“Grab your phone,” indeed! Tom Salvatori’s solo guitar Parlour Favorites is a delightful album that glances (with great beauty) at solo works like Steve Hackett’s Bay of Kings and Anthony Phillips’ Private Parts & Pieces, Vol 5: Twelve.
Now, the first allure of this record is the subtitle: Akkerman, Fripp, Hackett, Howe, Salvatori. Heck! I even braved my way through the arena/MOR/grist of that GTR album simply because it starred you-know-who from Yes and of course, the other you-know-who from Genesis! And bless me father, I once contemplated buying an Asia record, and also spent way too much time trying to wade the deep sonic waters of a Frippertronics soundscape, all the while still loving the Crimso stuff.
That all said, and bless me father once again, but my prog compass gets all wiggy at the prospect of new solo guitar renditions of my favorite acoustic tunes by these masters.
Just an observation: In the heyday of the 1970s, the quiet acoustic piece of guitar virtuosity was a near necessity amid the hurly-burly of any progressive-rock masterpiece. It was the eye of the musical hurricane. But, more importantly, that interlude should never have been of interest to a devotee of a tough backbeat, who considered Foghat’s “Slow Ride” to be “about as good as it gets”; but we all listened – because, well, these were cool prog records with a really cool (hopefully) Roger Dean cover.
And doors opened. Patience became a favorite color. Rock music enrolled in a liberal arts college. That was a big deal. Talk about a lunar moon shot. Before I knew it, John Renbourn’s Sir John Alot of Merrie Englandes Musyk Thyng & ye Grene Knyghte was spinning on my turntable! I even coughed up a few bucks to buy a Philips label Johann Sebastian Bach 3 Sonaten fur Viola Da Gamba & Cembalo (with an “Imported from Europe” sticker!).
Parlour Favorites re-ignites that favorite color of patience. And, as stated, Tom Salvatori ends the album with five renditions of classic tunes. First, Steve Hackett’s “Horizons” gets an exact treatment that doesn’t stray from the original. But (oh my!), “Hands of the Priestess” is stripped down to emotion and truly does conjure the breath of (to quote guitarist Ralph Towner) “the silence of a candle.”
Jan Akkerman’s “Le Clochard” is pretty much a mirror to the Moving Waves take, yet without the mellotron backing, the gentle melody oozes with pensive melodic meditation. Odd: Robert Fripp’s “Peace, a Theme” is a reminder of the great beauty found in the parenthesis of King Crimson’s early albums. This tune, of course, unified In the Wake of Poseidon, but Lizard and Islands had their acoustic moments in “Lady of the Dancing Water” and “Formentera Lady.” And finally, Steve Howe gets his due with the extended collage of “The Ancient / Mood for a Day” (with a bit of uncredited “Roundabout”), which injects a nice bit of bounced levity into all this profound prog acoustic stuff.
As does the packaging. The cover is an abstract guitar figure by Spanish artist Juan Gris, which is nice enough to grace any number of top-line classical record labels. But the album is stamped with a not-so-Sony – but rather, a “Sore Knee Classical,” and the high-brow Gramophone label has been altered into “Grab Your Phone” (hence the first line of this review!). And that’s part of really decent gist of this album: Despite all the technical wonder and delightful melodies played in these grooves, nice art is all about human beings attempting to plug (with grace and humor!) all the holes in the ever-bulging wall of sad history.
As my friend Kilda Defnut often says, “A really nice guitar solo is proof positive of evolution.” Now, the warm memories of those classic tunes are (sort or) like going back to Tintern Abby, or perhaps, re-reading that facsimile copy purchased long ago when visiting the site during a youthful literary pilgrimage! But the new acoustic pieces by Salvatori (which are the first six tunes on the album) stretch that very same colored patience, all over again. Yeah, it’s not all about “Living in the Past” as Ian Anderson sang on Jethro Tull’s popular single.
So, fast forward to the Salvatori’s new tunes played by yet another guitar virtuoso. Well, the “Summer Suitino in G Major” (divided into a three part “suite”!) is a “slow ride” through its own woven tapestry of acoustic guitar charm, and to make a ’70s musical reference, the music sounds like a lengthy interlude in the middle of The Amazing Blondel’s big Fantasia Lindum epic side-long song. That’s high praise!
There are more contemplative autumnal tunes. “What Is Said and Done” meanders like a contemplative river in the Peter Cross cover art for an Anthony Phillips album where time stands still. “Low Tide,” too, is deliberate and patiently carves a melodic statue captured in mid Renaissance dance step.
The lovely “Wandering” touches the stars with an insistent mystery, not unlike early Genesis’ quiet instrumentation on the Trespass song “Dusk.” “Native Land” ups the tempo with a melody that cascades with happy cadence of the certainty of lovers’ first exchanged glances. This music paints delightful pictures.
And “Looking Back” is a gorgeous retrospective glimpse at perhaps those old prog melodies that fired youthful brain synapses and opened doors to music that snapped ancient “3 Sonaten fur Viola da Gamba & Cembalo” fingers (embossed with that “Imported from Europe” sticker!). Yet, because rock ‘n’ roll youth is an eternal itch, those same fingers still plug the jukebox so as to hear Foghat’s glorious guitar boogie of “Slow Ride,” just one more time. Yes, indeed, as Genesis once sang long ago, “more fool me.”
Or, as the label says, (indeed!) “grab your phone” – and, by the way, I’m really sorry about that “sore knee”!
It’s all (sort of) like what Henry David Thoreau said: “I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there.” You know, leave the comfortable featherbed.
All the quiet acoustic pieces of prog guitar virtuosity were quite wondrous way back then. They are warm thoughts. But, thankfully, Tom Salvatori’s Parlour Favorites “leaves the woods” where they were, and is a vibrant and continuous prayer that still vibrates with the infinite simplicity of the very acoustic and always melodic human heart.
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