Anyone who thinks the steel drums are limited to calypso and other native West Indian styles has obviously never heard Andy Narell or his collaborators on this disc, the French band Calypsociation. Narell's compositions take the music headlong into jazz, and the richness of the steel pan sound ripples and sways throughout. For added flavor and texture, guests Michael Brecker, Paquito D'Rivera, and Hugh Masekela bring their horns, but they're the icing on a swinging cake (full praise to the percussionists who make the whole ensemble swing). The music is deliciously complex without ever sounding it. It works just as well on slower pieces like "Song for Mia," where the drums create a latticework of melody that remains gorgeously balanced. Granted, at times it veers perilously close to smooth jazz, but then it always steers faultlessly as far as melody is concerned.

After giving Clarke's fans a taste of some live tapes of the School Days band on I Wanna Play for You, Epic waited until 1991 to put another batch of them out, well after it would have been commercially feasible to do so. But no matter, for this CD captures one of Clarke's best electric bands – maybe his best band, period – in a number of gigs in the U.S. and U.K., mixing up the jazz, funk, and rock into a high-energy, musically literate brew. A lot of this album recycles then-existing material, but the live conditions add flashes of spontaneity and sometimes considerable interest to jazz fans.

Long before the mid 80's when this album was recorded Stanley Clarke had more than proven himself as a major league musician in terms of not only his base playing but as a member of Return To Forever and his session work with members Flora Purim as well as his famous collaborations with George Duke. On this album he takes a break from the strong electro funk flavored Time Exposure to do something just a little different. True that modern style of production is still very much in play but with drummer Rayford Griffin and keboardists Sunnie Paxon and Duke alumni Robert Brookins he decided to work that style of groove into a far more pop/R&B oriented formula that while it took it's cues from the previous albums is far lighter on the instrumental fusion influences and stronger on the 80's techno-funk/pop/hip-hop end of things.