[Slowhand] musings

[Sam Mangano]

1. trevor, you beat me to the james Vlahakis comment, very good!!

2. clapton sure doesn't excel as a sideman anymore. when in the wings on
many of the recent appearances, he plays well but nothing awe-inspiring. he
plays with deference and respect to his fellow performer (i.e. mojo with
buddy guy in the concert for new york was lame). however, now with him as
the leader and randolph as his foil, that song is a tour de force!

3. my past favorite tours for his axe-manship were FTC (way out in front),
followed by Journeyman and the 25th anniversary tour with mark knopfler
(sorry, was born the month before LAOALS came out, so i never got to see him
with cream). however, after witnessing firsthand my shows from last week,
and listening to many boots from this tour, i think he approaches and
sometimes passes the fretwork from the FTC tour (i know, pretty
blasphemous).

i say this because the all-blues framework was somewhat limiting for his
improvisation at times, where the pop songs allow him a little more freedom
to do different things in regards to the licks he chooses for each song. a
lot of the solos in the blues songs from the FTC tour sound similar from
nite to nite, whereas i think he is painting new, unique masterpieces in a
musical sense every nite so far this tour.

4. bluescrazy dave won the backstage pass offer-not hard when he was the
only respondant....

5. scott wallenberg: i'm so happy you won the LA lottery! give our best to
sherry, our prayers are with you. art is a great guy-i had the pleasure of
meeting him at the OMCOMR dvd show. what fun it will be to see EC at the
famous open-air Hollywood Bowl instead of stuffy staples!!

out
sambo8

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"To keep up with me, you must be fast. To beat me, you must be kidding."

- David Lee Roth