Sorry, the lateset cd is not for me. (Page 2 of 2)

Marshall Texas home of Wes Jeans.

Durham NC 12/4 & Columbia SC 12/5, I'm ready to be schooled!  I'd hit Greenville SC 12/6 but I'm out of tuition money

Have you seen him play live?

I’ve listened to DSOB a lot just recently and I have to say that I like it... I just don’t really love it in the way that I love, say, Blues Deluxe, You & Me or John Henry. For me, John Henry was probably Joe’s last real killer guitar album (others may disagree).

I thought Dust Bowl had some great guitar tracks (Last Matador, etc.) mixed with some pretty ordinary stuff (Tennessee Plates, Dust Bowl, Sweet Rowena) and marked the start of a steady movement away from ‘great guitar songs’ to ‘great songs featuring guitars’. Black Rock, DTTD and DSOB are all fine, enjoyable albums that I like to listen to and have some great songs on them (Athens to Athens, Driving Towards the Daylight, Dislocated Boy, Different Shades of Blue, So What Would I Do). But these tend to be songs that suit being played acoustically, rather than electrically.

These three albums have probably done a lot to widen Joe’s appeal but, for me, haven’t really produced any killer guitar tracks that stand shoulder to shoulder with some of his earlier work or which have earned a ‘must play live’ status. I watched the video of Joe playing Oh Beautiful and Midnight Blues on French TV and honestly felt that Oh Beautiful really only HINTED at what Joe is capable of as a guitarist and singer, while Midnight Blues DEMONSTRATED what he is capable of.  By the same token, when people ask which of Joe’s albums are a great introduction to his music or should be recommended to friends, Forum members almost invariably opt of RAH 1 or LFNIP, not the recent studio albums.

I remember as a kid being disappointed with Clapton’s 461 Ocean Boulevard album because it paled into insignificance as a guitar album alongside, say, Rory Gallagher’s Irish Tour ’74, which was released around the same time and a lot of us pretty much stopped listening to Clapton at that point. By going for a more 'popular' sound, Clapton went on of course to be incredibly successful, but I’m not sure he ever lived up to his reputation as one of the guitar greats from that point on. His real guitar legacy really remains rooted in his work of the late 60s and very early 70s.

I can understand why Joe doesn’t necessarily want to live in the past and wants to reach a wider audience and try different things, but as a fan of his I’m still keeping my fingers crossed that the next album will be a step in the direction of something a bit more ‘Beano’ and not another step in the direction of ‘Tears in Heaven’, if you know what I mean...

Music is such a subjective thing and this is just my personal opinion. Ask 100 other people and you may get 100 completely different opinions.

Hey Beergodess, I must admit that I tend to differentiate between Joe’s recorded work and his live work. Although DSOB is not really one of my favourites, it won’t stop me going to see Joe playing live as he generally always puts on a great show. In these days of iTunes, streaming, playlists, etc., it’s pretty easy to listen to the stuff you really like at home and in the car and not bother with the stuff you don’t. At the end of the day, if you buy a CD that you don’t particularly like, you haven’t really wasted THAT much money.

However, I do recognise that going to one of Joe’s shows can be expensive, especially if you have to add in the cost of travel and a hotel, so you naturally don’t want THAT to be a disappointment. It’s human nature when you go to a show to hope that an artist will play all your favourite songs, but that rarely happens except on maybe greatest hits tours. The next best thing is that the artist plays his very best material, even if it’s not your favourite stuff (I really like Blues Deluxe, for example, but if Joe plays Midnight Blues instead, that’s fine with me too, because it’s also a quality song).
 
In reality, unless you like every single thing an artist has ever produced, there’s always likely to be some songs in a set list that are not your favourites and occasions where you might think a better song has been removed from a set list to make way for one that’s not as good. That’s the way of the world. I guess the question of whether you choose to splash out on tickets depends on just how many of the songs on the set list fall into this category...

I’m looking forward to seeing Joe play live next spring. I personally think he’s done some of his very best work with a horn band (RAH 1, Shepherds Bush TDF) and has had rave reviews for his Muddy Wolf concerts, so if he does have a horn band I'd be really happy if some of my personal favourites from those days such as Blues Deluxe, So Many Roads and The Great Flood (which sounds fantastic with horns) made a re-appearance. But others may be hoping for something else and you can't keep everybody happy...