Shadow Company

For those fans still incapable (or unwilling) to accept Deep Purple guitar legend Ritchie Blackmore's defection from heavy metal glory into the acoustic renaissance music of Blackmore's Night, perhaps this double live album will finally drive the reality home. Recorded in May 2002, Past Times with Good Company (named after a traditional folk song written by none other than King Henry VIII) finds the obdurate guitarist and his conversely charming sparring partner and wife, vocalist Candice Night, performing before a few hundred friends in the Netherlands…

According to the press biography disseminated with advance copies of Gato Barbieri's Peak Records debut, The Shadow of the Cat, he was nearing 70 at the time of this release (previous published accounts would have put him at only 67) and this is the 50th album on which he is either featured or is the leader. One cannot, then, reasonably expect the old cat to have learned new tricks. Nor has his new label required him to; the company, run by contemporary jazz guitarist Russ Freeman, specializes in a melodic, commercial style of jazz. Producer Jason Miles (whose previous clients include Miles Davis and Luther Vandross) seems to have aimed at re-creating the sound of Barbieri's mid-'70s albums for A&M Records…