COLORCODE COULD HAVE REALLY DONE WITHOUT TWO BULLETS AND A GUN

Funk runk and funk metal were two sub-genres of rock which never really
took off and gained any degree of sustainable populist appeal, if you
disregard Prince`s pop-laced power funk of the 80`s & early 90`s that
was at the top of the charts on the odd occasion. Prince was so much
more talented than what most of his music would suggest, too much of
the time Prince`s music was wayed down with too much instrumentation
which muddied the sound of so many crisp funk rock arrangements. But
he often had the right idea, he never sounded more vital and at the
top of his guitar game than on the lewd and raunchy `Peach` and the
funky rhythm and blues classic `Cream`, both from 1991. Prince was
an inspiration to many obscure funk rockers who unlike the Purple
Rain man never achieved commercial success with their recordings,
but one funk rocker, who almost passed for metal, who looked up
to Prince and has one cult classic under his belt, is a guy by the
name of Stevie Salas. His 1990 album, titled `Stevie Salas
Colorcode` is argubaly the best funk rock recording of all time.
COLORCODE, like all funk rock records, sounds dated, it`s always
the case for some reason. It doesn`t sound cool, it`s as cool as
MC Hammer in 2011 actually - NOT VERY. Another funk rocker who
i may get around to reviewing at a later date is Dan Reed, a half
american/half hawaiian funk rocker who released a string of albums
in the late 1980`s and early 1990`s, which all flopped commercial-
ly. Stevie Salas took his cues mainly from both Dan Reed and the
guitar legend himself, Jimi Hendrix. COLORCODE has C.J deVillar
on bass and bass sitar, Winston. A. Watson Jr. on drums and of
course Salas himself on lead and vocals. The album is characte-
rised by some very jazz influenced power drumming and Salas`s
absorbing and unrelenting guitar playing, which on many occa-
sions is very convincingly Hendrixian. The album starts with
a bang, the pro-black rights theme `Stand Up`, which has the
protest line `stand up and fight the power` repeated on many
occasions throughout the song. `Blind` and `Cover Me` are no
nonsense rockers just as much as they`re funk, `Baby Walk On`
is funk at it`s best, Salas copies Jimi Hendrix brilliantly with
`Indian Chief`, with a little help from his peroxide drummer.
The one blight on the album is the violent and provocative
`Two Bullets And A Gun`, an unneccesary paean to how not to
treat your girlfriend when you are feeling angry. Why Salas
saw fit to write such a song i dont really know, it promotes
violence, pre-meditated murder and post-homocide suicide.
It was a very silly diversion that really detracted from the
rest of the album, one of the lines in the song goes some-
thing like this.......i`ll take my bullets and my gun and
make the front page news. The other one, which i think is
worse, i wont even repeat. A great album that was partly
wrecked by one song that Slayer should have recorded.