• AllMyVinyl #140
• Band: The Steve Morse Band
• Album Title: The Introduction
• Release Date: ? 1984
• Date purchased: 26 Nov 2022
• Location purchased: Half Price Books
• Color of vinyl: black
• Number of discs: 1
• Links: [ Wikipedia | Discogs | Band Website | Complete album on Youtube ]

This album is one that in years past I would have never paid any attention to.  Certainly not if it wasn’t for Deep Purple.  I first found out about Steve Morse back in 1986 when Kansas put out their “Power” album.  Before that I had never heard of Morse.  I never knew of the Dixie Dregs, so I can’t speak to anything with them.  It was Kansas’ Power album that brought Morse to my attention.  Worked well, as one of my all time favorite Kansas songs comes from that album – “Silhouettes In Disguise“.  It’s a killer track, and one I wish more people knew about.

Jump forward a few years later, and after Ritchie Blackmore left Deep Purple (for good), they got Joe Satriani in to play some gigs, and when it came time for the next album, Joe wasn’t going to stay.  Deep Purple hired Steve Morse as the new guitarist for Deep Purple.  At the time I remember thinking “Oh, the guy from Kansas!”.  They played a couple of gigs right after he was announced – one of which was in Corpus Christi Texas – I actually SAW that gig – was on 26 Nov 1994.

Anyway, in the fall of 2022 after Steve Morse was announced to no longer be in Deep Purple, I was walking around a Half Price Books one day as you do..  Flipping through the vinyl, and I saw the album in the racks.  Obviously by this point with eight studio albums with Purple, I was well versed with his stuff by now.  So I was rather interested in this one, and picked it up.  Especially because it was just $5, and it was in fair shape.   Most of the time when you’re in Half Price Books you don’t see anything your’e SUPER interested in. But this time I was.   Checked the credit, and found out it was before his time in Kansas, so this was new to me.

I’d never owned this in the past in any format ever, so a total new thing for me.

The entire album is an instrumental.  The lineup is dominated by Steve.  He plays guitar on all tracks except one (Albert Lee on Track 2).  He plays synths on all tracks except one (Rod Morgenstein on track 6).  Steve plays none of the piano, bass, or drums, but for me it kinda feels like “close to a true solo album”.  A weird perception.  The album itself is short – the entire thing is 33:52 mins long which is length of 70’s rock albums.  Speaking of “rock album”…  The album charted at #15 on Billboard’s Jazz Albums chart, which is odd, as this is a rock album.  I wonder how this was marketed back in the day.  Is there anyone reading this who has any insight into the OG marketing of this album?

Because the entire album is an instrumental, it’ll be hard to write about IMO.  We’ll see.

Cruise Missile – Fast paced track.  It instantly gets me tapping my toes from the start.   It starts fast and picks up speed.  I’m not talking thrash levels here, but it’s got a very solid fast pace, that only breaks for short parts, for what I also call a fast bass solo section.  There’s also a short section of keys which makes you go “Oh yeah, this came out in the mid 80’s”.  Has a touch of “that” sound to it, but not too bad.  The bulk of this song is dominated by Steve’s fast guitar sound.  Good stuff.  Rarely stopped tapping my toes to this.  Killer start to the album.

General Lee – This one starts off with a guitar sound that dances in the neighborhood of country “twang”.  We’re not talking Garth Brooks level stuff here, but I could easily see it going that way if either played by a real country artist, or Steve just wanted to push it in that direction.  Once again, another track with some great guitar work, but sounds quite different to the track before it.  Some of the bass stuff here sounds like something out of Glenn Hughes’ playbook.  And the country angle of this makes me think the General Lee title is definitely sourced from The Dukes of Hazzard (that show was still going when this song came out).

The Introduction – This one is a slower pace than the two that preceded it.  A more fluid sound that permeates this track.  By no means does it sound slow at all.  But it isn’t like the first two, which actually is a good thing.  Three songs, three different vibes.  From an aural standpoint, this reminds of something that late 70’s Journey would have done – right before they got mega huge.  Has that same kind of vibe to it.  Probably not the most in your face track on the album, but they don’t all have to be.  Steve sounds great here, too.

VHF (Vertical Hair Factor) – Starts off with a drum sound that’s unlike anything else on the album to this point.  This is the first track that I haven’t been really into.  While I don’t think it’s bad, it doesn’t really light me up musically.  The underlying beat and base sound is something I’ve heard in a ton of other bands.  The title is amusing, though.  Steve’s actual solo was pretty good, but the rest of the song was just kind of “there”.  Song ends with a long single note fadeout, something that seemed to be more for the end of an album, not just the end of the first side.

On the Pipe – Another song that starts off with a riff that seems culled from a country guy’s playbook.  Good riff, though.  The rhythm section is very 80’s on this track.  That country riff kind of disappears though – and the rest is a faster paced rock track with an 80’s sound to it.  Can’t decide if I like this or not – kind of on the fence here as I listen to it.  Once I stopped trying to think about what to write about this track, and just took in the music more, I found I was enjoying it – doing the bass drum kick with no drum there at my desk – so yeah, I guess I liked it once I stopped thinking about not being sure if I liked it – haha.  Had a hard cut ending which I like more than fadeouts.

The Whistle – The slow track.  There’s no traditional guitar sound here like you hear on the rest of the album.  Sounds like something created for a movie soundtrack.  A synth heavy track for sure.  It feels like the kind of song I’ve seen placed first on albums as an “intro” piece or something.  It’s not bad just doesn’t do much for me.  There’s no toe tapping here.

Mountain Waltz – This song is yet again a different vibe – dances into jazz territory at time which could explain the appearance on jazz charts?  But it’s mostly just the piano work in the song.  This was one that unlike On The Pipe, I wasn’t thinking about this at all, and was just letting the song come to me at start, but then it was nearly over and realized “Oh crap, I have to say something”.   Piano work is a nice different sound, which when combined with Steve’s usual great guitar work created a pleasing sound.  I don’t see a “waltz” in this as such, but instrumental song names can often be odd.  Hello Satch and your “Mystical Potato Head Groove Thing”.  :)

Huron River Blues – This song is the longest on the album (at 6:12), but it’s broken down into three separate parts, each with their own names.  they are “Dark Water, Water Under the Bridge, & Toxic Shuffle”.  Usually when I see something like this, it’s three separate musical ideas that are relatively short on their own, but put together make a proper song length.  That’s kind of what’s going on here.   One of the parts has a guitar sound that sounds like what Joe Walsh used to do.  Also, I found in he middle listening to this, I think it’s a song that I could EASILY have seen Deep Purple tackling.  Morse was a good number of years away from joining Purple when he made this (heck, he hadn’t been through Kansas yet), but the bulk of this one has a Purple live jam feel to it.  Good stuff.

As I mentioned earlier, this album was a total unknown to me when I spotted it in the rack at Half Price Books.   It was a total roll of the dice, as I didn’t know what was on here, but heck, I’ve bought coffees that have cost more than this album cost me.  There’s some great stuff on here.  It’s a bit short at 33 mins.  When it ended, I found myself wishing the album had a couple more tracks – he could have added two more tracks to this at the average length on this album and still brought it un under 40 mins.  Oh well, I guess ‘Leave ’em wanting more”, eh?

If you’re not a fan of Steve Morse, then I don’t see where you’d find a lot on this, but if you don’t know him, and like good guitar work, check it out.  There’s some good stuff on here.  A few parts are bit too influenced by that mid 80’s synth sound, but it’s not THAT bad, really.

Enjoyable album and a great pull from a random HPB visit.

One final remark.  I can’t find the real release date for this. Best I can find is “1984” – not even a month.  The album itself in the fine print says (c) 1984, and his next solo album came out in 1985, so I’m pretty confident in 1984 there.  If anyone reading this has any hard proof to the date, let me know.  Spotify’s listing for the album says 5 Mar 1985, but I find that unlikely.