GTR

Giuffria Digitally remastered import reissue of the 1984 album from Giuffria, led by former Angel keyboardist (and future House Of Lords member) Greg Giuffria and featuring Craig Goldy (Dio), David Glen Eisley (Stream) and Chuck Wright (Quiet Riot). One of the most under-rated Hard Rock ...	GTR Steve Howe and Steve Hackett's GTR was one of the shortest-lived supergroups, releasing only one album in 1986 and breaking up a year later. During that year, they gave a handful of concerts, and this King Biscuit Flower Hour CD captures their virtues quite well, arguably eve...	Phoenix Asia's eponymously titled debut album in 1982 was both ecstatically received and the biggest selling album of the year. It spawned a trio of US top 10 singles in "Heat of the Moment", "Only Time Will Tell" and "Sole Survivor." Over the greater part of the 80s, Asia racked up 15 ...	Asia	Silk and Steel First ever release on CD, includes the bonus track, 'Say It Ain't True'. Digitally remastered limited and numbered edition. Standard jewel case housed in a slipcase. 2000 release.
Girls With Guns	Last of the Runaways Giant featured the late Van Stephenson of Blackhawk on backing vocals and keyboards. The Huffs writing and playing comes through on this album and their other two albums for different labels that track the band from their California beginnings to their Nashville sessions with jus...	Orion the Hunter	Fly on the Wall	The Very Best of Saga

Guitars for a New Wave
The short-lived progressive rock supergroup - one album and tour - featured guitar stars Steve Howe and Steve Hackett working with cutting-edge technology to develop synthesizer sounds on their instruments. Along with Max Bacon (v), Phil Spalding (b) and Jonathon Mover (d), the 1986 album had a nice run on the Billboard chart - peaking at #11 - and yielded a pair of singles, When the Heart Rules the Mind & The Hunter. Balancing FM radio play and experimenting with the sound that could be produced in the studio, numbers like You Can Still Get Through, Toe the Line and Hackett to Bits demonstrate that GTR had a blueprint to a concept that had potential, but ultimately never given the proper time to reach fruition.

Nadir of 2 great guitarists
When I saw this album with these 2 great artists, I was excited and bought it quickly. After listening to it I am greatly disappointed. This album appears to be an attempt to have a success like Asia. The qualities that make these guitarists great are not apparent. If I had heard this without knowing who it was I would have never suspected. It is almost undiluted pop-rock-shlock from the 80s. Only two songs are bearable, "Sketches in the Sun" and "Hackett to bits." Sketches is a lyrical acoustic-type song played on electric guitar. Hackett is a slightly altered version of Steve Hackett's "Please don't touch" on the album of the same name. That album and that version of the song are far superior. This is much more akin to Asia, Journey, or Boston than to King Crimson, Yes, or Gentle Giant. If you're looking for an undiscovered progressive gem, look elsewhere. This isn't it.

Not great, not terrible
I don't think there's any question that GTR was a "sell-out," at least for Hackett. I bought this because of being a Genesis/Hackett fan, but it doesn't really sound like Hackett's work. Even his "solo" moment ("Hackett To Bits") is just a recycling of a piece ("Please Don't Touch") from one of his own early albums. Overall, the singing & writing isn't great or terrible. The lyrics aren't cliched, just rather incoherent (a common problem when Hackett has tried to go "pop") - in fact, songs like "Reach Out" could have been much stronger just by having better lyrics. Another song with potential that it doesn't live up to is "Jekyll And Hyde," which underplays the musically catchy verses and overplays the uninteresting chorus. I didn't originally like "Toe The Line" (which seems to have been mostly Howe's work, and I'm not a Howe fan), but it's grown on me. Oddly, despite the band's name and theme, this is not really a guitar-oriented album. Hackett doesn't seem to have had his heart in this band, or this album. But he seems to have had a lot to do with this album's best song, "Imagining." I think he can be proud of that achievement, at least. (in fact, he's been known to include a snippet of the song in his live medleys). Whatever its faults, this album has its moments, so I find it worth a listen now and then.

Excellent album
I originally picked this album when it was released back in the 80's, and was blown away by the talent on this album. This album showcases the guitar skills of both Steve Hacket and Steve Howe, and is filled with some over the top by both of them, and a highly polished album. While some have complained about this album and any other "super group from the 80's, this is one album worth picking up and adding to your collection. It is a shame the group did not continue with another album, but at least there is this one to enjoy.

A One Of A Kind Masterpiece.
I've never understood people's objection to slick sounding records. This one in particular seems to come under a lot of criticism for having that quality, but I ask you, what were the classic Yes and Genesis albums of antiquity? With their spacious keyboards, airy vocal harmonies and intricately constructed studio orchestrations, they were nothing if not slick. Take away the labyrinthine, movement-based structures and you have some nice, catchy melodies (albeit with lyics about mountains coming out of the sky and standing there.) GTR pares down the prog-rock structures of yore to create radio-ready anthems slightly more sophisticated than you'd hear from the likes of Asia or 80s Genesis, and festoons them with nifty duel-guitar filigrees that far outstrip anything that was being played on the radio at the time (Journey, Saga, Huey Lewis, etc.) Add the earnest, ceiling-scraping vocals and a solid rhythm section, and you have a package that has withstood the rigors of fickle trends and changing tastes. The album's opening salvo, "When the Heart Rules The Mind," is a fitting manifesto for what follows, molding it's bold vocal melody around an ever-shifting core of chameleonic guitar textures. Besides the expected acoustic break in the middle, we are treated for no discernable reason to a bizarre fanfare sounding like it was lifted straight out of a gladiator film-- proof that the front-duo of veteran guitarists are bold explorers and not callow ex-proggers searching for a hit. The rest of the album follows suit, inserting moments of sideways brilliance into strident 80s rock songs. The only weak spot is the lone ballad, "Toe The Line," with its lyrical paean to swimming with the tide bourne on a slow-moving barge of steel-guitars and aimless melodies. Luckily, the one-two punch of the instrumental "Hackett to Bits" and the epic "Imagining" are close behind to dazzle with confident virtuosity and close the album on a high note. It would have been nice to hear a follow-up to this misunderstood gem, but perhaps it's best for it to stand on it's own, a unique and and splendid oddity without precedent or posterity.