A glimpse of Olympus...

First watch this....

While I tried to desperately find some time away from my day job to write about some music, I came across this video last night and found myself keeping it on loop for almost forty five minutes. As a wannabe blues guitarist who couldn't improvise if his life depended on it, this for me was a religious experience of sorts. You've got some of the greatest blues guitar players on one stage, Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy, Johnny Winter, Jimmie Vaughn, Robert Cray and John Mayer. If I were having a heart attack, that would be heaven for me. Just get B.B.King and Stevie Ray to join in, and I can die a content man.

While more than enough has been said and written about folks, like Eric Clapton and Buddy Guy, the comments here seem to be rather harsh on Mr. ‘Your body is a wonderland’ Mayer. While I’m still getting around to write a piece to talk about how John Mayer went from my ‘this stuff goes with N’sync’ list to ‘you are a Titan’ list, John Mayer is probably one of the few guitar players around whose thorough knowledge of music (and feel free to disagree if you stopped listening to him after ‘Room for Squares’) makes him the one guy whom you know is going to become one of the torch bearers of Blues guitar, if he sticks at it.

What I’m getting to is that this video is perhaps a perfect picture of how the torch of Blues guitar is being passed on. Winters to Buddy Guy, to Clapton and at the bottom of that line is John Mayer. Anyway, enjoy this video. And there’s another one of him messing with the King. And you’ve got to be worth something if B.B King plays with you.

Gig Review : The Shakey Rays @Hard Rock Café B’lore

I happened to stumble upon ‘The Shakey Rays’ at the NH7 Weekender fest in Bangalore in 2012 when I was stage-hopping while waiting for another band to get started. I really enjoyed the sound they had then although I got to listen to only one and a half songs. Based on that, I was quite eager to see the band from Chennai play a full set.

So here they were at the Hard rock Café in Bangalore. Alas I’m going to have to say that I was disappointed by the show. Let me put it this way, there was no show in a manner of speaking. It was a band that walked onto stage, played their music and left. Don’t misunderstand this for them not sounding good. They were quite good in fact, but them being on stage or the DJ playing songs off the console was almost one and the same.

I hope this was only a one-off thing or else The Shakey Rays still have a long way to go in stage presence. Right now, they’re the sort of band that people would probably hear and decide to go grab a smoke, make that phone call, use the rest room. The audience simply did not seem entertained. I've seen more amateur (and worse sounding) bands ensure they get the people up on their feet. People at such venues come to be entertained. No one really cares what you know, but care if they've had a good time. And The Shakey Rays seemed to have missed that lesson. My thoughts were reflected by some folks outside who said, “ They have a nice sound yaaar, par majaa nahin aaaya!”.

That being said I really enjoyed their version of Velvet Underground’s ‘Rock and Roll’ and their Kinks cover of ‘Where have all the good times gone’. I especially enjoyed their smooth jazz version of Frank Sinatra’s ‘Under My Skin’, wish I had bootlegged that. Actually reminded me of a more upbeat jazz trumpet version I have heard somewhere. Even the original compositions were upbeat, but were however undone by a lackluster performance.

To sum it up, The Shakey Rays sounded really good, especially on the covers. But the lack of interaction with the audience between songs and during songs seemed to have made the evening a bit of a bore. Here’s to hoping they find some energy from somewhere because we all can hear good music at home, we want to be entertained. I want to bring up a dialogue from the movie Gladiator. As said by Proximo to Maximus, “I was not the best because I killed quickly. I was the best because the crowd loved me.”

Good bands sound good, great bands entertain.