Album Review: Misha Calvin, “Evolution”

Listening to the creative, exuberant six string talent of Yugoslavian-born Misha 'The Hat' Calvin is a welcome antidote to these tired, grunge-infected ears.

His self-produced meisterwerk Evolution is a masterful melting pot of old school, traditional rock styling, with a contemporary edge. Vocalists Tony Martin (Black Sabbath) and Ian Parry (Vengeance) are esteemed 'players' and add solid theory to the Calvin equation as the sharp shooting hook of Strangers, the soulful wrench of Put A Little Faith In Me and the crowning glory of Heaven Only Knows pull the aces in a pack served with soloing that is fluid and heartfelt, never falling into extravagant self-indulgence.

In a current climate of angst-ridden Neanderthal regression devoid of melody Evolution holds many a missing link. GRADE A

Mark Crampton
Riff Raff
August 1993

Revenge...?

Riff Raff was a legendary rock magazine based in London in the late 1980s and 1990s. Edited by the ultimate music biz insider, Mark Crampton, and employing such talents as Mark Blake, Jerry Ewing, Mike Harris, Paul Smith, Chris Collingwood, Alan McCrorie, Simon Robinson, Lyn Guy, Anna Marx, Nick Douglas, Marion Garden, Peter "Grunty" Grant, Joe "The Crow" Mackett, Billy "The Kluck" Kulke, and, lastest and mostest, the incredible Liddell Brothers, Mark (a.k.a. "El Perro") and Colin (a.k.a. "Der Fly"). Unfortunately, Riff Raff was just too R n' R for its own good. A genuine working class rock mag, written, edited, and translated into 16 European languages in a drug-N-Jack-D-fuelled haze, often on the back of motorbikes, with spell checking by our staff of attentive rock bimbos (chosen purely for their blondeness and big knockers), it soon fell behind more trainspotterly, nerdish, and politically correct publications like Q, Kerrang, Mojo, Metal Hammer, and Horse & Hound. This website is an archive and kind of shrine dedicated to the writing of its greatest writers, some of whom, luckily for the Rock Kosmos, still continue to write about music. This is the REVENGE of Riff Raff...Rock on!