The Essential Richie Kotzen

This is an excellent value and well-balanced retrospective of Richie's middle period. Having entered the scene as a teenage prodigy guitarist on Mike Varney's Shrapnel label Kotzen started to develop his songwriting talents and make listeners pay attention to his excellent soulful and funky voice. This collection, as has been stated elsewhere, concentrates on his songs (see "The Shrapnel Years" for an overview of the best of his early instrumental masterworks) My first impression of Kotzen's singing was that his voice was exactly halfway between Glenn Hughes and David Coverdale without being quite as good or quite as powerful as either. Alright by me and lots of others! His original material is quite similar to Hughes also and it surprises me they haven't worked together (apart from Kotzen playing on Glenn's "Blues" LA Authority album from 1992 and Hughes doing a backing vocal on "Wave of Emotion"). He has been quite prolific as a solo artist in addition to work with the likes of Mr. Big and Poison and what you have here are basically his best songs of the noughties. He has recorded a couple of very fine new songs and rerecorded several others on acoustic guitar. The acoustic takes and a couple of demos make up Disc 2 but at less than 40 minutes he could easily have thrown in another handful of album tracks. These newer versions allow his voice more space and are very worthwhile as they highlight to an even greater extent how good a songwriter he is. Unlike a couple of the other reviewers I'd like to point out this isn't a collection of ballads (he has a CD of ballads on release) and there is some fiery guitar playing especially "Fooled Again" from "Go Faster" and lots of smouldering funk riffs like "Help Me" from "24 Hours". The package contains an 11 track DVD only one of which (Walk with Me) is included on the CD and several tracks are recorded live as a 3 piece. "My Angel" is a really lovely tune. The sound is fine throughout. The non-studio videos were not very expensive creations but the songs are a good cross-section of musical styles. On "Paying Dues" Richie plays everything on a very punchy track. Great bass solo in addition to the expected shredding passage. Minor complaint about the DVD - you have to either play all or keep going back to the menu to select songs i.e. skip to next track is not available. What's not covered is anything from The Winery Dogs except for demo versions of 2 tracks and there's no instrumental here so nothing from his releases with Greg Howe either. The double CD has 100 minutes of music with half an hour of acoustic guitar. The 2 demos are keyboard led and in pretty good sound. The DVD is best if you want Richie's rockier guitar playing "24 Hours" has fingers flying all over his fretboard at a great rate. Pity he omitted this track from the CDs as it is one of his best rockers. Same could be said for the following slow number "Larger Than Life" which should also be on the CD. Both this and "My Angel" are two very classy ballads and show how far Kotzen has come from the whizz kid axe slinger. Not all his songs are of this high quality and even though I love his gritty voice his funkier numbers are not that original. Overall this is a most comprehensive package which only just misses out on 5 stars by a whisker.

If you are looking for young Richie Kotzen shredding like in his early Shrapnel years, you're looking in the wrong place. If you're looking for Richie's vocal based blues and funky, rock and melodic music, mostly ballads, here you are.This essential album compiles Richie's best work from What Is (1998) onward and from his different bands/projects (Poison, Wilson Hawk, The Winery Dogs) and 2 new songs totalling 23 songs over 2 discs. After many many years, I got a proper double sized, 3 discs jewel case and thank god not that sleeve business. Most of my favourites - Bad Situation, Love Is Blind, Go Faster, Fooled Again, Chase It, Change, Larger Than Life, Lie To Me, High, Special, Fear, My Angel, Remember, Doing What The Devil Says To Do are included. The new tracks War Paint and Walk With Me are as good as any of these ones. The third DVD has 11 clips of music videos and live studio sessions.I knew Richie Kotzen as a guitarist of Poison and Mr Big. I was a big fan of his early Shrapnel Records' albums Richie Kotzen, Fever Dream and Electric Joy. I found him again in The Winery Dogs doing his best. I wanted to have what I was missing in between. There was just too many. About 22 albums. And I think this is just the perfect essential album to be in my collection. Richie Kotzen is an underrated guitar virtuoso, a charismatic singer and a very good song writer. If you don't know that, get this CD/DVD and know it.\m/,

Richie is one of rock music's best kept secrets. From Thrash Metal to Jazz to soulful ballads he doesn't disappoint. This collection is mostly blues/rock and ballads, the vast majority I already had copies of. A few tracks are different versions of previous releases and are well worth the cost of the CD on it's own. Throw in the DVD on the deluxe release and all your Christmases have come at once.

I have a lot of respect for Richie, and he deserves 5 stars for his skills, but I found this collection too focussed on slow songs. I prefer the hard edge he has in Winery Dogs and earlier work. This is mostly a bunch of slow (and beautiful) songs, and the guy can both sing and play like the best. But ok, 4 stars only for my taste.

I have recently been introduced to Richie Kotzen via Winery dogs and thought I would buy this album to get a broad spectrum of his work. This guy is a fantastic and accomplished guitarist, can't believe I have not come across him before.

This bloke should be a household name , unfortunatly the music business is very strange business indeed!

A great introduction to a range of Richie Kotzen's work for anyone that may not be aware of him.

i only bought it for the dvd as I've got rest of stuff off his albums apart from the 2 new tracks and yes war paint is good so the dvd it's pretty good could have been longer though the reworking of a few of other tracks are accoustic so don't like them I prefer electic stuff if your new to him it's worth the price but if like me you only wanted the dvd it's expensive