GPS
Window To The Soul

The name GPS, certainly not very catchy or effective for a band, is an acronym for Govan (guitarist), Payne (bassist and singer), and Schellen (drummer). And who are they? Three-quarters of the crew with which Asia had transitioned into the new millennium alongside the surviving original member Geoff Downes, all thrown out halfway through the last decade by the initiative of the record label's management, to allow the return of the other founding members John Wetton, Steve Howe, and Carl Palmer, with the aim of attempting yet another commercial revival for the partnership.

So then, who is that John Lennon-like figure on the cover, dressed in white and watching television from his Paradise? Someone from the group? No, that's John Kalodner.

Oh well, who the hell is John Kalodner? An actor? A model? A relative of one of them? John Kalodner is an impresario, a talent agent, retired for some time now but one of the most important in America in past decades. He recommended lots of artists to the record companies he worked for (Atlantic and Geffen) and made their fortunes. A guy so authoritative that in many records from the nineties, in the booklet notes where names, surnames, and roles are mentioned, he often appears in the role of ... himself! Written just like that: John Kalodner: John Kalodner.

The music of GPS is inevitably very similar to that of Asia, meaning very pop progressive rock, much more inclined to the mainstream than the experimental. This is mainly due to the full (stuffed) with emphasis singing of the frontman John Payne and his primary way of creating vocal melodies, characteristics that had kept the career of Asia more or less dignified afloat in the nineties and the beginning of the millennium. The differences come from the soloists: the Asian keyboardist Ryo Okumoto (on loan from Spock's Beard) is much more virtuosic and busy than his predecessor Downes, while the curly guitarist Guthrie Govan is tremendously more technical, unpredictable, incisive, and eclectic than the wrinkled Steve Howe.

Govan is an outstanding musician: on this record, he doesn't do much, but just enough to say that the interesting things come almost solely from him... Certainly not from the grandiloquent voice of his bassist, who is also not in great shape (his vocal cords “scratch” a lot on this occasion, and in a very annoying way), from the songs that are almost all quite conventional, from Okumoto's prodigious efforts who is very talented but not Jon Lord or much less Kerry Minnear.

GPS no longer exists, and this album must therefore be filed among the one-offs in the history of the more commercial and linear progressive: Payne immediately after this release almost immediately opted for an agreement with the old companions, as a result of which and still now he tours with his "Asia featuring John Payne," not including any of his backers from this record.

Rather than keeping up with Asia 1 and Asia 2 featuring Payne, I suggest following my favorite Govan, currently engaged with a drummer and bassist almost at his stratospheric level in a very brilliant instrumental fusion trio named Aristocrats.