By Steve Gilmore Waiting For Helen - Feed The Fire Hear The Track -------------------------------- My introduction to Waiting For Helen (blues rock of a very high standard) was with Good Good Woman (January 2008) which found me ready and waiting for a solid jolt of authentic blues rock. The kind that sandpapers your face while soothing your ears. Heavy, drenched with emotion and a beat that is irrisistable and Good Good Woman was all that and more. It's to be expected though, when you understand that Waiting For Helen is a real gigging band so you'd expect them to be showing no quarter.
The title should give you a clue.
Jerry DeCarlo, Helen Harak, Tony Mazza, Pete Salomone and Joe Van Winkle (collectively WFH) are very decent stokers for this particular conflagration which rocks in the time honoured fashion. There again, it was their outstanding professionalism that first caught my atttention and that is much on display here, both in the performance and the pointed, coherent punch of the arrangement. Can't say I was overly fond of the mix on this though, it felt a little flat compared to the music.
Feed The Fire has - for me - many musical echoes and that will go a long way to keeping my interest. Anything from the B52's, Jefferson Airplane and even Cyndi Lauper got in there and I have to say that this is a class pop rock track in that tradition. Whether that will translate to a wider audience who knows but you have to try right? Me, I loved this from the get go, partly because of the above named influences but more because it is a great arrangement of a very strong song.
