Schenker
Pattison Summit-The Endless Jam

September 2004
Released: 2004, Shrapnel
Rating: 2.5/5
Reviewer: JP

Covering The Covers



This is part of small five CD review feature I like to call ‘Covering the Covers’. Love ‘em or hate ‘em tribute CD’s and cover tune CD’s are here to stay. I personally enjoy covers for the most part as long as I like at least the band doing the covering or the bands being covered. Here is a very quick round up of five recently released cover CD’s including, L.A. Guns, Michael Schenker, Kevin Dubrow, George Lynch and Heathen



Michael shows his age a bit with the choices on this disc. Not a bad thing but being a few years younger I only recognized one of the eleven cover tunes on this disc. Maybe I’m showing MY age! Mr. Schenker teams up with a couple of dudes from Robin Trowers band and an old UFO buddy Ansley Dunbar on drums and bust out a batch of tunes from the 60’s and 70’s.



Another Shrapnel production, we are presented with fairly streamlined packaging, but as always top quality sound. As I’m not familiar with the original versions of songs by bands like The Yarbirds, Free, Mountain and so on I just enjoyed the tunes for what they were, namely classic melodic hard rock performed by veterans. Not knowing the originals I am probably missing some of the nuances but I did notice that the super extended end portion of ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ was phenomenal. It did indeed sound like an endless jam.



I don’t know how much of this was truly a ‘jam’ but it sounds good and I’ve always been a fan of Schenker so balanced with the fact the songs were unfamiliar it is like a whole CD of new songs. The Endless Jam has great individual performances on some aging classics by some aging rockers but just didn’t do it for me.