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Second Winter

Johnny Winter - Second Winter Audio CD

A fair review of the Johnny Winter "Second Winter" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all Johnny Winter reviews here, or go back to the Johnny Winter tabs.

Band: Johnny Winter
Title: Second Winter
Rating:

Release Date: 2004-10-19
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: Memory Pain 2: I'm Not Sure 3: The Good Love 4: Slippin' And Slidin' 5: Miss Ann 6: Johnny B. Goode 7: Highway 61 Revisited 8: I Love Everybody 9: Hustled Down In Texas 10: I Hate Everybody 11: Fast Life Rider 12: Early In The Morning 13: Tell The Truth- Instrumental 14: Help Me Live 15: Johnny B. Goode Live 16: Mama Talk To Your Daughter Live 17: It's My Own Fault Live 18: Black Cat Bone Live 19: Mean Town Blues Live 20: Tobacco Road Live 21: Frankenstein Live 22: Tell The Truth Live

RAH 1970: absolutely great

This review is about the RAH concert. I already had the LP, the CD and now the remastered CD, with the RAH concert. In short: it's absolutely stunning!
There's so much energy in this live set, it's really amazing. Also the sound quality is very good; IMHO even better than the 2009 issue of the Woodstock recording.
From the beginning to the end, Johnny plays with lots of drive and energy.
Listen to Johnny B. Goode, and you know what I mean: switching from lead to rhythm guitar in a split second and a lot of "breaks" which made JW famous later in his career. Also the collaboration with Edgar is great; that brings a bit of jazzy atmosphere in the songs where he's joining in.
Together with the 1969 Woodstock set, this 1970 Royal Albert Hall recording catches Johnny on the peak of his "pre-rock" period.

Fantastic rock blues
I own everything by Johnny and this is a classic. Saw Johnny in 72 at the Garden in NYC and man, what a show! Caught him again at the Felt Forum a year later with his brother and Rick Derringer. When I saw this edition, with a show from the Royal Albert Hall, I was most excited. I traded in my single disc copy and purchased this. The live performance disc is as good as it gets. If this gets your blood move'in (as I'm sure it will) check out some of his new "Bootleg Series" releases. There all live recordings through the past years. Some songs he has never recorded in the studio. .

HOLD ON A SECOND...
The Albert Hall concert has its moments, but to compare it to the Allman Bros. Second Winter is an excellent studio disc, and if I were just reviewing that, I'd give it five stars. "Live at the Fillmore" as a previous reviewer did is blasphemous. Johnny's guitar playing and singing are first rate as always, and Tommy Shannon was a rock solid bass player, but I'm subtracting two full stars for the presence of Brother Edgar on this record. If I never hear him sing "Tobacco Road" again, it will be too soon, let me tell you.

Impressive expanded edition with a fine live disc

It is not a pure blues album, nor a rock n' roll record, although there is plenty of blues here, and a solid helping of rock n' roll as well. Johnny Winter's second album for Columbia Records came out in 1969, and it is one of his most stylistically diverse offerings, and his most idiosyncratic as well. . . it is sort of psychedelic blues-rock record which includes shades of funk, hard rock, and a little bit of jazz.

Johnny Winter is backed by his usual power trio of Tommy Shannon and John Turner, plus brother Edgar Winter on piano, organ, sax, and the occational harpsichord (!). And I'll come right out and say that I didn't like this album very much when I first heard it maybe ten years ago. I had only heard a couple of Johnny Winter's records before, and those had been almost pure blues, so this odd, eclectic mix of blues, "old time rock n' roll", and psychedelia wasn't really to my liking. I've always disliked psychedelia, no matter who plays it.
But "Second Winter" has grown on me to some extend. It will never be among my favourite Johnny Winter-albums, that honour belongs to "White, Hot and Blue" and the phenomenal "Live Bootleg"-series, but it does have its moments. This expanded double-disc edition has quite a few of them, in fact, including an entire live CD.

To me, Johnny Winter is at his best when he is playing the blues, and even as great as he is as both a singer and a guitarist, his covers of early rock n' roll standards are just not QUITE as mesmerizing. But, having said that, I'll be the first to admit that his take on Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode" really rocks! The piano boogie of "Slippin' and Slidin'" is generic but fun, and Edgar Winter is a terrific R&B piano player. He also contributes mightily to the swaggering "Miss Ann" (originally a Little Richard-tune), this time playing the sax, and Winter rips through one of the most fiery Bob Dylan-covers you'll ever hear on the classic "Highway 61 Revisited". I'm a really big fan of the aforementioned "Bootleg"-series, but this is still the best version of this song I've ever heard from Johnny Winter.

The heavy blues "I Love Everybody" with its screaming, overdriven guitar attack is another highlight, and its jazzy, horn-laden sister-track "I Hate Everybody", sort of a frenetic jump-blues, is worth a listen as well.
At the end of disc one comes two bonus cuts, a too-psychedelic and over-produced "Early In The Morning", and an equally forgettable instrumental version of Ray Charles' "Tell The Truth" which'll quickly fade from memory. Unless you're much more into psychedelic organ flourishes than am I, that is.

But then comes a 72-minute live recording of Winter playing the Royal Albert Hall in April, 1970. He is backed by the same three musicians that recorded "Second Winter" with him, but the psychedelia has been stripped away, and Winter and the band tear through powerful, fiery renditions of songs like "Johnny B. Goode", the high-octane "Dust My Broom"-knock-off "Black Cat Blues", and a somewhat more agreable "Tell The Truth" (now with vocals!).
Sonny Boy Williamson II's classic blues "Help Me" and J. B. Lenoir's boogie "Mama Talk To Your Daughter" are transformed into sizzling blues-rockers with some absolutely magnificent lead guitar playing, and songs like the twelve-minute "It's My Own Fault" and the eleven-minute slide guitar-fest "Mean Town Blues" is Johnny at his bluesy best.

The sound is absolutely excellent, and Johnny Winter's astounding abilities as a guitar player were never more apparent than in a live setting. Okay, so I'm not overly fond of the over-long "Tobacco Road", or of Edgar Winter's nine-minute instrumental "Frankenstein", but everything else is good, and most of it is just plain great! And disc one is better than I originally thought, as well ;-).

Lose the FBI Warning!
If you don't like being warned by the FBI every time you load the CD you just paid for buy the Version offered on Amazon. Great package but be warned there are ugly FBI warning medalions printed on both CDs and on the art work on the back cover that absolutly ruin the great effort at artwork. co. uk B0002M1DDY it is the same package, made in Austria with NO, ABSOLUTELY NO FBI warnings printed all over your otherwise great CDs. I ordered the set from Amazon. co. uk itself, paid about $23 USD and got it in days. Beautiful clean CDs and artwork - no FBI crap.

You can see a complete list of all Johnny Winter discography, or go back to the Johnny Winter tabs. There is also a good guide on how to read guitar tabs here.