Re: Prague - a tale of two gigs
Joe Bonamassa wrote:We can only give 100 percent of what percentage we have at the show. Sorry you didn't enjoy it.
Joe B
OUCH! I actually read all of these threads afore afixing quill to parchment. Someday after a while is a straight on 12-8 slow blues with an interesting twist. Freddy King, Coco Montoya did it in F. Eric Clapton did it in D...with horns. You tube has a version I love.
Ironic that the hard rock fans here used to shout, Blues Purist and Blunatic at me.
and we both know..." On any given night..."
MuchLove
Bjg Jeff
You are right Jeff, I totally agree with you that Someday After a While is a blues song and indeed that most of the songs Joe plays have a blues base. That's not quite the point I was trying to make – it was more about the way the songs were arranged and played. Having now had a chance to watch Joe's Hammersmith Apollo DVD, which is billed as a 'rock' gig, it's clear that, with one or two differences in song selection, it was basically this 'rock' set that we saw in Prague.
Don't get me wrong, I do like some of Joe's rock songs, especially the 'solo' rock songs he does, like Just Got Paid and Young Man Blues, where he's not drowned out by the rest of the band. But as I said earlier, if you play songs with a full band/loud/rocky arrangement, as opposed to a solo arrangement, then it creates a wall of sound, which makes it virtually impossible to hear what Joe is singing and extremely difficult to make out the subtleties of his playing, even in a venue with superb acoustics like the Congress Hall in Prague. Someday After a While is a good case in point – I’m sure it’s a fine song, but it’s really difficult for me to say, as I couldn’t make out one single word of what Joe was singing.
Again, this is why I prefer the quieter, solo, more 'bluesy' arrangements of songs like The Great Flood, Blues Deluxe, etc, etc, the acoustic versions of songs like Driving Towards the Daylight and Dislocated Boy and the solo rock songs – because the focus is on Joe and his guitar and you can actually hear what he is singing and playing – which is surely the whole point of going to a concert in the first place, isn’t it?
It's difficult to make an emotional connection with loud/rock music, which is probably why the biggest hits most rock bands have tend to be ballads and probably why Sloe Gin is Joe's most requested song and Blues Deluxe won Joe's poll. When Joe and Beth did 'I'd Rather Go Blind' in London, people were actually in tears in the audience...when the crowd were leaving at the end, people were saying that it had been worth the ticket price just to hear that song...
My personal hope is that, having toured the 'rock' set this time round, he play the 'blues' set in Spring...
