Pat Travers
Putting It Straight

LA RECENSIONE

A charming cover wraps the third career album (1977) of yet another blues rocker on the scene in the seventies (and then the eighties, nineties... up to the present day: Pat is still alive and kicking). On the back cover, there's the same shot of the record manager's office, but at the end of the "sound" audition, with the young Travers leaving satisfied, however leaving behind a bit of... mess. A blast!

Travers is from Toronto, Canada. Not a great singer, but raw and straightforward, somewhat like Rory Gallagher. And like the latter, on the guitar, he is no less than excellent, though he doesn't quite reach the charm and personality of the late Irish master.

In his Pat Travers Band, sometimes arranged as a trio like in this instance, other times as a quartet with a second guitarist, many outstanding musicians have come and gone. For example, on this record, the drummer is Nicko McBrain, later with Iron Maiden. Limiting only to drummers, names like Carmine Appice, Tommy Aldridge (Whitesnake), Mike Shrieve (Santana), Aynsley Dunbar come to mind... all at some point present in the PTB. Travers is the classic name that the general public ignores or almost (in Italy without the almost), but that colleagues and industry insiders know very well and have always praised.

I don't want to say by this that he is a genius... he is not. He's an excellent blues rocker, spirited and enthusiastic, who in fifty years of career has followed the classic path of many others like him. That is, the initial substantial success when rock blues was in vogue, followed by the usual adaptation to slightly more mainstream music with added synthesizers in the eighties, and finally from the nineties onwards the return to blues, to small clubs to perform instead of arenas, and to the hardcore and indispensable fans, to be satisfied with an occasional release.

The best episode of this album seems to me to be the extended (8 minutes), bi-thematic "Dedication", characterized by an instrumental intro ("Part 1"), or better said organ-driven. The Hammond is handled by Travers himself and it's always a pleasure to listen to. Without any break comes "Part 2", a very inspired blues ballad in which the titular guitar reclaims its dominance.

A couple of good songs, namely "Life in London" and "Speakeasy", energetically describe the sensations that London, the British capital where he settled in those early career years because the record label that discovered and signed him was English, transmitted to Pat.

I won't say anything more. Actually, yes: Pat Travers' best album is live! It's titled "Go For What You Know," and it's... special. Someone should review it.