Birdland

04/07/2003 4:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Bill Holdship

It's a pleasant album, that's for sure. But if Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney decided to tour together with two new players, it wouldn't be the Beatles. When Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey toured together last summer, some people may have considered that the Who. But if John Entwistle and Keith Moon were still around to tour and they did it without the founding guitarist and singer, no one would consider that the Who. So even though Jeff Beck shows up to add his guitar to the new "My Blind Life," it's extremely hard to consider this a genuine Yardbirds reunion. After all, drummer Jim McCarty and rhythm guitarist Chris Dreja were both on hand (as was Beck for one tune) for a 1983 major label project called Box Of Frogs that also included founding bassist Paul Samwell-Smith--and that wasn't billed as the Yardbirds. So what's different here? Well, at least half of the album is comprised of fine-but-unnecessary remakes of the band's '60s classics, featuring guest guitarists that span from cool (Slash) to technical wankers (Steve Vai, Joe Satriani--both actually come off relatively tasteful here) to questionable (Goo Goo Doll Johnny Rzeznik is unfortunately somewhat annoying doing the vocals on "For Your Love"). Keith Relf, the dead guy who originally sang the song, is acknowledged on the final track, "An Original Man (A Song for Keith)." Like everything else here, it's pleasant... but still questionable as to whether it merits the full "Yardbirds reunion" hype, although aficionados will most surely want to hear the Beck contribution for historicity’s sake, if nothing else.