Review DVD Shoot

What an amazing show Glenn and his band played on Sunday. Glenn was simply on fire, it must be tough to play and put on a show in such a strange environment as a rehearsal studio, but Glenn and his band made the best of it. Of course most people (including me) will have quibbles about the setlist, but Glenn can’t play a four hour set…..As it was it took about three hours including breaks to get all of these songs recorded, including redoing CTC and Wherever You Go after the Pro Tools machine erased the first takes (damn those computers). There’s no way to win the battle of length either….start adding more solo songs, like my favorites from From Now On, Feel and The Way It Is (and Feels Like Home from BTM) then you have to not play any Purple or Trapeze numbers or HT either….and exclude more of the brilliant SITKOR. I hope that In My Blood and Blue Jade get included, as we heard afterwards those may be cut from the final product as well.
I was just 6 feet or so from Glenn, and about 5 from JJ, the best seat in the house!!!!! A shame we couldn’t hear the vocals that well, except for the quieter numbers like Coast to Coast, but this was all for the end result. There was no PA on the sides of the stage, so the only Glenn we got was coming out of his monitors facing him. Little memories of the day keep replaying in my mind, like most concerts, I forget a lot of details, but what was cool was meeting all my fellow GH fans, and chatting with the various musicians who showed up and who were in the show. I got there about 220PM…and didn’t see anybody I really knew at first. The first person who I talked to was George Nastos, who had a really cool Simon Says: “You Suck!!!� shirt, so I proceeded to tell him about the latest ads for American Idol, which include the Simon quote, “You are the equivalent of a musical sleeping tablet.� I didn’t recognize George so I thought he was a roadie. I kept glancing at the attractive pouty redhead sitting at the band table…..that looked like Tiffany, Todd and Chip and I and their spouses finally decided it was her, which of course it was. Then I sat and talked with JJ for awhile telling him I’m a fan of his and how much I like his playing. We had a great chat about his gear and guitars, and I asked him about the live You Fool No One on Addiction….I love the drums on that track, because I often drum to it on the stairmaster at my gym….I didn’t know that Morgen Agren was in Zappa’s band. It was great to talk to Frankie Banali, who was on my cruise ship ten years ago….on his honeymoon it turns out. I complimented Alex Ligertwood on his fine randb songs on the new David Garfield album Giving Back, and I surprised Jeff Scott Soto when I told him I saw him on Dec 16, 1986 at the Orange Pavilion with Yngwie. Back to the show again….what really sticks out in my mind, is Chad Smith’s enthusiasm for playing with Glenn….I can still see the silly grin on his face that he had the whole time. And those licks he was putting in the 1’st Step of Love were very Stewart Copelandish…..And he was the loudest thing in that room for sure. Seeing Chad play with Glenn upclose was incredible….I mean stuff like Getting Tighter with the Cal Jam You Got To Dance was amazing. This was the first full blown Glenn show I’ve been able to go to so what a treat that it was something this special. The fact that he personally invited me at the HOB in Nov makes it even more special for me. Hearing the JJ and George play some dual guitar leads was really amazing also. JJ really is a great guitar player, I was surprised to see that he doesn’t use his fourth finger on all those leads unlike people like Ritchie or Yngwie or Eddie Van Halen!!! But his feel and sound are great. He totally nailed those Pat Thrall delay effects on First Step, and had a nice clean sound on the intro to Coast to Coast. I recently wrote about how mechanical Frusciante played the intro to Mistreated, but JJ is one of those players like Yngwie, Jeff Beck Ritchie or Eric Clapton, who have that exquisite vibrato…so he nailed it perfect. Glenn’s voice was outstanding, his bass playing fantastic also. He had some different looking clothes this time…..which looked pretty cool I thought. The black with gold crosses looked great and Glenn said they “were some crusader crosses bought at a museum in London.� The guy was totally on fire, he sounds and looks 20 years or more younger. It was great to hear the extra harmonies that Alex and Kevin sang on Higher Places and Written All Over Your Face. The other day Higher Places just about made me cry and I had to catch myself this time…..what an emotional powerful message that song has. It was interesting to see that Ed Roth uses an old Korg C3 organ, and not a real B-3, he has a small leslie speaker simulator that adds added realism to the show. I'm still trying to figure Ed out, is he as good as Vince and Hans???I couldn't hear him that well....He was the only strange guy I met all day as well...but hey takes one to know one (All of us keyboardists are nuts)
After the show many of us headed to George Nastos’ local watering hole….and there was great conversation there….Including with Fedor about Hendrix, but today I realized I should have asked him about the tourography also. I want to thank David and Shirean for their efforts to coordinate this, as well as Glenn and Gabi for thinking of us fans…and that fantastic band for giving us such a fantastic show. Just a fantastic day, and I’m still trying to recover…..It’s such shame it’s gone already, but there’s Purple next month and Glenn in April in Vegas to look forward to. And last but not least, the fact that all of us GH fans are such great friends and have so much fun hanging out, adds so much to this experience for me.

John

There were so many GH solo albums missed I forgot to mention.....ROCK.....No Angela


JH