Roll Over And Play Live! Niles MI

Roll Over And Play Live!

Ronnie Montrose

RoMoCo Records, 1998

http://www.ronniemontrose.com

REVIEW BY: Jason Warburg

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 02/08/1999

Joe Satriani is about athleticism. Steve Vai is aboutinventiveness. Eddie Van Halen is about the intersection of flashand melody. Jimmy Page is about sheer thundering power.

Ronnie Montrose -- as this first live album of his long anddistinguished career reminds you -- is about passion.

Satriani and Vai and their acolytes use and manipulate theguitar, sometimes astoundingly so. But -- to my ears, anyway --their work can come off as somewhat clinical. They are masterfultechnicians, but at times they don't seem to have a great feel for the music they're so efficiently performing.

What Ronnie Montrose does with a guitar is, seemingly, to becomeone with it, to make it the ultimate instrument of self-expressionof a person who is, by all accounts, a very intense individual.There is an almost limitless energy that flows through his playing,from the eerie sonic squiggles he teases the audience with in theopening seconds of Roll Over and Play Live!, to the bruising power chords heuses to finish off the closing "Wish In One Hand."