STEVE STEVENS - The New Wave Of Classic Rock Page 3
by Martin Popoff

"Nothing really too fancy, no, but the fact of where the title of the record comes from, is about whenever my computer would crash or something, and I would be frustrated and I thought, well, I'm just going to call the record that, and turn a negative into a positive. A roadblock or whatever. But not really. I kept thinking, I'm not an engineer, so I kept it as basic as possible recording. I didn't EQ anything and didn't have anywhere where I thought I might run into technological phase problems; I avoided them and kind of left them to the mix engineer, and I thought, if I can get things sounding good without adding EQ... you know, it's got to come at the source. You've got to have a good guitar and a good amp and the right part."

Asked to explain the origins of some of the interesting titles on the album, Steve divulges that "'Water On Ares' was written the day that... I was watching CNN, and they had announced that they'd found water on Mars. So this was pretty astounding. Ares is another name for Mars, so I used that for a title. 'Joshua Light Show' was the original light show that was shown at the Fillmore, behind... anytime you see this old footage of the Grateful Dead or something, and they have the colours, those kind of trippy molten colours, that's the Joshua Light Show. And I always thought it was kind of a cool thing to give homage to that. 'Small Arms Fire' was inspired by friend of mine who is a photographer. We had lunch, and he had been embedded with the troops in Iraq for the last six months, and he was just explaining to me what it was like."

Elsewhere there's a cover of Robin Trower's 'Day Of The Eagle' featuring Dug Pinnick from King's X on vocals, and here and there, there are nods to Steve Howe, Queen, additional Trower, and quite amusingly, Robert Fripp from King Crimson...

STEVE STEVENS - The New Wave Of Classic Rock Page 4