01	Flamenco A Go Go						05:16
	02	Cinecitta						04:58
	03	Our Man In Istanbul						06:13
	04	Letter to A Memory						05:19
	05	Feminova						03:51
	06	Velvet Cage						06:04
	07	Hanina						05:51
	08	Dementia						06:39
	09	Twilight In Your Hands						04:20
	10	Riviera						08:58
	11	Data						09:27

Released: 02/29/2000

AMG EXPERT REVIEW: Steve Stevens is well-known as one of the supreme architects of heavy rock & roll guitar, as his epic performances on Billy Idol's hits such as "White Wedding" and "Eyes Without a Face" readily attest. This solo album is a wonderful surprise. Stevens' explorations into classical and flamenco music will certainly catch a lot of people off guard, but that's probably precisely the point. Stevens wails and floats through the tracks here with a snake-like abandon, mostly on classical, nylon-string guitar. Flamenco.A.Go.Go also borders on being a dance record, and the rhythms and tempos will no doubt grab every listener. It's mostly an instrumental album, although there are a few wonderful vocal sections. In the end, you have a wondrous, exploratory album which presents one of the finest guitarists of the last 20 years flexing his muscles and stretching his creativity. Fabulous. - Matthew Greenwald

1. Flamenco a Go Go (Stevens) - 55:03
2. Cinecitta (Stevens) - 49:46
3. Our Man in Istanbul (Stevens) - 44:48
4. Letter to a Memory (Jones/Stevens) - 38:35
5. Feminova (Stevens) - 33:15
6. Velvet Cage (Ali/Ellis/Stevens) - 29:24
7. Hanina (Faudel/Stevens) - 23:19
8. Dementia (Stevens) - 17:28
9. Twilight in Your Hands (Stevens) - 10:48
10. Riviera '68 (Ellis/Stevens) - 6:28

Steve Stevens - Bass, Guitar, Keyboards, Producer, Engineer, Synth Guitar
Vinnie Colaiuta - Drums (Snare)
Greg Ellis - Flute, Percussion, Trumpet
Mike Esposito - Bass
Howard Jones - Piano
Armand Sabal-Lecco - Bass
Mark Schulman - Drums (Snare)
David Tickle - Mixing
Gota Yashiki - Loop
Cameron Stone - Cello
Faudel - Vocals
Martin Pradler - Mixing Assistant
Azam Ali - Voices
Takeshi Honda - Guitar
Fumiaki Nishiyama - Bass
Shyunichi Oshima - Keyboards

2000 CD Ark 21 810025
2001 DVA Digital Sound 1078

Steve Stevens - Biography

Nobody can make an electric guitar scream like Steve Stevens. When he came to fame as the instrumental foil for Billy Idol, he turned his six-string into a virtual special effect for songs like "White Wedding," "Flesh for Fantasy" and "Rebel Yell."

Not anymore. After several years of silence, Stevens introduces an entirely new sound and direction with Flamenco A Go-Go. It shouldn-t be a surprise to anyone who knows Steve-s history, since the legendary folk musician Phil Ochs was the first person to put a guitar into his hands. Not only has be traded his trusty electrics for a nylon-string acoustic guitar, but he took a total do-it-yourself approach to the project, recording it by computer in his home and playing almost all of the parts himself.

"I had kind of reached an end to playing real loud, aggressive stuff," says Stevens of his personal un-plugging process. After recording and touring with Motley Crue frontman Vince Neil in the mid-L90-s, Stevens felt burnt-out by the metal grind. "It really didn-t matter what I was playing," he says. "The audience wasn-t really listening."

However, in the 80-s, Stevens enjoyed great success with his electric formula. He appeared with the Thompson Twins as part of the historic Live Aid benefit concert, worked with Michael Jackson to create the controversial, but highly successful song, "Dirty Diana," and received music-s highest honor, a Grammy Award as Best Pop Instrumental Performance for the Top Gun soundtrack. Then came the 90-s.

Although the audiences during the Vince Neil tour weren-t listening, Stevens was ¦ to flamenco virtuoso Paco DeLucia. "I had gone to see Paco DeLucia play, and it was so powerful. It was like seeing Jimi Hendrix still alive," he says. "For me, Paco is the Jimi Hendrix of flamenco guitar."

Although Stevens had never been a flamenco player himself, hearing DeLucia reminded him of how great an influence flamenco had been on his early musical development. "One of my first guitar teachers was a flamenco guitarist," he says. He also remembered being blown away, as a teen at New York-s High School of Performing Arts, by classmate Mario Escodero, Jr., whose father played guitar for the Jose Greco Dance Company. "When this kid sat down and played, it was like a complete orchestra, right there on this one instrument," he recalls.

Excited and intrigued, Stevens decided to try to develop his own flamenco-style sound. "I just felt like, where else am I going to go?" he says. "I-d been making records since 1981, and I really needed to challenge myself musically. If you do something flash on flamenco guitar, it's listenable, and it's used in a passionate way." He laughs. "It really is like the speed metal of acoustic guitar music."

As he began to find his voice on acoustic, he was also experimenting with digital recording in his home studio, and suddenly the two things clicked. "It just seemed that flamenco, being such a rhythmic style of guitar playing, could live alongside drum loops and electronics and ambient sounds and things," he says. "I started experimenting with tracks, and it just really flowed. There was never a point where I was racked by having to come up with a good pop-style verse or something. It was really stream of consciousness writing, and the recording was almost cathartic in that it almost has a healing aspect about playing that instrument.

That "healing aspect" is immediately evident in the depth and melodic majesty of tracks like "Our Man in Istanbul" or "Riviera 68." Working with percussionist Greg Ellis, Stevens has no trouble tapping into the kinetic pulse of flamenco music, yet no matter how intense the rhythmic interplay gets, there-s always a strong melodic component to the music. It-s as if Stevens gets the best of both worlds.

Nor is he hampered by the sonic limitations of a nylon-string classical guitar. Thanks to the editing capabilities of digital recording, on "Letter to A Memory" and "Flamenco A Go-Go," Stevens was able to have his acoustic and make it sound electric, too.

"If you want to distort something, you can distort it afterwards," he says. "But all the tracks emanate from acoustic guitar. In some cases, I even have a MIDI flamenco guitar, which I use to trigger samples. I might trigger an electric guitar sound, but the actual instrument I-m playing on is still a nylon string guitar."

Between his playing, his writing, and his production, Stevens feels he has turned a corner, creatively. There is, he says, a musicality to flamenco that he never found in the hyped, over-amplified world of hard rock. "With the shred guitar thing, it always seems like I was playing to guys who were standing there with score cards or something," he says. "We weren-t creating an emotional event ¦ it was a gymnastic event."

With Flamenco A Go-Go, Stevens has created an emotional event, and is justifiably proud. "That-s my job as a guitarist," he says. "A guitar is the tool that I use to get what, emotionally is happening inside me, out.








Steve Stevens: Flamenco a-Go-Go
Ark 21 (286 910 025 2)
USA 1999

Steve Stevens, guitar, guitar synth, bass, keys; with Gota Yashiki, loops; Greg Ellis, percussion, trumpet, flute; Azam Ali, vocals; Howard Jones, piano; Mike Esposito, bass; Vinnie Colaiuta, drums; Cameron Stone, cello; Faudel, vocals; Mark Schulman, drums; Takeshi Honda, guitar; Fumiaki Nishiyama, bass; Shyunichi Oshima, keys; Armand Sabal-Lecco, bass

Tracklist:
1. Flamenco a-Go-Go - 5:16
2. Cinecitta - 4:58
3. Our Man in Istanbul - 6:14
4. Letter to a Memory - 5:19
5. Feminova - 3:51
6. Velvet Cage - 6:05
7. Hanina - 5:51
8. Dementia - 6:40
9. Twilight in Your Hands - 4:20
10. Riviera '68 - 6:29

total time 55:03

Brandon Wu:
Complaints from flamenco aficionados that "this isn't really flamenco" aside, this solo debut from the Bozzio-Levin-Stevens guitarist is quite entertaining. As anyone who's listened to either BLS album might expect, there's a large serving of really fast Spanish guitar picking on here, and a lot of it is really melodic and quite beautiful. Also unsurprisingly, there's a fair share of wankery, particularly on the live track "Dementia" which is just embarrassing in its gratuitous masturbatory soloing. But to be fair, Stevens keeps things reasonable for most of the rest of the album, and there are some really strong pieces - the opening track, "Cinecitta", and "Hanina" in particular.
With many of the songs, Stevens tries to combine his flamenco-styled picking with rock, jazz, and/or new age influences, with mixed results. In any case, one can't fault Stevens for not being adventurous. When he gets something right, it's great stuff; and the other efforts are good enough to warrant my recommendation of this album. I find the best stuff on here much more engaging than the comparable flamenco-guitar pieces on the Bozzio-Levin-Stevens albums.