I got them blues
The last two gigs I've been two were both more-or-less blues guitar extravaganzas, with the staggeringly not-died-of-liver-failure-yet George Thorogood and his Ever-Mighty Delaware Destroyers, and the screaming young gun of Eric Sardinas.
I used to think of myself as a nerdy shredhead, in love with the need for speed and furious fretboard fireworks, and on those criteria Mr. Sardinas does not disappoint. With a couple of old steel guitars and monster tones from a mighty rig of screaming tubes, he unleashes a banshee's chorus of bottleneck blues with frenetic fingerpicking to make every fowl within earshot fear for their feathers. His technique is fearsome, using all the trad rock plank-wanking techniques in a virtuoso display of material that runs the full gamut from the deep Mississipi delta to the sweetest home Chicago, with occasional nods Hendrixward and a touch of Van Halen or Gilbert just to let you know he can do it. And he can sing, pretty well at that. And he has a good hat. And... I was kinda bored.
Ol' George has apparently not particularly updated his set since I got the Live! album in 1986 - and I mean all the banter is the same, let alone the actual songs. But goddamn it, you don't care. He's nowhere near the player Sardinas is. His voice is... unexceptional, though in tune. But he's a showman, who knows the material he's playing like he's been doing it for a quarter of a century. And I was not bored, even by songs I knew I didn't like all that much.
Maybe it's the expectation. When Sardinas throws out songs that you're humming other lyrics to (Voodoo Chile, Sweet Home Chicago) it's kind of a letdown that he's not playing the standard - I mean, blues is a genre that has a standard repertoire, so why not just DO Red House? When Thorogood cuts loose the riff from Bad to the Bone it triggers an adrenaline response because you know what is to come, and that it will bee inspirational in its relentless backbeat minor train that keeps-a-rollin.
Maybe part of it's the crowd. Sardinas got billed as a part of the Bath International Festival of the Guitar, so the gig was full of people who liked the kind of things he plays, but were not necessarily conversant with what he was playing, while George got people who knew every note, every glissando, every sardonic aside, and were there to receive the exact package that was delivered. But I've never seen Mr. Thorogood, and I think my copy of the Live! album was lost over a decade ago, so I wouldn't call myself a diehard fan, but the performance was just more inspiring, but how much of that comes from the anticipation and fulfilment of the other thousand people in the auditorium?
Maybe it's the live thing. The holistic judgement of the performance, not merely on the musical merits, but on the visual ones - the set and the lights and the smoke and the banter, and the reaction of the crowd to it all.
I'm just surprised at my own preference for great performance over great playing.
Nevertheless, they are the both of them worth a listen.