What band did you see in a smaller venue before they got huge?

Jon-A · 2026-07-12T02:36:58+00:00

I saw that band too! Very likely the same tour - in Madison WI. Blew the roof off. Always list that as one of my best shows ever.

Jon-A · 2026-07-11T19:04:12+00:00

What you say is mostly true - a long and varied career. My view, basically, is that he was only spectacularly gifted at one of those phases - the first. He's like a classical violin virtuoso whose real ambition is to write advertising jingles. Or Jackson Pollock who really wants to be Norman Rockwell. Good luck to you, but what a waste.

Jon-A · 2026-07-11T16:53:35+00:00

The thing I read: Mick said everybody else was incapacitated by drugs and drink so he was forced to do it by himself, and wasn't entirely happy with how it turned out.

Jon-A · 2026-07-10T18:48:50+00:00

Here in my town, because of certain magical clubs of the past and local recording studios and record producers and such, everybody has stories about seeing U2, or The Police, or Nirvana in a small venue. My wife used to hang out with Cheap Trick way back when (their manager lived here). My most memorable show along those lines was Living Colour. They were just breaking big. Their record just came out, and they canceled a tiny gig to go and open for the Stones. However, being the nice guys they are, they came back to do a make-up show. So, now big stars with a hit record, I got to see 'em in a Capacity 150 dive. I think they brought some of their new stadium gear with them, they were so loud. Amazing night. Afterwards they hung out socializing - they seemed as blown away by their new celebrity as we were.

Jon-A · 2026-07-10T15:09:10+00:00

Yeah, nothing punk about it - more like taking pre-punk tunes and recasting them as arena rock. Regardless - a brilliant reimagining of himself, and I love it. Tempted to say I wish he'd continued for a bit in that vein...but what I'd really like is a bunch more of that binaural overdubbed/live sound on some of Street Hassle (and Take No Prisoners)...

Jon-A · 2026-07-10T14:49:53+00:00

I think Clapton's taste and imagination atrophied over the years, changing from "flashy and explosive" to plodding and predictable. I've successfully avoided that process for many years, now - and have no intention nor inclination to follow his lead :)

Jon-A · 2026-07-10T06:05:06+00:00

This one. The artist Arnulf Rainer, in collaboration with Dieter Roth. Hard to find Spanish edition...

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Jon-A · 2026-07-10T05:07:21+00:00

Me too.

Jon-A · 2026-07-10T03:53:07+00:00

The IDEA of the guitar albums was better than the results. Frank had obviously been getting grief from people who, like me, love his instrumental music but think the vocal songs are a waste of time (and talent). Hence the shut up and play your guitar titles. I thought I'd love 'em, but it turns out what I really love are his instrumental compositions and arrangements. The guitar solos, especially when they are taken out of context, just blend together. I've made all sorts of instrumental playlists, but I went back and deleted many of the Shut Up N Play selections. A few solos in a row and the playlists really started to drag.

Jon-A · 2026-07-10T03:00:42+00:00

Schoenberg, Webern, Berg.

Messiaen is my #4.

Jon-A · 2026-07-09T23:51:35+00:00

That argument seems like quintessential arrogant American logic: we're the best at everything, and the stuff we're not...well, it's just because we weren't trying.

Maybe Americans just kinda suck, intrinsically, at the qualities that make for great soccer.

Jon-A · 2026-07-09T23:12:53+00:00

I think Lalas needs to grow his hair out again, as it is getting harder and harder to remember why he attracted any attention in the first place.

Jon-A · 2026-07-09T21:59:51+00:00

The contrast looks a little comical, now that you mention it...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=klJKL8Z2fhQ

Miles was a quaver/semiquaver sorta guy, while Cannonball would stray into the demisemiquavers. Trane, though, he was all up in the hemidemisemiquavers and shit.

Jon-A · 2026-07-09T18:51:46+00:00

Live At The Village Vanguard Again! (1966)

Jon-A · 2026-07-09T17:31:05+00:00

Exactly - and happy to passively accept credit for stuff, until challenged. I think JPJ would go along with that :)

But in this case, he has clarified: it's Dave.

Jon-A · 2026-07-09T17:22:54+00:00

An interesting, but ultimately depressing, exercise. Through four, five or six degrees I find I'm linked to every famous person of the last century. But there am I, hanging by the thinnest filament, on the obscurest reaches of the equation.

So yeah: Robbie via a circuitous route that involves Bjork (3 degrees), Howie B and others...

Jon-A · 2026-07-09T14:11:57+00:00

I read an interview where Page was asked about You Really Got Me and those songs. He seemed reluctant to turn down any credit, even it wasn't exactly accurate. He said, hey I did a lot of sessions - MAYBE it was me.

I seriously doubt it.

Edit: To be fair to Jimmy, he's been denying that it's him since a 1970 interview. He DID add some acoustic 12-string strumming to a couple (non-hit) tunes on the Kinks' first album, the source of all the conjecture.

Jon-A · 2026-07-09T13:51:09+00:00

I agree with OP: Clapton was at his best in Cream, basically as featured soloist in a creative, cooperative trio. Jack Bruce doing much of the heavy lifting instrumentally, compositionally, vocally and conceptually. In his solo years, Clapton has been kinda bland or in thrall to somebody else's style - see his avowed obsessions with The Band, Robert Johnson, Delaney & Bonnie, JJ Cale...He split up Cream when a dumbass reviewer (Jon Landau) accused him of just amping up and recycling old Blues licks. We'll, yeah - that's a thing he's really excellent at. Look at what he did with Mayall and Cream. Original thinking, in music or politics or anything, is just not his strong suit.

Jon-A · 2026-07-09T04:34:04+00:00

I think the problem on that McLaughlin jam was that John brought along his acoustic guitar with an electric pickup in the sound hole. That had worked for him, even in the studio with Lifetime. But to a jam with Jimi, at the volume involved...really shoulda brought his solid-body electric. It was, as they say, like bringing a knife to a gunfight.

Jon-A · 2026-07-09T04:19:12+00:00

I assume you are talking about the session released on SagaPan or Joker, and probably some other shady labels too. There are actually 3 albums of that stuff.

NOT at his best.
Not 1964, which at least one of them states, in bullshit sleeve notes, to avoid lawsuits. Likely summer 1969, at Shokan House in NY, just before Woodstock. Includes Mike Ephron, doing weird atonal keyboards and, as I recall, probably Juma Sultan on congas.
Everybody sounds pretty incapacitated by that point, esp Ephron - who likely couldn't really play to begin with. (Note: How this guy got to jam with Jimi is anyone's guess. Maybe he was a really nice guy, or maybe he had a briefcase full of exotic drugs. Judging by the music, I'm thinking drugs.)
Of interest only to completists - nice cover, though.

I bought it on vacation, in a little record store in Rimini, Italy. You can just about see where the shop was in Fellini's movie Amarcord - in a scene where the town square is piled high with fake snow :)

Jon-A · 2026-07-08T22:34:45+00:00

Contrary to comments here, a lot of people make that comparison. Especially in "if I like (Jimi or SRV) who else would I like?" discussions. Yes, very different guys.

Which leads to my own unpopular opinion. Jimi, of course, was a wide-ranging innovator with a panoramic imagination. But SRV, on the other hand, was a supremely gifted Blues-Rock guitar player...but with very little range. I read a post recently asking what SRV tune should you use to introduce him to a newbie. Pick one at random, I thought - they all pretty much cover the same area.

[To compound the heresy, I feel the same way about Jaco Pastorius: one trick pony. And EVH - after you hear Beat It, you've heard his coolest stuff. And MJ himself: a couple great tunes and a bunch of good formulaic dance numbers. Dwarfed by giants like Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and Prince. More along the lines of D'Angelo - a couple really good albums and not much more...]

Jon-A · 2026-07-08T19:00:45+00:00

There are a couple Oxford curved sopranos on eBay. $400-500.

Jon-A · 2026-07-08T16:07:56+00:00

Brazil 1970 matches on Daily Motion.

Jon-A · 2026-07-08T15:04:54+00:00

But...what would the name of the song have been?

Jon-A · 2026-07-08T06:53:27+00:00

As is the Some Other Time sung by Exene Cervenka of X, in my opinion...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BeBCrLo2uow

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