Is Clapton God?

well, the famous graffiti was probably over-stating how good a guitarist he is, but he is a pretty damn good guitarist nonetheless!

We saw EC at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre on Weds night, and it was quite an experience. I've never been to a gig at an arena or stadium before, as I much prefer a more intimate, smaller venue. But, you'll never get to see someone like EC at a small venue, so I guess you just have to roll with the punches.

We got to the BEC on the train, which was nice and easy. It's then 600 metres walk from the station to the venue through some lovely bushland - very nice, and no snakes / spiders / great white sharks attacked and ate us :) The weird thing was the age group of everyone else that got off the train there.... a *lot* of grandparents!

The warm-up act was Mia Dyson, and she was good. Nice bluesy voice, she sings and plays guitar in a 3 piece band, and her guitar playing was smooth and chunky. I was nicely warmed up for the main event. We had silver class tickets (I think) which meant that although they cost quite a bit of money, they weren't stupidly expensive and we had fairly good seats. From where we sat, we had a pretty good view down onto the stage, and the sound quality was clear. Danm loud though! :)



But. Even though EC was very, very good for some reason his band had *3* lead guitarists. Now, some bands have got away with having 2 lead guitarists (Thin Lizzy, Iron Maiden) but never 3. And we didn't pay all that money to hear these other, unknown, guys play - we only wanted to hear Eric play. This meant that we all were niggled throughout the gig by these guys, who, although they were fairly good, showed absolutely no emotion and feel in either their playing or their body language. Their body language of standing stationary, with virtually no change to their facial expressions just said "oh, here I am again swapping solos with Eric Clapton in front of 10,000 people, what a drag". Boring to watch, and boring to hear. And being a blues band there were plenty of solos over a 12 bar blues - but this band had to give all bloody 3 guitarists their solos.... I really could continue ranting about this, but I'll stop there :)

That aside, when Eric sat down with just an acoustic and played "Rambling on my mind" off the John Mayall's Blues Breakers album, it was just magic. And he did play Layla (of course!), Cocaine, Crossroads and even a stunningly beautiful rendition of "Wonderful Tonight". The drummer, bass player and keys guys were all amazing, and EC himself was simply stunning. If I were giving marks out of 10, I'd only be able to deduct points for the 2 extra guitarists.

I don't know if I'd be up for another "guitar legend" gig like that - EC tipped the balance on the positive side against the negative weight of the arena venue, the stupid quantity of lead guitarists in the band and the cost of the ticket. But if he'd been anything less than stunningly amazing, I don't think it would have been worth it.

Anyway - the next gig is Little Britain Live a week on Monday, looking forward to that!