Consumer Guide Album

Johnny Winter: Saints and Sinners [Columbia, 1974]
I think what puts me off this otherwise searing assertion of rock and roll prowess is the engineering. Rick Derringer has done the standard live-sound job, in which echo is amplified into unnatural "depth," and theoretically that's fine. The average live-sound band is too busy doing promotional tours for its current album to worry about material for the next, but here the songs are lovingly chosen--there's even a good one from the pitiful Richard Supa. Rock and roll the way Johnny likes it, however, was meant to have a human dimension, and since he has trouble projecting irony or intimacy anyhow, a lot of these die a little when Derringer mixes them into heavy cuts. B