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Steve Booke: Rare Earth (CD, 71:21); Earth Tones Music, ET-0916

	Give a guy an acoustic guitar, open tunings, a solid percussionist, David Penna, to 
accompany him and he can drone and raga strum nearly indefinitely. Harmonics thrown in, 
rhythmic changes, syncopation, mini-riffs, a pull off here, a hammer-on there, slides, open chords 
banging, and that adrenalin gets going. Remember Woodstock and Havens� �Freedom, freedom!� 
and his power strumming?
	This kind of flowing, strum-drenched, abandon made Tibbetts and Hedges happy campers. 
Yet Tibbetts, Hedges, and others had many more fascinating tricks up their sleeves and threw in 
an electric lead flourish when necessary. But Booke remains endlessly acoustic and loves to 
strum. On �Alone�, track four, the strumming ceases and a beautifully melancholy, fingerpicked 
piece calls to mind Anthony Phillips. A welcome break from marathon strumming! Next three 
tracks -- more strumming and percussion. Track nine, �Tears�, brings us back to fingerpicking 
delights and another strumless respite. Alex De Grassi seems influential here. The remaining 
tracks, ten through fourteen, are -- you guessed it -- Booke strumming his heart out, chord 
change upon chord change, callouses upon callouses. 
	Frankly, I tired very quickly of the �sameness� that saturated my headphones. Booke is a 
competent rhythm guitarist yet lacks a needed element -- variety. Easily, at least a couple solos 
dubbed in somewhere -- guitar, flute, synth wash, a bass solo or even violin, would have sufficed 
to add interest from song to song. Penna�s creative percussives were exceptional but couldn�t lift 
Booke�s strumming above that unavoidable monotony, inherent in many exclusively acoustic 
guitar releases. On the other hand, if you want that droning, strumming wash of acoustic guitar 
playing, to relax away the hours or to jam with, then Booke�s Rare Earth is for you.
	~ John W. Patterson



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