James Burton, Nokie Edwards, et al in London

[JimN]

Dennis Coffey (X-Motown Funk Brother but here playing harsh, distorted, stuff). Coffey was not my cup of tea and Jim and Spence felt the same way

Ray,

You are far too kind.

Dennis Coffey's contributions to that concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on his ebony-finished Gibson ES-355 were worthy of an award - from Private Eye's "Pseud's Corner".

Interested members can read about him here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Coffey.

On Monday, there was absolutely no attempt at melody, structure or even harmony of any sort beyond basic pentatonic noodling over a single chord drone with no development whatever. The supporting band - and what a superb band they were - were reduced to beating out a raucous monotone, which felt as though it went on for much longer than the five or six minutes that each of the three or four separate episodes of Coffey's Cacophony actually occupied.

I know only too well (remembering with a shudder my own interest in "free jazz" in the late sixties) that audience members can be easily intimidated into thinking that they are the only ones present who don't understand a "challenging" performance, with the result that they are tempted to present an over-enthusiastic response. Hans Christian Anderson wrote a story about that tendency. There were obviously many such victims in the audience that night, whereas those who could see the emperor's nudity for what it was gave no public reaction beyond the demands of basic politeness.

I hope I'm not making him sound too good.

No matter what glories he may have achieved in the studios of Detroit (about which I confess that I know very little), he was rubbish on Monday.

JN
(who felt cheated)

[cockroach]

Jim,

I think Dennis might have been one of the session man who was called in when they wanted loads of effects and raucous 'rock' type styles to make the recordings seem really hip and up to date...probably not in the same musical class as someone like Tommy Tedesco, who could sight read and play anything on a first take.

Sometimes even our idols aren't what they seem.

In his book 'Stone Alone' Bill Wyman alleges that Jet mimed on stage while his guitarist played the lead parts (the Stones toured with him as a support act early in their career, but this was during Jet's bad time with drink just before or around the time of his car crash.) No reflection on Jet, and I'm sure he would not be bothered about old events after 40 odd years...he was going through a bad time with his personal life at that stage...

I always liked Johnny Burnette's Rock'n'Roll Trio- supposedly with the hot rockabilly lead guitar on the records by Paul Burlison.
However on a clip I saw recently of them playing live on an old US TV show, he was very disappointing- some of the YouTube comments alleged that Grady Martin played the leads on their records...who knows?

I love Nokie's playing, but I suspect James Burton might be coasting a bit these days- and apparently if you want to book him for a session, his fee is unbelievably high! Still, if you listen to his work on the old Ricky Nelson records when he was a hot young kid, that was classic magic playing.
I think Eric Clapton is another feted player who always was a bit ...erm..over rated?