An amazing player who never got the recognition he rightly deserved.
Screw ‘Eruption’…
Try playing this:
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More here…
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I’v never heard of this guy, and those ARE pretty wild - I dig the edge-of-control feel here. Did he play with a group, and when were these filmed?
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Ray Gomez was known among the ‘jazz-fusion’ crowd of the mid 70’s.
Supposedly, he was Stanley Clarke’s favorite guitarist.
Ray’s right-hand is nothing short of amazing.
This track (‘Mating Drive’) is from 1975…years before EVH.
Whenever I attempted to get Eddie-fans to check out Ray…it was always the same:
‘That’s jazz. Why are you listening to that shit?’
Not knocking Eddie…not-at-all. But jeez…Ray is killing it…
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‘School Days’…studio version…1976…by Stanley Clarke.
Ray Gomez on guitar.
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Yeah, I was curious - that guy’s absolutely tearing it up for the mid-70s. Awesome.
I think what’s jazz and what’s rock is blurrier these days than it used to, that first piece made me think of something more akin to Satch Boogie, which I guess to be fair Satriani talks about it as having sort of a big band through a cranked up Marshall vibe, to the intro. I get the EVH comparisons, but parts make me think of Yngwie too, if very different harmonically.
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Bingo!
I agree.
Again, the frustration of guys outright refusing to even listen to Mahavishnu…DiMeola…Larry Carlton…drove me crazy. And then, decades later: ‘Hey! This DiMeola guy is pretty good!’
This guy was also really good: John Goodsall 1953 - 2021. Played with a band called ‘Brand X’.
Good player!
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Damn, that is some great playing
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I first heard of him via Shawn Lane, who covered Ray’s “West Side Boogie” on Powers of Ten. Ray’s 1980 album Volume is great!
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What a guitar monster! RIP.
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I collected records with Ray on it for a while. School days is downright rocking. He also played as rhythm guitar on Roy Buchanan’s “Loading Zone” and “You’re Not Alone” which his pulse drove Roy harder than he normally would play. Stanley Clarke was on “Loading Zone” too. A lot of 70s fusion records have great guitar but also check out Narada Michael Walden’s “Garden of Love Light” with Ray trading lines with an actual orchestra. Towards the 90s he was on a trio record for Peavey guitars with Tim Landers and a drummer and it sounded great but I get the idea he got sidelined at some point due to industry issues. I heard his CBS solo album “Volume” did well - you still hear “Make Your Move” on AOR radio even today but there was some systemic racism in the record biz back then and his moroccan roots may have worked against him. Not for me, I was a friend of his on facebook and we talked strats a couple times. He was still playing right up to the end but had issues with his knee in recent years. Like a lot of people.
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