In the spirit of Alexander Dumas, this album could be called “Seventeen years later.” It was many years have passed since the last joint appearance The City Boys Allstars and to their new meeting August 28, 2013 in New York club Cutting Room. Nine songs performed that night, and made ​​the program album Blinded By The Night.

The City Boys Allstars – is ten instrumentalists and three singers. As before, led a group worth guitarist Mike Merola, and the structure has undergone over the decade and a half, only small changes: alas, over the years some members of the band was dead. But all participants in The City Boys Allstars – is an experienced New York musicians, professional-class, past the fire, and water, and copper pipes. And some – even the blood, sweat and tears, I mean wonderful trumpeter Lew Soloff, who played in his time back in the gold part of Blood, Sweat & Tears.

I know perfectly well that live albums have a special power, like accumulating in the aura of the auditorium, but even so, that powerful energy that begins to exude you a CD, just dip it into the player, is striking. The impression is that all of these seventeen years some dark forces are not allowed to approach the instrument musicians and only now, Dorval, finally, to the scene, they “gave the heat” for all those years, The City Boys Allstars with their powerful horn section sound like a real big band, vocalists and canceled Angel Risoff Bill Kurtz and Horace Scott only reinforce that feeling.

The program has the album and tracks ballad plan, for example, The Vow, or God Bless the Child, but the emphasis is still on things with the drive, born explosive mixture of jazz, rhythm and blues, soul music, funk and even rap (in the composition When You Needed Me). You guessed it, God Bless the Child – a famous hit Billie Holiday, and opens the program Testimony Jamie Robbie Robertson. Two tracks of the album were written by a former member of the famous on that same Woodstock festival group Country Joe & The Fish David Bennett Cohen. Singers The City Boys Allstars Risoff and Scott brought into the program and a pair of his own compositions.

In the album liner notes quoted as saying Mike Merola about feeling amazing ease of playing together that night. Well, understanding musicians The City Boys Allstars really immaculately. A light and visible (audible) pleasure from the fact that they are back on stage together again play your favorite music and hell, they all get cool, you are sure to feel listening Blinded By The Night.

Original Review at: http://jazzquad.ru/index.pl?act=PRODUCT&id=3793