High Strung Tall Tales

Artist: Adrian Legg
Label: Relativity
Category: Music

Average customer rating:

Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 1

UPC: 088561122423
EAN: 0088561122423
ASIN: B000003BXW

Release Date: 1994-10-11

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Tracks:

Celandine
The Crockett Waltz
The Cool Cajun
Song For Di
Sweetheart
High Strung Suite: Meditation
High Strung Suite: Hispanic Theme
High Strung Suite: Thirds
High Strung Suite: Major Theme
Naive II
Silent Night-The Movie
Live At The Tin Angel-Philadelphia, February 5, 1994: Mud & Jigs
Live At The Tin Angel-Philadelphia, February 5, 1994: Paddy In The Synagogue/ The Pregnant Folksing
Live At The Tin Angel-Philadelphia, February 5, 1994: Sharon Puckett's Knees
Live At The Tin Angel-Philadelphia, February 5, 1994: The Irish Girl
Live At The Tin Angel-Philadelphia, February 5, 1994: Profiles In Hormones
Live At The Tin Angel-Philadelphia, February 5, 1994: Queenie's Waltz
Live At The Tin Angel-Philadelphia, February 5, 1994: Two Duties
Live At The Tin Angel-Philadelphia, February 5, 1994: Meditation Reprise
Live At The Tin Angel-Philadelphia, February 5, 1994: Nasenhaarmechismus

Similar Items:

Mrs. Crowe's Blue Waltz
Guitars & Other Cathedrals
Waiting for a Dancer
Guitar for Mortals
Inheritance

Customer Reviews:

Legg takes a few gambles, but remembers from where he came.......2002-12-10

About the time that High Strung Tall Tales was being released, Adrian Legg admited that he was paranoid about that reactions the CD might receive. There are a few deviations of style here, but Legg stays rooted in his winning formula. And rarely have you heard guitar music sound this good.

It's rather hard to describe the power of the music because it gently walks the line between impressive guitar work and impressive melodies. How can you have both? Well Legg shows us how it's done with the High Strung Suite, a four movement piece (and a reprise towards the end) that gives us varations on a theme. The theme may sound conventional, but the variations are modern.

Naive II and Silent Night are a bit puzzling (I'll assume that the latter is a joke?), but the remainder of the album really does serve up the goods just as well as the suite. Throwing in a keyboard here, a wind instrument there, a dab of drums, there is lots of nicely arranged music for your money. The song Sweetheart can melt the coldest of hearts.

And we get a concert excerpt too. It's a real treat for me (since I've never seen him perform) to hear this, even if the live songs total to only three. The rest are his witty banter (like Leo Kottke, just replace the midwestern wryness with British wryness).

To call High Strung Tall Tales a bummer is really underscoring all that is going on, surface and otherwise. If you like your guitar music, and I mean REALLY like your guitar music, you owe it to yourself to hear High Strung Tall Tales.

superhuman talent, coupled with humility...what a concept.......2001-11-09

If you've ever seen a picture of Adrian Legg...he's a pretty unassuming-looking guy. He possesses, however, a huge guitar talent. Not only is he a monster fingerpicker, but he also makes extensive use of a guitar technique that you would bet $ couldn't work--while the right hand is busy with intricate fingerpicking, the left hand will suddenly leap off the guitar neck and start to detune certain strings with a speed and precision that seems impossible. Between this detuning and the actual fretting of strings on the neck with the same hand, beautiful melodies are created. In waltz time, no less. If you've ever held a guitar long enough to mess with the tuners, you can imagine how difficult it must be to zip up to various tuners at lightning speed and move them to exact new locations so that the open string plays a different note. This is while alternating back and forth playing chords, etc. on the neck! While the right hand is making sense of it all with complex fingerpicking patterns! AND, you have to write a piece that can make use of this startling trick. I saw him do this live, repeatedly and with apparent little effort, as the opening act for the G3 Tour (Vai, Satriani, Johnson) in the mid-90s. The crowd was a bunch of testosterone-poisoned chuckleheads who swilled Miller Lite, chest-bumped each other and totally ignored Legg's set, which was a pity because he was the most interesting thing in the whole show. The live cuts on this CD show, to anyone who doubted, that it is technique and not trickery that creates his unique sound. His stories between the live cuts are priceless--sublime and ridiculous (a'la Python) tributes to dry British wit. I would give this CD five stars, but I'm not as enamoured of waltzs as Legg is.

Finally a live track.......1999-12-17

There are a couple of live tracks on this CD. I quite honestly didn't believe he was as good as he sounds on the previous albums and I own them all. You can't fake live and it is as amazing as it is beautiful. The album seems to be an experiment with a few tunes in the beginning that seem to be variations on a theme. It allows you to hear how an artist of this caliber can take a melody in different directions. A very worthwhile investment.

Very disappointing.......1999-09-06

After buying Mrs Crowe's Blue Waltz and Guitar for Mortals, I was hooked...was. Sorry Adrian this one's a bummer and I won't take a chance on you again. :-(

Awesome guitar work; mood-altering textures.......1999-04-20

Adrian Legg can provoke almost any human physiological response with six strings. This album runs the gambut from Irish jigs to smooth New-Age(ish) melodies. I am as impressed by his virtuosity as I am pleased with, and soothed by, the textures he creates. Even the between-song patter on the live tracks is highly entertaining.

Music CD:

Music CD

Music CD

Music CD

A Shade of Red ~ Redhead Kingpin and the F.B.I.

Hustlin' Pays ~ Mr. Nitro

Ophelia ~ Natalie Merchant

Chaps ~ The Monochrome Set

Ernie Graham ~ Ernie Graham

Living Well Is the Best Revenge ~ Midtown

Implosive ~ Rasmus Rasmussen

Chart Toppers: Dance Hits of the 70's ~ Various Artists

Life Story ~ Black Rob

Set the Record Striaght ~ Fast Crew