Don Barnes - Ride The Storm (1989)

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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!

38 Special - Live In Concert (1988)

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This is very good sounding live show by Southern AOR Rockers 38 Special. I always found their later studio albums a little too bland to attract my attention, but live it's a different story. This is FM quality and it's a nice set-list they're playing. Everybody seems to be in fine form and hearing this music played live sure gives it that much needed extra pizazz. This CD has also been released as "Memphis 1988". Rough-Housin'..