Tag: Carl DeMarco

Takara – ‘Eternity: The Best of 93-98’ (1998) – Album Review (The Jeff Scott Soto Series)

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After Takara’s third album, The label decided to release a greatest hits compilation of those first three albums. Jeff Scott Soto was no longer a member of the band…okay…he was never an “official” member of the band even though he sang on three albums with them. Now that the band needed to search for a new singer, the label wanted to release this to hold fans over until that process was done. Neal Grusky’s search for a replacement would take a little while as their follow-up album didn’t come out until 2001 with Michael James Flatters as their new singer.

This compilation had 16 tracks and was released on November 18, 1998. If you have the Japanese Edition, you get two additional acoustic tracks as well which is always a plus. However, I think you get those two acoustic tracks on every edition so it isn’t that special…although I don’t think they were ever previously released. You also get the ever cherished OBI Strip along with a booklet with lyrics in both English and Japanese. As far as a breakout between albums you get 5 tracks from the debut, ‘Eternal Faith’, 6 from the follow-up ‘Taste of Heaven’ and 5 from the final Soto album, ‘Blind in Paradise’. The songs are in chronological order and even in the same order they were on the album so not much thought was put in to sequencing for this release. But it is a money grab, so what do you expect.

“Spotlight” kicks it all off and is the first of five tracks from ‘Eternal Faith’. It sounds like you are right back in 1985 with the keyboards and heavy guitar riffs. It is Bon Jovi meets Europe. The album sounds so dated in the 80’s which is not where the music scene was going in 1993!! It has the obligatory guitar solo and Jeff’s vocals have that higher register tone which was key for 80’s rock. The biggest problem is the keyboards are high in the mix and sound like crap. They have this crisp, clink, clink sound to them which I find rather annoying. But not too much that I don’t enjoy the song…more a production note.

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Takara – ‘Blind in Paradise’ (1998) – Album Review (The Jeff Scott Soto Series)

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Takara had 2 albums in the can with Jeff never really being an official member. He was always doing the vocals to help promote the band and hopefully giving them a chance to find a new singer. The third album was written and the music was laid down back in December 1996. The tapes were sent to Jeff and it took almost a year for Jeff to finish the vocals as he was so busy with The Boogie Knights. You might ask yourself, why did the band wait for Jeff. Well according to Neil Grusky, there was no one as good as Jeff. And that might be true, but was it worth it? Probably not as the band never really took off and never found success with or without Jeff. Without a full commitment from Jeff and the band not finding another singer, they were really destined for nothing.

Three years after the release of their second album, ‘Taste of Heaven’, the new album ‘Blind in Paradise’ was finally released. The band consisted of Jeff Scott Soto on vocals, Neal Grusky on guitar, Carl Demarco on bass, Eric Rango on keyboards and Robert Duda on drums. The band continued their AOR sound and being 1998, it is a very dated sound for even that time as this album reeks of the 80’s. I’m not saying that is a bad thing…it just isn’t really a good thing.

My copy is a cool one I think as I have the Japanese version. It comes with the prized OBI strip and even a postcard to join their MVP Supporting Club. The booklet is half in English and half in Japanese which better than getting two separate books. It also has two bonus tracks and that is really why we want the Japanese Edition is those bonus tracks. If you look at the song titles, you see a lot of numbers or letters replacing words. Soto is huge fan of Prince and Prince did that a lot so Soto thought if it was good enough for Prince, it is good enough for him. Now, enough about this version, let us get to the music.

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Takara – ‘Taste of Heaven’ (1995) – Album Review (The Jeff Scott Soto Series)

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When we reviewed Takara’s ‘Eternal Faith’ album a few weeks back, we mentioned that Jeff Scott Soto said he wasn’t a member of Takara and did it as a favor. Well, a couple years later we are back with the second Takara album and who is singing? It is a Mr. Jeff Scott Soto, of course. After the band had such success in Japan with ‘Eternal Faith’, the Japanese record company wanted another album and would only do it with Jeff on vocals. Jeff didn’t want to let his good friend, Neal Grusky, down and be the reason his buddy lost his record contract, so Jeff being the man he is agreed to do vocal duties again as well as Produced, Engineered and Mixed the album. When Jeff says he’s going to help out, there is no half-assing it for him.

The band had more money to produce this record then the measly $2,500 for the last so we do get better production quality…plus Jeff was getting better at it. The biggest difference is that Jeff’s friend Greg Schutt was no longer on bass. Duties were handled by Carl DeMarco. There were two songs that the bass was done by Bob Daisley from Ozzy and Rainbow fame which is pretty cool, but Carl was the now official band member. On drums, we still had Robert Duda and Neal Grusky on guitar as expected. There are also some keyboard elements done by none other than Jeff’s then girlfriend Julie Greaux, of course!

The album was released on May 24, 1995 in Japan and went to #96 on their national charts, so not bad at all. The version I have is the Canadian Release from 1995 but the CD has 1993. That isn’t the only mistake the CD has as it also called the last song “Lonely Sade of Blue” omitting the “h” in Shade. Oops! Good quality control goes a long way. Let’s get to the music, shall we!

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