Author: Jernej Vene
Artist: Paganini
Label: PaZouZou Records
Release: year
The band isn’t new on the scene, but despite the internet, news about what musicians close to us are up to doesn’t exactly reach our neck of the woods very often. Marco Paganini is a Swiss singer who played in the German band Viva in the late ’70s. With them he recorded a successful single, “Weapon of Love”, followed by two albums produced by Rudolf Schenker of Scorpions. Viva were based in Hanover, the hometown of the German rockers, so the collaboration is no surprise. In 1986 Marco Paganini struck out on his own and staked his claim with the record “Weapon of Love”, on which he reworked the hit from the start of his career. The weather stayed pretty cloudy for him until 2005, when he revived the Paganini lineup and put out freshly recorded songs of his own.
Given all that, you might wonder whether this Marco has any new ideas of his own at all. The answer is obvious. We’re talking about the record “Medicine Man”. It’s an interesting collection of songs that ranges from bouncy, melodic hard rock polkas to stuff with a strong whiff of glam, or sleaze rock, along the lines of Ratt or Poison. The title track is a slow but catchy ballad backed by acoustic guitar. For someone hearing Paganini’s voice for the first time, the surprise is total. In the calmer passages his voice is distinctly feminine and nasal throughout, but eventually the ear gets used to both. Sonically, Medicine man is Swiss-polished. It doesn’t quite hit the standards of the mighty Gotthard, but that probably wasn’t what the folks behind it were going for.
Paganini impress on this album with just the right balance between a dirty garage sound and the glossy AOR of the ’80s. The ballad Teardrops, with its song structure, vocal tone and instrumentation, immediately pulls you toward Ozzy’s Dreamer. Like any proper hard rock record, “Medicine Man” has its ballads. Moments like these often show how much of a songwriter is hiding inside the protagonists of a given genre. Paganini can’t brag about much here, since the theme of this song is pretty chewed over. Saying “it’s all been said already” is no excuse here, because then they might as well shut up shop. That’s just how they see ballad territory. Good thing they hit hard with two rockers, The Only One and Keeping It Real, which show they’re made of the right stuff. Paganini sound incredibly American, and in some songs (Easy Come, Easy Go) they edge dangerously close to country and Southern rock a la Lynyrd Skynyrd, which may not do this album any favors. The second-to-last original song, Stomping Grounds, is pretty pale idea-wise, since it doesn’t stand out in any way. I Don’t Want Your Love is a completely different story, once again a pure-blooded rock projectile. Marco Paganini closed out the album with a cover of Faith Healer by Brit Alex Harvey, in both a shorter and a longer version. Apart from the length and a longer organ solo, the two are barely different at all, so the justification for this move adds another minus to the record. Both versions are almost psychedelic and totally wrong for closing out a record.
“Medicine Man” is a fifty-fifty record. It’s a shame that after so many years in the business Paganini and co. couldn’t come up with enough decent songs, because then the record would’ve stuck in the memory a lot longer.
Lineup
Marco Paganini – vocals, backing vocals
Dale Powers – electric guitar, piano, backing vocals
Kiki Cretin – bass guitar
Diego Rapachietti – drums, backing vocals
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Hens Grubenmann – acoustic guitar
Gerard Magin – keyboards
Zou Zou Mamoux – keyboards
Production
Gerard Magin
Track list
1.Medicine Man
2.The Secret
3.End Of The Line
4.Teardrops
5.The Only One
6.Keeping It Real
7.Easy Come, Easy Go
8.Stomping Grounds
9.I Don’t Want Your Love
10.Faith Healer
11.Faith Healer (extended version)
