CHASING THE DRAGON

Nice live show which features all the highlights and the recent songs:unescapable "Heat of the Moment" and "The Smile..." and a few surprises for Proggers - fully played "Rendezvous 6.02" and "In the Dead of Night" (good musicianship but incomparable to UK's one!). Also he did "edits" for such Classics like "Starless","Thirty Years" and "Easy Money", and that's certainly not the reason for this album to be recommended :$ .Mostly for collectors and fans, this live CD contains the main thing I like about John Wetton - his voice. Amazing and emotional, caught me since I heard it first in UK (then in KC and - not the best example - then in Asia) and still one of my favouritest ones!

A great live album by a great singer! Chasing the Dragon was recorded live in Japan (like the UK live album, Night After Night) and the sound is very good. It was recorded during the tour to promote Battle Lines so there is some songs from this album (Crime of Passion, Hold Me Now and the stunning title song).

But you can also see this album as a kind of retrospective of Wetton's career. You can hear classics from UK, King Crimson and Asia. The version of In the Dead of Night is particularly good.

The musicians are good and the voice of Wetton is, as usual, powerful and emotionnal.

A good recommandation to any fan of Mr. Wetton

Ugh!

This album was recorded in Japan, on a tour to promote the 1994 album "Battle Lines", so a fair number of the tracks are from that album. And those tracks are the worst on the album. It seems that since eroding the band UK down to pop music, Wetton has been deteriorating into a completely uninteresting songwriter (note the decline from UK1 to UK2 to Asia to this). At least his voice still sounds like an injured bull moose.

I had heard much of Wetton's post UK work over the years, and really had no interest in him after hearing more than a few boring Asia tracks (some of which are covered on this album), but after seeing a song list from this release, with UK and King Crimson represented, I requested a copy.

Rendezvous 6:02 is done well. Keyboardist John Beck (It Bites) does a good job of imitating Eddie Jobson's fine work on that song. And unlike some of the other prog songs, it's not dumbed down. Easy Money is brief, and lacks the power of King Crimson. In The Dead Of Night is okay, although it's only the first part of the song. Bob Dalton (also from It Bites) does a great Bruford imitation on this one. Thirty Years is a waste, as they don't play the best part of the song, the instrumental section. Book Of Saturday is okay, but very different sounding from the original.

And Starless is an abomination. Wetton chooses to play only the verse sections, leaving out what is one of the best pieces of music he ever did with Crimson. I can only think he either 1. didn't want to play complex music anymore 2. Didn't feel he could play complex music anymore, or 3. Didn't think his audience wanted to hear him play good music anymore.

Whichever, BOOOOOOOO, John Wetton. BOOOOOOOOO!