Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Don Barnes - Ride The Storm (1989)

My favorite things to post, must be the unreleased albums. I mean really, that's as good as it gets, even if the music isn't always as good as what you know the artist is capable of. And sometimes it is as good as you hope it would be. For all you 38 Special fans, here is the unreleased Don Barnes album from 1989. And every bit as good as you would expect. Since Don has always been the main provider of 38 Special songs, it should come as no surprise that his music bears heavy similarities to Donnie van Zant's band. Don has been responsible for their biggest hits and has a knack for writing commercial songs of good quality. And this album is just full of that. I guess it leans even more towards straight-up AOR than any 38 Special album, but this is well worth your attention. (I found myself in the kitchen singing Foreigner lyrics to one of the songs here ;-) I'm not too crazy about the quality and I bet there might be better copies out there hiding from us. Someone tried to clean up the sound by using standard noise filters which, I'm afraid, didn't do it a world of good. Then a gain, it didn't do a world of hurt either, so I won't complain. I'm happy I get to listen to this! If you're up for some quality Southern AOR, grab your chance and ride the storm!

6 comments:

ziggi said...

Thanks for the post. I must say this is a surprisingly good album and should have been released. It deserves it. Full of good players including the Porcoro brothers and great songwriting.
Glad you found this one.

Anonymous said...

Wow! Can´t believe that such an great album did never made it to an official release! That album is a killer! Many thanks for posting! cheers, Marty

Lovegun said...

hi guys,
no wonder that this record kicks ass.
alan pasqua, keys, and dann huff. guitar (and playing on most of all AOR and later nashville albums), come from the legendary mega AOR band giant. listen to their albums and you'll cum! saw them live twice in munich, awesome. and these guys combined with the toto groove section and don himself...what else do you want??
cheerz

Anonymous said...

link's dead, could U pleaz reup it? Thanks anyway and congrats for your passionate and worthy job!

Skydogg said...

Try again, link is still very much alive...

Anonymous said...

FYI - this album is now an official release via Melodic Rock Records! www.amazon.com/Ride-Storm-DON-BARNES/dp/B071W49HRY