What have you been listening to?

[Mord]

Jeff Beck - Still on the Run (2018)
Great documentary covering Beck's exceptional career....from Yardbirds to today. My favorite guitarist by far.

[Mike Scott]

Who dat?

A nice collection of WHO singles, for it's time. I like the use of the young look-a-likes on the cover!

[Hepcat]

Jeff Beck - Still on the Run (2018)

Great documentary covering Beck's exceptional career....from Yardbirds to today. My favorite guitarist by far.

Absolutely! Jeff Beck is in my opinion the greatest guitarist of all time.

[Mord]

 I knew we could agree on something.  My dad brought home a couple of used Yardbirds records he found in a pawn shop when I was a kid. I played those to death. There was always something special about Beck's playing. I had never heard some of those sounds coming from a guitar before. He is definitely the best guitarist I've ever listened to. Check out the "Live at Ronnie Scott's" dvd. He plays circles around Clapton.

[Hepcat]

Check out the "Live at Ronnie Scott's" dvd. Check out the "Live at Ronnie Scott's" dvd. Check out the "Live at Ronnie Scott's" dvd.  He(Beck) plays circles around Clapton.

I attended the Eric Clapton/Jeff Beck concert on 21 February 2010 in Toronto at the Air Canada Centre (a venue built primarily for hockey games I might add). Here's the review I wrote a few days later:

1. The joint "tour", immortalized already of course in t-shirts, was the second most curiously abbreviated tour of which I'm aware. (The Cream's reunion tour was the shortest.) This Clapton/Beck tour was confined to London, New York, Toronto and Montreal. Eric will now be performing a few concert dates with Roger Daltrey while Jeff is heading off to tour Australia with his band.

2. An old buddy of mine, Dave, and his older brother Paul had come in from out of town for the show. Their college age kids had chipped in together to buy the two of them nosebleed tickets for the concert. The kids though had no interest in attending the show....

3. The stage was set up at one side of the rink. Floor tickets and lower level seats up to the end boards were all $225. I passed on the $225 tickets since the only ones that were still available ten days before the concert were in the corner seats at the opposite end of the rink. I had mixed feelings about attending the concert in a hockey barn but I finally broke down and bought a pair. Mine were $150 tickets fifteen rows up at the other end of the rink.

4. I'm not entirely convinced that the show was completely sold out. There might have been some empty $225 seats at the sides of the arena.

5. The view from that distance was helped along by a pair of TV screens although these weren't that big compared with the huge monitors at say Stones' concerts.

6. The tickets gave a start time for the concert of 7:30 PM and start at 7:30 it did with Jeff Beck taking the stage. He cleverly ensured a standing ovation when he came out by playing the first few notes of "Oh Canada", which of course had the crowd rising to their feet.  He then broke into "Eternity's Breath".

7. He was accompanied by Montreal native Rhonda Smith on bass, a drummer and a twelve piece orchestra complete with conductor. No singer though. This is the fourth time I've seen Jeff in the last fifteen years and he's never had a singer so I wasn't surprised. I would of course have sneered at any less sophisticated fan who was expecting vocals. Jeff's style is to have his guitar take the place of vocals, substituting his notes for the words of a singer.

8. It was therefore Jeff's guitar playing that carried the melody on such classical pieces as "Corpus Christi Carol" and "Nessun Dorma". He often used a whammy bar, a.k.a. a tremolo arm, and I found the notes that flowed so freely from his guitar to be both plaintiff and spellbinding.

9. He introduced his band mates at one point and Rhonda Smith launched into an extended bass solo version of "Voodoo Child".

10. Jeff ended his set with his crowd pleasing cover of the Beatles' "A Day in the Life". He ended up playing for exactly 45 minutes.

11. But because there were no vocals, the focus of his set was entirely on his guitar playing. I therefore knew that Eric Clapton would be very hard pressed to top Jeff's set when it came to straight forward guitar playing.

12. I had taken in a fabulous Eric Clapton concert at Maple Leaf Gardens in 1995(?) which consisted entirely of Eric covering old blues classics. A set of old blues classics into which Eric could intersperse searing guitar licks would have been a more than adequate way to follow-up Jeff's blistering fusion guitar set.

13. The break between Jeff's set and Eric's set wasn't much more than fifteen minutes. I'd arrived in the company of my fellow alley dweller Red who'd long been a big Eric Clapton fan and she was waiting for her idol's appearance with rapt anticipation.

14. Eric arrived backed by a bass player, drummer, Chris Stainton on keyboards (both piano and organ), another keyboardist who may have been handling both synthesizer and mellotron duties since I detected strings that I hoped weren't canned at points during Eric's set, and two black female backup singers. He never did introduce his band though.

15. The first two numbers Eric performed were acoustic - "Driftin' Blues" and the unplugged version of "Layla" which has always struck me as being a completely emasculated version of the original. After a set of Jeff's blistering guitar leads though, I found Eric's opening numbers to be a letdown.

16. Now Eric was never a great singer but he's evidently been losing his voice lately which is why he needed the backup singers to add some punch/projection.

17. After switching to electric guitar his most crowd pleasing numbers was the reggae influenced "I Shot the Sherriff" which Eric performed as a full fledged calypso number with the aid of his backup singers. It was about the liveliest number he performed.

18. He played "Cocaine" but I could not have found it all that inspiring because just now I had to check to make sure it really had been part of his set. In fact, I didn't notice Eric playing any seering extended guitar solos at all. Red was disappointed in the omission of "Bell Bottom Blues" and "I Can't Stand It" from his set.

19. Eric played for about 45 minutes before being joined on stage by Jeff Beck. With both of these guitar legends sharing the stage together, I expected some serious joint guitar pyrotechnics. But it was not to be. Eric played the bandleader and front man, but Jeff was the hotshot young guitar god throughout the rest of the performance. While Jeff pealed off solos, Eric was content to strum rhythm guitar. Jeff was the flashy one, while Eric was workmanlike. I guess that's why they call Eric "Slowhand".

20. One of the numbers they performed was a very interesting instrumental cover of "Moon River" with Jeff's guitar and whammy bar taking the place of the vocals.

21. Their cover of Sly & the Family Stone's "I Want to Take You Higher" was a crowd pleaser. The backup singers certainly got into that one. My buddy Dave had a dissenting opinion though. He didn't think the tune was done justice without the presence of brass.

22. They performed a well received version of "Crossroads" as their encore in which Eric finally traded some guitar licks with Jeff.

23. They never did perform the original version of "Layla" though which was a big disappointment since Jeff was there to fill in Duane Allman's guitar parts. Neither did they perform Jeff's signature "Beck's Bolero" which was also quite the disappointment since Eric would have been there to fill in the guitar parts that Jimmy Page had originally added to the track.

24. The show was over by 10:35 PM.

25. Red professed her profound disappointment in Eric's performance. In her own words, Eric looked "old and tired" in comparison to Jeff. She had come in with the expectation that Eric would prove to be the star of the show but she left with a newfound appreciation for Jeff.

26. My buddy Dave disagreed. He thought Eric was just fine. But Red and I later agreed that since Dave had probably not seen a big time act for over thirty years and had never even seen any kind of event at the Air Canada Centre, he wasn't going to be difficult to impress.

27. Now Jeff Beck has for many years been my favourite guitarist so I wasn't the least bit surprised. But I'll reiterate a point I've made on a number of occasions. Jeff delivers his best music playing for someone else. Whether for the Yardbirds, Donovan ("Goo Goo Barabajagal"), Rod Stewart ("Infatuation"), Buddy Guy ("Mustang Sally") or Mick Jagger, that's when Jeff comes off the best musically. Unfortunately, Jeff doesn't take direction well from others. That's why he could never have made beautiful music as part of the Rolling Stones for very long. Mick and Keith being control freaks, Jeff would sooner rather than later have ended up clubbing one of the two over the head with his guitar.

It's therefore a good thing that Jeff typically needs no direction when it comes to adding the guitar parts that take a song from the ranks of the very good to the transcendent. The problem is that on his own he very rarely provides himself with any good songs. His signature piece, "Beck's Bolero", was actually written by Jimmy Page. Jeff is a great guitarist, but his music is too outré to capture the imagination of the record buying public. Sometimes I actually think he should be left to experiment by himself in the basement of some monastery.

28. So my final verdict was the same as the one I held before buying the ticket - Jeff is the better guitarist, but Eric remains the better musician.

[Hepcat]

I've just found a video clip of their performance of Moon River at the Air Canada Centre that evening:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BanCoA9VDI0#

And here's perhaps my very favourite Jeff Beck video clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do5W6RXk6cY#

But I've never been able to figure out who his bass player was that performance.

[Mord]

 Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds  - Your Funeral...My Trial
  One of the coolest album titles ever,. Excellent lp.

[marsattacks666]

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds  - Your Funeral...My Trial
  One of the coolest album titles ever,. Excellent lp.

Mord! You are awesome! 👍🎧🎵

[Mord]

Mord! You are awesome! 👍🎧🎵

Back at ya, pal. Respect runs deep here.

[Wicked Lester]

I know that most of you are into the rock/metal/punk stuff as am I. I also LOVE the 90's techno and Rave. Takes me back to my early 30's and going to underground bars and such. Between the synth and the badass keyboards,this song SCREAMS old school creepy scary monsters all over it. OK so Frankie took a hit of acid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhnUK2ceRqo

[marsattacks666]

W.A.S.P.- L.O.V.E.

[Mord]

 The Birthday Party - Mutiny e.p.
1. Jennifer's Veil
2. Mutiny in Heaven
3. Swampland
4. Say a Spell

This 4 track e.p. from 1983 is more essential to me than the entire Beatles catalog.

[Wicked Lester]

Nothing like cruising to the city listening to Death Metal,arriving at the Techno/Rave club. Double shot of Vodka and some .....hmmm. Apotheosis o Fortuna and jumping in the Rave pit. Man,I really miss the 90's http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkl62CqWY5E#

[marsattacks666]

Traffic-The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys-1971
Lou Reed-Transformer-1972

[Wicked Lester]

I have been a fan forever and to this day still one of my favorite bands. Sisters of Mercy.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWMPdBaRW3M#


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EunWH1VbpA