Artists: Buddy Guy, Eric Johnson
Venue: South Lake Union Park, Seattle, WA
Date: June 30, 2005
My roommate was very keen on this concert and persuaded me to join him. Held right on Lake Union, the concert was interrupted every 15 minutes as a small plane would fly overhead and land 40 feet away in the water. Eric Johnson is supposedly one of the “world’s greatest guitar players,” yet his performance was very cold and detached. He didn’t even seem to be that great (although I don’t know really know much about guitar playing), and only on his last song did he really jam out on his guitar. He also sang, which really took away from the performance as he was a terrible singer.
However his shitty performance was more than made up by Buddy Guy, who I can only describe as a “performer.” While he played the guitar really well, he also sang very well (most of it was almost like scat), and he had a way of keeping the audience mesmerized as he would come down to almost a whisper and sing the same two lyrics over and over. He even went and walked around the audience, and was a very impressive man to see, with his almost-gaudy costume and his very frequent guitar changes. His playing was more expressive than I ever thought an electric guitar could be, and his technical skill seemed to be very good and very clean (the normal squeaking you hear in rock performances as the players go from note to note results from sloppy playing, where they have to slide along the strings to find the right spot–in contrast, Buddy Guy would take off his hands and go straight to the right spot, hitting the note exactly in tune). It was all very enjoyable, and despite the cold which came on as the sun descended, I had a great time.
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