*** Review ***

(Lone Guitar Pub. MA13 1005)

Like his namesake Ron, Mike Anthony is a leading player whose mature, melodic and inventively tasteful playing has been eclipsed by the fickle fashions that come and go like the east wind. Players like Mike and Ron are too readily taken for granted, overlooked by major record companies and perceived as old-fashioned by young guitar fans force-fed a diet of Metheny and Scofield through the many guitar playing magazines that adorn the shelves

One thing is for certain, there is no short cut to experience, and this is made abundantly clear by Mike Anthony's classy playing on NATURAL INSTINCTS.

The entire CD is dedicated to Barney Kessel, but it could just as easily have been dedicated to Howard Roberts, for Anthony's style appears to come from an amalgam of these two masters. His chord playing is remarkably like Kessel's, whereas his method of breaking a solo into segments, e.g. octaves, single lines and block chords, mirrors Roberts' improvisational approach. Wes Montgomery used a similar strategy, but Wes' use of octaves was more extensive, and he didn't run between single lines and block chords in the course of a single phrase; a Howard Roberts trademark.