Steve Stevens 

Flamenco A Go-Go 
 

Release date  02/00 Ark-21    

FLAMENCO.A.GO.GO. 

CINECITTA

OUR MAN IN ISTANBUL

LETTER TO A MEMORY

FLEMINOVA

VELVET CAGE

HANINA

DEMENTIA

TWILIGHT IN YOUR HANDS

RIVIERA '68

Reviews

Steve worked on this CD for over 2 years. It is written by Steve & played by Steve, even the artwork has been finalized by Steve. It is a true reflection of Steve & his work.  
When I spoke to Steve he told me how he had always had a passion for acoustic playing.
He said that he finds it more enjoyable & musically rewarding.

I first listened to Flamenco.A.Go.Go, with great anticipation. I knew it would be good & I certainly wasnt disappointed.
Flamenco.A.Go.Go is a whole experience in itself. It really demonstrates the many different dimensions of Steve's playing. It is exciting, intense & moving. It also generates a feeling of peacefulness, a calm & gentleness & really allows you to appreciate Steve's magnificent playing.

Treat yourself to a listen of this amazing album.

Steve has recorded and produced all of this album.  He also wrote all the music
and played nearly every instrument.

It is an intricate combination of various textures, layers and sounds evoking a variety of emotions. It is without a doubt Steve at his very best.  This album showcases his unlimited talent in a variety of areas of the musicians profession. 
His instruments were: a flamenco guitar, a nylon string acoustic guitar of which he
mixes delicate electronic rhythms.

Howard Jones guests on the album, he plays piano on Letter to a Memory,,
which he also co-wrote with Steve.

Vinnie Colaiuta plays drums on Letter to a Memory, & Riviera68 and
French rai artist Faudel sings on the track Hanina.

There are contributions also from Gota Yashiki, Greg Ellis, Azam Ali, Mike Esposito, Cameron Stone, Mark Schulman, Takeshi Honda, Fumiaki Nishiyama,
Shyunichi Oshima & Armand Sabel.

Steve is unquestionably recognized for his fierce & distinctive electric guitar work, but his playing has always been influenced not only by his first guitar teacher, who was a flamenco player, but also by Mario Escodero Jn, a classmate at New York's High School of Performing Arts, whose father played guitar for the
Jose Greco Dance Company.
Steve felt the time had come to take this change of direction in his career
& quotes this album as being one of which he is the most proud.

Steve uses his expertise & digital recording to enhance his classical guitar to create an electronic sound on such tracks as "Flamenco A Go-Go" & "Letter to A Memory"
and Steve says :

"If you want to distort something, you can distort it afterwards," he says. "But all the tracks emanate from acoustic guitar. In some cases, I even have a MIDI flamenco guitar, which I use to trigger samples. I might trigger an electric guitar sound, but the actual instrument I'm playing on is still a nylon string guitar."

Quote taken from the ARK21 Web Site, Thank You.

As if this audio delight isn�t enough, Steve has also included an interactive content, which shows us a live performance of the track �Dementia�, filmed in Japan.
(This can be viewed using a �Multisession-Compatible� CD-ROM drive on either
a Macintosh or Windows 98 computer.)

This is an extra special treat, showing Steve playing really close up.
You can feel the passion & really sense the atmosphere.

Listen to this CD through your headset, adjust the earphones, kick back, close your eyes & accompany Steve on his journey. It will twist your heads!

By Carole Page

Steve Stevens spent a good portion of the 1980s playing guitar and writing songs with the likes of Billy Idol and Michael Jackson, and earned himself a Grammy for Best Pop Instrumental Performance for his song on the �Top Gun� soundtrack.
For the past two years, Steve has been recording his first solo album
�Flamenco A Go-Go,� a major departure from his earlier work.
Steve is proud to say that this record features no electric guitar � just one flamenco guitar delicately layered upon electronic rhythms. 

A few guests make appearances on Steven�s solo debut: Howard Jones co-wrote and played piano on �Letter to a Memory,� Vinnie Colaiuta played drums on 3 tracks, and French rai artist Faudel sings on the track �Hanina.�
Stevens wrote every song and played all the instruments on this daring new record,
and he produced and engineered the album himself.  

Reviews

From: GUITAR 2001 magazine

Steve Stevens

"Flamenco A Go Go" (Ark21 Records)

Awesome Flamenco guitar in 2000 setting. Guitarist Steve Stevens (Billy Idol,
Vince Neil band) who also plays bass, guitar synth and keyboards on almost every song on the album, has constructed a astonishing CD that shows his considerable musical talent. This is an exciting direction, one I hope Mr. Stevens continues.
 I've really got to hand it to Stevens production work.  He's captured a colorful soundscape. The mix, separation of instruments is simply amazing.
 I don't think I've ever heard anything more balanced.
This symmetry of sound mostly comes from Steve Stevens compositional skill.
He will be playing slow acoustic guitar, suddenly stop, a dark, nasty keyboard line
will skip in, then blend into an electric guitar jamming.
It's constantly exciting and definitely not predictable.
Stevens incredible picking ability is on full display and you've got to hear him rip it out on his acoustic guitar. I was also taken by his ability to mix in cool keyboard work that takes the Flamenco sound into new territory. 
 Flamenco.A.Go.Go is an enhanced CD, meaning it has a beautifully shot eight minute video of "Dementia," bio info and connections to the Internet.
Ark21 Records must be praised for the quality of the CD and the extras it includes. Kind of reminds me of the extras you find on DVD and Laser Discs for films. 

TW

From: www.rockreunion.com

 ..proves to be an artist without boundaries. Steve Stevens is one of my all-time favorite guitar players. Similar to Michael Schenker, Steve Morse, Eddie Van Halen, Steve Howe and some others, he has a very distinctive style and is able to play the electric guitar with as much virtuosity as the acoustic guitar.
Whereas the above mentioned players already captured their outstanding abilities in the classic field on at least one release (Schenker on the "Thank You" album, Steve Morse on his solo albums and his works with Dixie Dregs, Eddie Van Halen on various acoustic soli like "Eruption", Steve Howe on almost all his releases),
Steve Stevens spent years performing as a glam and hard rocker
(with Billy Idol, Jerusalem Slim, Atomic Playboys).
It was only in the last years that Steve decided to reach new horizons.
The Black Light Syndrome with Terry Bozzio and Tony Levin was only the beginning. Anyone who heard the fantastic acoustic live version of the Billy Idol classic
"Rebel Yell" or his performance on "Caro Nome" from the Angelica album
 (with Clif Magness, Steve Vai and Dweezil Zappa) knew about Steve's high class performances on the classical guitar.
"Flamenco A Go Go" features no electric guitar - just one flamenco guitar
delicately layered upon electronic rhythms.
A few guests make appearances on Steven�s solo debut: Howard Jones co-wrote and played piano on "Letter to a Memory," Vinnie Colaiuta played drums on 3 tracks,
Mark Schulman (Foreigner) on 2 tracks, Greg Ellis (ex-Shark Island) contributed percussion on five songs and French rai artist Faudel sings on the track "Hanina." Stevens wrote every song and played all the instruments, and he produced and engineered the album himself.
The title track is a fast flamenco instrumental with a fiery melody and a hot rhythm.
Most of the other tracks are more quiet, but keep the high level. "Our Man In Istanbul" once again increases the tempo and adds an oriental vocal line. "Dementia" was recorded live at Yokohama Stadium & is also featured as a video on the enhanced CD.
This is a great album where Steve Stevens

Rating: 9

From: Guitar Nine Records

After several years of silence, Stevens introduces an entirely new sound and direction with Flamenco A Go Go. It shouldn�t be a surprise to anyone who knows Steve�s history, since the legendary folk musician Phil Ochs was the first person to put a guitar into his hands. Not only has be traded his trusty electrics for a nylon-string acoustic guitar, but he took a total do-it-yourself approach to the project, recording it by computer in his home and playing almost all of the parts himself. Playing flamenco brought out the best in Stevens--check out the depth and melodic majesty of tracks like "Our Man In Istanbul" or "Riviera 68." Working with percussionist Greg Ellis, Stevens has no trouble tapping into the kinetic pulse of flamenco music, yet no matter how intense the rhythmic interplay gets, there�s always a strong melodic component to the music. It�s as if Stevens gets the best of both worlds. Nor is he hampered by the sonic limitations of a nylon-string classical guitar. Thanks to the editing capabilities of digital recording, on "Letter to A Memory", for example, Stevens was able to have his acoustic and make it sound electric, too. Note: Only one of the vocal tracks on Flamenco A Go Go is a traditional vocal number ("Hanina") - the others feature an occasional female voice in an indistiguishable language adding vocal coloration.

From: Guitar.com

You may remember guitarist Steve Stevens from his '80s days in Billy Idol's band, strutting about the stage with an outrageous puffy hairdo while creating outrageous electric solos for songs like "Rebel Yell."
Well, toss those preconceptions aside  before you spin Flamenco.a.Go.Go,
an album on which Stevens plays only acoustic guitar.
Comparisons to the Gypsy Kings and Enya are more appropriate than to Stevens' last rock gig in Motley Crue screecher Vince Neil's band.
 Inspired by flamenco/new-age guitarist Paco DeLucia, Stevens has entered the realm of mood-inspired instrumentalist.
Go.Go mixes his stinging flamenco-inspired picking and strumming with a host of electronic beats and the occasional vocal.
The results create techno flamenco on the title track, a mysterious spy-movie theme on "Letter to a Memory," a jazzy samba for "Feminova," and even an excursion into Algerian rai on "Hanina."
 Stevens proves it's not all studio show either, on the live-in-Japan speedster Dementia.

-- Buzz Morison

From: ARK 21 Records

Nobody can make an electric guitar scream like Steve Stevens. When he came to fame as the instrumental foil for Billy Idol, he turned his six-string into a virtual special effect for songs like "White Wedding," "Flesh for Fantasy" and "Rebel Yell."

Not anymore. After several years of silence, Stevens introduces an entirely new sound and direction with Flamenco A Go-Go. It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who knows Steve's history, since the legendary folk musician Phil Ochs was the first person to put a guitar into his hands. Not only has be traded his trusty electrics for a nylon-string acoustic guitar, but he took a total do-it-yourself approach to the project, recording it by computer in his home and playing almost all of the parts himself.

"I had kind of reached an end to playing real loud, aggressive stuff," says Stevens of his personal un-plugging process. After recording and touring with Motley Crue frontman Vince Neil in the mid-'90's, Stevens felt burnt-out by the metal grind. "It really didn't matter what I was playing," he says. "The audience wasn't really listening."

However, in the 80's, Stevens enjoyed great success with his electric formula. He appeared with the Thompson Twins as part of the historic Live Aid benefit concert, worked with Michael Jackson to create the controversial, but highly successful song, "Dirty Diana," and received music's highest honor, a Grammy Award as Best Pop Instrumental Performance for the Top Gun soundtrack. Then came the 90's.

Although the audiences during the Vince Neil tour weren't listening, Stevens was - to flamenco virtuoso Paco DeLucia. "I had gone to see Paco DeLucia play, and it was so powerful. It was like seeing Jimi Hendrix still alive," he says.
"For me, Paco is the Jimi Hendrix of flamenco guitar."

Although Stevens had never been a flamenco player himself, hearing DeLucia reminded him of how great an influence flamenco had been on his early musical development. "One of my first guitar teachers was a flamenco guitarist," he says.
He also remembered being blown away, as a teen at New York's High School of Performing Arts, by classmate Mario Escodero, Jr.,
whose father played guitar for the Jose Greco Dance Company.

"When this kid sat down and played, it was like a complete orchestra,
right there on this one instrument," he recalls.

Excited and intrigued, Stevens decided to try to develop his own flamenco-style sound. "I just felt like, where else am I going to go?" he says.
"I'd been making records since 1981, and I really needed to challenge myself musically. If you do something flash on flamenco guitar, it's listenable, and it's used in a passionate way." He laughs. "It really is like the speed metal of acoustic guitar music."                     

As he began to find his voice on acoustic, he was also experimenting with digital recording in his home studio, and suddenly the two things clicked.
 "It just seemed that flamenco, being such a rhythmic style of guitar playing, could live alongside drum loops and electronics and ambient sounds and things," he says.
 "I started experimenting with tracks, and it just really flowed. There was never a point where I was racked by having to come up with a good pop-style verse or something. It was really stream of consciousness writing, and the recording was almost cathartic in that it almost has a healing aspect about playing that instrument."

That "healing aspect" is immediately evident in the depth and melodic majesty of tracks like "Our Man in Istanbul" or "Riviera 68." Working with percussionist Greg Ellis, Stevens has no trouble tapping into the kinetic pulse of flamenco music, yet no matter how intense the rhythmic interplay gets, there's always a strong melodic component to the music. It's as if Stevens gets the best of both worlds.

Nor is he hampered by the sonic limitations of a nylon-string classical guitar. Thanks to the editing capabilities of digital recording, on "Letter to A Memory" and "Flamenco A Go-Go," Stevens was able to have his acoustic and make it sound electric, too.

"If you want to distort something, you can distort it afterwards," he says. "But all the tracks emanate from acoustic guitar. In some cases, I even have a MIDI flamenco guitar, which I use to trigger samples. I might trigger an electric guitar sound, but the actual instrument I'm playing on is still a nylon string guitar."

Between his playing, his writing, and his production, Stevens feels he has turned a corner, creatively. There is, he says, a musicality to flamenco that he never found in the hyped, over-amplified world of hard rock. "With the shred guitar thing, it always seems like I was playing to guys who were standing there with score cards or something,"
he says. "We weren't creating an emotional event - it was a gymnastic event."

With Flamenco A Go-Go, Stevens has created an emotional event, and is justifiably proud. "That's my job as a guitarist," he says. "A guitar is the tool that I use to get what, emotionally is happening inside me, out.

From: The Cutting Edge

Gorgeous is about the only word that actually fits Steve Stevens� (Billy Idol, Vince Neil) debut solo release Flamenco.A.Go.Go.
In an interview last year Steve told TCE that he�d been working on a flamenco record for quite some time and that he felt it would express much of what he was currently pursuing as an artist.
Though quite a transition from Stevens� metal days, his harmonies and innovative effects are just as memorable as the White Wedding hook or the riff for Michael Jackson Dirty Diana, both of which hallmarked Stevens with critical acclaim.
In the traditional sense, Flamenco.A.Go.Go. is not a typical flamenco guitar album.
One listen to the wide range of fluid movement on the eighth track Dementia will convince you of that.
 The song is a hybrid of twisting sounds moving across the scale with a melodic theme woven in. As with the Our Man In Istanbul, Letter To Memory and Feminova the melody always has a home no matter how intense the rhythmic interplay gets.

Brushing elements of Jazz and New Age, Stevens is able to develop Flamenco�s many moods in a cascade of tonal resonance. Cinecitta, Twilight In Your Hands and Velvet Cage all experience a sweeping panorama of color and intrigue.
Stevens, a graduate of New York�s High School of Performing Arts, secured his chops as an imaginative hard rock player. Over the years he developed an appreciation for Flamenco great Paco DeLucia (whom Stevens calls the �Jimi Hendrix of flamenco guitar�) and began recreating a style that would combine his risk as a guitarist
with the orchestration of flamenco.
Flamenco.A.Go.Go. is enhanced with a video to accompany Dementia which depicts Stevens live before a sold out crowd in Japan.
His command of his newly embraced style is staggering!

ark21.com

From: www.canehdian.com

After almost two decades of recording music, Steve Stevens has tried it all. Having played guitar with well-known acts like the Thompson Twins, Michael Jackson, and his claim to fame Billy Idol, this rock veteran has had volumes of experience with the electric guitar. Now Stevens, who has also toured with Vince Neil of Motley Crue, is experimenting with a whole new genre of music.

This different style of playing is flamenco, and Stevens seems to have mastered it quite nicely. His latest album, Flamenco.a.go.go, is proof of this. An exquisite mixture of acoustic guitars and digital music, this album is a vital addition to any guitar player�s CD collection. Not only does Stevens perform beautiful, flowing roots music like in the song �Cinecita", but also found on Flamenco.a.go.go is a show of Steve�s amazing talent with rapid picking and (for all you guitar buffs) breathtaking left-hand ability.

Amazingly, all the playing on this album is done on just a nylon-stringed guitar. Stevens has said that flamenco music, being so rich in rhythm, seems to fit naturally with digital music and �electronics and ambient sounds and things." The first track on the album is a prime example of this combination. And the two seemingly different types of music do prove to flow together very nicely.

Those who have this album in disk format will enjoy a CDROM feature which allows the user to hear all the music on the album, access Steve�s website, read a bio on the artist, and view a stunning, nearly 7 minute video clip of one of Stevens�s performances. Again, guitar players and also those who merely appreciate talent will no doubt be impressed and at the same time mystified by the sheer speed and dynamic playing seen and heard on this lengthy clip.

As a performer, studio musician, and as an artist, Steve Stevens would certainly rank very highly in the expanding world of music. Those who seek tasteful style and thrilling dynamics will find Flamenco.a.go.go to be quite a treat.

Betsy MacDonald CanEHdian.com, 2000