Artist: Moonstone Project
Label: Majestic Rock Records
Release: 2006
Majestic vocalists Glenn Hughes (Deep Purple, Trapeze, Black Sabbath), Kelly Keeling (Blue Murder, Baton Rogue, MSG, Carmine Appice’s Guitar Zeus and more,…) Eric Bloom (Blue Oyser Cult), Steve Walsh (Kansas), Paul Shortino (Rough Cutt/The Cutt, Quiet Riot, Bad Boyz, Shortino and more,…), Graham Bonnet (Rainbow, Alcatrazz, Forcefield, MSG and more,…) and James Christian (House Of Lords). And then there are two drumming legends, Ian Paice (Deep Purlpe) and Carmine Appice (Vanilla Fudge)!
I wouldn’t be hitting you with a roll call like this if the whole thing hadn’t turned out so damn well. Moonstone Project is the brainchild of excellent Italian guitarist Matt Filippini, one of the few lucky souls who managed to get on board some names that left an indelible mark on rock music for good, because they lived this culture and helped create it.
The album opens with the hot rocker Slave Of Time featuring Keeling. The track has a “Whitesnake-ish” to “Zeppelin-esque” erotic charge, and both Plant and Coverdale would be ideal alternatives at this point, but there’s no need, because Keelling is perfectly and fully himself in his vocal delivery. Not Dead Yet announces with its very title that our good old Rainbow acquaintance Graham Bonnet is still alive and kicking, and his current Alcatrazz colleague Howie Simon (JSSB, Talisman,…) even chips in a guitar solo – damn it, the thing actually comes out all “rainbow-y”. Especially interesting on the album is the reunion of members of the Mk. III and IV lineups of Deep Purple – Glenn Hughes and Ian Paice, that is. Most of all the semi-ballad Where Do You Hide The Blues You’ve Got, which is surely one of the album’s peaks. Glenn Hughes’s soul touch on this track in particular stands out so devilishly from all the known hard rock standards, if I may exaggerate – it’s like Stevie Wonder was born in a white guy’s skin. This is where Hughes’s craft shines in full – simple and untouchable at once! Filippini successfully pulled the essence out of both legends! And that’s a successful expression of what makes both of these gents great, which honestly isn’t all that far from the pulse of the Deep Purple record “Come Taste The Band” (1976). The album is garnished with an excellent cover of the Free classic Fire & Water, where Italian singer Enrico Madidini stands out in the Rodgers role – flawless!
City Of Lites is a very interesting track, with Kansas heavyweight Steve Walsh on vocals. It’s funny, because we mostly know Steve only from his contributions to Kansas. Well, his thinner, slightly “sandpapery” voice, which gives Kansas their special flavor, is brilliantly worked into this classic hard rocker too, and the chorus is the shocker, where Walsh recodes the song in a way that pulls incredibly hard toward his home band. City Of Lites comes out as the most classic of the bunch, with the least blues, practically none, yet it’s incredible that, on the other hand, the song gains precisely from the Kansas element. Might I even dare say it’s the most prog-rock-oriented? That only confirms what an excellent manager Matt Filippini is. Pictures Of My Lonely Days, with Appice on drums and Paul Shortino on vocals, puts things back in their proper bluesy rock place. The most solid rocking pulse-raiser on the record is actually Beggar Of Love with James Christian on vocals, where the funk element keeps building and gets more dangerous by the second, and what’s especially tasty is the razor-sharp, masterful cross-soloing conversation in the middle interlude between the Hammond organ and the guitar!
The beauty of Matt Filippini is that he lets the guest musicians breathe to the fullest, adapts diligently himself, and doesn’t try to wear us out with outbursts of ego-tripping over his own guitar chops, which is so often the Achilles’ heel of this kind of solo project. Incidentally, one such totally botched attempt is last year’s similar MSG album, with a heap of legendary guest names. Outdoing the majesty of Michael Schenker in that approach also counts for something. Likewise, Filippini, who has undoubtedly learned a lot from Blackmore, and you can feel it, doesn’t try to imitate the legend in his soloing at all, but does his own thing entirely. The focus of “Time To Take A Stand” isn’t the guitarist, even though it’s his project; instead, he managed, both in the production of the individual tracks and in the performance, to bring to life the feeling that the album was played by a rock-solid unit, the kind that really only bands (with a singer in the central role) can fully express!
Filippini divided the roles among the contributors with care! That let him conjure up extraordinary contrasts between the tracks. He squeezed the maximum out of each singer’s specifics, carefully placing each one in an expressive range where those qualities can sparkle in the best possible way, the very qualities that make these singers, across their careers, count as the greatest in the rock trade today. So every singer was given a wide spectrum of freedom for soulful improvisation, without which this album would surely have gone watery.
“Time To Take A Stand” brings no musical sensation! Just nine seasoned tracks for all the connoisseurs of the hard rock giants’ legacy, and nostalgics, of course. The blues note is strongly present throughout. Funk blues, R&B drive and, of course, the juicy Hammond/guitar avalanche of Rainbow and Deep Purple. Man, it doesn’t get better than this, dear comrades! Filippini is backed by a solid crew of Italian instrumentalists who form the core of Moonstone Project, while the special “renowned” guests bring the essential spices to the album. Filippini has proven himself a skilled conductor who actually managed to squeeze the maximum out of everyone involved, and so cashed in his poker aces to the fullest. “Time To Take A Stand” is an excellent “seventies” hard rock album. I can’t wait for part two!
Lineup
Matt Filippini – guitar (all tracks)
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Kelly Keeling – vocals on #1
Graham Bonnet – vocals on #2
Glenn Hughes – vocals on #4 and #6
Steve Walsh – vocals on #7
James Christian – vocals on #5
Paul Shortino – vocals on #8
Eric Bloom – vocals on #9
Enrico Madidini – vocals on #3, backing vocals
Howie Simon – guitar on #2
Carmine Appice – drums on #8
Ian Paice – drums on #4 and #6
Chris Catena – backing vocals on #9
Moira Raineri – backing vocals on #1
Max Numa – guitar on #6 and #8
Gianluca Tagliavini – Hammond organ
Alessandro Del Vecchio – keyboards on #7
Nik Mazzucconi – bass guitar (all tracks except #2,#6,#9)
Johan Niemann – bass guitar on #9
Maurizio Corriga – bass guitar on #2, #6
Alex Mori – drums (all tracks except #4,#6,#8)
Daniel Flores – drums on #9
Matt Norberg – percussion arrangements, string arrangements, keyboards on #9
Production
Matt Filippini & Max Numa
Track list
1. Slave of Time
2. Not Dead Yet
3. Fire & Water
4. Rose in Hell
5. Beggar of Love
6. Where Do You Hide the Blues You’ve Got
7. City of Lites
8. Pictures of My Lonely Days
9. On the Way to Moonstone
Album length: 49.21
