CD Review: Axe Of God
By: Charlie X

This self- produced CD by Pennsylvania guitarist Charlie X is a showcase of several musical styles, among them jazz, rock, classical, and folk idioms. And while Mr. X is adept in all of them, he might have better represented himself by grouping the disparate material on a few different discs, giving some thought to how all this versatility would hang together as a package.

From the writings on his web page at www.CharlieX.org  I learned that one of the things he hopes to do with his music is to open up the ears of the rock audience by "rockifying" jazz classics, which he does very capably with Tunisia. The Dizzy Gillespie classic features a credible rendering of the famous Parker alto break and is the strongest thing on the disc for my money. It would indeed fill the bill for generating interest with rock fans. Other rock tunes that appear on Axe are Charlie X originals, good tunes that might benefit from a bit more production and some side people, as is the way with most rock music.

A visit to www.CharlieX.org  is worth the trip; if like me, you are interested in musical discourse. Charlie is not shy about expressing his views on the music business, the pointlessness of (some) live performance and his philosophy on why he plays in the first place.

Richard Mayer  September 2004

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