Let It Ripp!

Let It Ripp!

There may not be a serious smooth jazz fan alive who, even on first hearing, wouldn't recognize the band playing the title track. Such is the compositional imprint guitarist and leader Russ Freeman has left on the genre. On the other hand, his writing style, even the way he voices his music and the overall sound of his band, has been so imitated and saturated that the Rips just being the Rips has almost become a smooth jazz cliché. This is just another Rippingtons album, but is that a bad thing? For this release, Freeman and his boys did add a real horn section, arranged by the ubiquitous Jerry Hey, instead of multi-layered keyboard pads, and on solos the band has turned the ripping up just a tad, particularly keyboardist Bill Heller on "Mr. 3." On two tracks, buried deep in the album, "Stingray" and "17 Mile Drive," the Ripps do let it rip. On those tunes, the band is saying "this is what we could do and where we can go," but on most of this album, they're saying "this is what we have to do because so many Rippingtons fans have been down this old, comfortable road with us before." <I>--Mark Ruffin</I>