrestrial beings. Nice images. Nice looking instrument.
So I put the CD on the player, expecting some wonderful acoustic guitar. Well...
It just might have been an acoustic guitar once-upon-a-time, but there's so much processing ("stereo guitar sound effects" say the credits) that it just doesn't sound anything like "acoustic". Most of the tracks start off with a few very-promising bars... and then break into the sort of music that sounds programmed, and not played. The sort of thing that you hear in hotel lobbies and elevators. The sort of music that I definitely wouldn't want to be playing if I was stuck in an elevator for fifteen hours between floors. And I could hardly tell one track from the next.
I can understand why Acoustic Highway and Acoustic Planet have sold well - Craig Chaquico has a commercially-sound pedigree - lead guitarist with Jefferson Starship - "acoustic" is the word-of-the-moment, and, even if you take an immediate dislike to the tunes, they have the annoying tendancy to stick. You find yourself humming them in the bath. Or on the bus. Or in the elevator...
I'm not saying Acoustic Planet is bad... I'm just saying that I was disappointed. And that it doesn't fit my tastes in listening. And that I wish it hadn't been given so much "acoustic" hype, because it isn't acoustic. It's as repetitive as techno dance music, without the drive.
I'd like to hear a truly-acoustic version of "Gathering of the tribes" or "Just one world". Then maybe I'd appreciate it more, and feel less cheated by the commercial hype of this CD.
