One of my favorite guitarists, Eric Johnson, just released one of his old concerts on DVD. It is a performance from Austin Texas at a venue called Austin City Limits. The performance was filmed in 1988, before the fast camera switching rule existed. You know - the one that says you have to cut to a different camera angle every second to keep people interested in the program. It was nice to not have put up with jerky editing. There were a lot of good shots of Eric where you could watch his fingers while he played. If you are into guitar like I am, that is important.
He really has a unique style. No other guitarist sounds like him. He uses some really complicated chord fingerings and does some surprisingly fast soloing considering he does not use his pinky during most of his "shreds". He improvises a lot of his solos while playing live, though they follow the same patterns as his studio recordings. Eric is no slouch now, but this was recorded 18 years ago when he was in his prime.
This was filmed before the release of Ah Via Musicom, album which really put him on the map. There were a lot of songs from the Tones album as well as selections from that upcoming album. He played the song "Camels Night Out" which appeared on a later album (Venus Isle). A few Hendrix covers even made it onto this set list. It seems like all the big names in solo guitar have been influenced by Hendrix and Eric Johnson is no exception. The Grammy winning "Zap" was in there too and Eric really went off on this live version. He also played a long version of "Trail of Tears" that I really enjoyed.
I have seen Eric Johnson live a few times and it is always a good show. I am glad he finally released one of his concerts. Hopefully he will release some of the other Austin City Limits shows he has done. Over the years I have been in the right place at the right time to catch them on PBS. Ironically, the day I bought this video Eric Johnson was performing about a half-hour from my house. I didn't find out about it until after I missed out. The annoying thing about it is that I had been looking into that venue's list of summer performers every few weeks since May and never saw him listed. Oh well. This DVD will have to hold me for a while I guess. The problem is this guy tours every 5 or 6 years, not every 2 years like other acts.
If you are into guitar playing at all... this is a good DVD for you to buy.
