| Folks, I
know this is a difficult one. You've all heard this
from me before and you have a hard time buying the gospel, I'm going to
preach here again. Is there anything at all, I haven't said about
Doctor's Order before? No, I don't think so. I might as well keep this
focused on Johnny Spence. I might, but I won't. Here's the second
Johnny Spence/Doctor's Order outing and ... I'm impressed. Yes, sure,
you've seen it coming by a country mile. Bear with me, I'll tell you,
why this is a CD not to be missed. My first impression, about two songs into the CD, on the very first spin, this is a totally relaxed album. And its full of surprises. I was at home, cooking dinner, while I had my first go at the album. Almost dropped the pasta machine and a couple of kilos of metal meeting your toes on the ground, is certainly not my idea of fun. I just about managed to hold onto the thing. What had happened? The track "A Shot Of Rhythm & Blues" was on, and, I still don't believe this, a female duo of background vocalists were suddenly to be heard. Now, I was probably expecting a lot of things, but not this. I can tell you, this took me on the wrong foot. A very neat idea and thumbs up for adding the ladies on four tracks. Makes it that much lighter. One thing you notice immediately as well, is the very clean production. I like my Doctor's Order a bit on the rough side, but this is again, strictly speaking, not a release of the band on their own, so I suppose, they're in the green with a slight deviation of their usual way of handling matters. You get fifteen songs, most of them cover versions. Fear not, they are well chosen and make for an interesting program. There's only one original by Johnny and the band, this one's the title track, "Hot And Rockin'". And, can I say this, it's a super duper song? I just did. Fits like a glove. There's one cover version of finnish Rock'n'Roll heroes Hurriganes, "Oh Baby Doll". I know, this is very dangerous ground, but here I go anyway. Johnny's vocals on this release reminded me sometimes, and I mean sometimes, of Lee Brilleaux! Now I've said it, where's the way to Golgotha? Do your job! Seriously, I just can't help it. He's doing the same further back in one or the other song, but usually not completely throughout a given track. I've really never noticed this before with Johnny. But, of course, it's a top class performance of his any which way. Line-up is as follows: Johnny
Spence - Vocals Special Guests: Mr. Breathless - PianoEnsio Takamäki - Harmonica Elisa Korjus - Backing Vocals Maria Hänninen - Backing Vocals Juha Takanen - Percussion
Information
and bookings: P.S.: Besides the aforementioned Johnny Spence and
Doctor's Order "Hot And Rockin'", there are two more originals on the
CD, one being "Mean Machine" an unreleased Johnny Spence/Frank Farley
Song and the other "Meet Me With Your Hi-Heels On", which is entirely
of Johnny Spence's doing. Just to put this right, the wording in the
above review might have led to some confusion.
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