Showing posts with label Gary Moore. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gary Moore. Show all posts

Friday, August 19, 2022

GARY MOORE WAS THE ERIC CLAPTON WE DESERVED


 The more cynical among us might dismiss this effort by bassist Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker as a blatant money-grab to secure filthy lucre from nostalgic fans of Cream, replacing founding member Eric Clapton with stalwart blues—rock specialist Gary Moore. Two parts Cream is better than no Cream at all? But hold on a second, Moore's guitar work matches and very often exceeds the admittedly early brilliance of Clapton from those studio and live discs; Moore is technically far more advanced as a musician than Clapton, but what saves the Irish fret lord from being merely another wind-up virtuoso is his retention of the raw aggression, emotion, power of the blues.

 In this video, you'll note that he pretty well recreates Clapton's tone from the period and reveals great evidence of having spent hours, hundreds of hours playing EC with guitar in hand learning his phrasing, his timing, his dynamic sense. This is likely to be the best Clapton tribute that will ever come to be.Moore presents the particulars of EC's style that make me think that this was his (Clapton's) the best era as a guitarist. The timing, the tone, the frantic unpredictability of his blues intonations as the self-taught guitarist battled with the jazz-trained Bruce and Baker in those extended improvisations that were Cream's stock-in-trade.

 Moore brings all that to this performance, and effortlessly incorporates this fiery and swift riffing as well to remind you who's controlling the wah-wah pedal. Bruce and Baker, of course, are in fine shape as aging rock musicians, each improving and goading each other to different rhythmic emphasis, all of which Moore elaborates upon with inspiring blues improvisational escapades. It's refreshing that Moore seems to refuse to treat Cream's canonical songbook with any over reverence. He makes the material his own, and though Clapton's shadow looms over all of his flights, the Irish guitarist takes full possession of the solo spaces allotted and fills with a superbly honed manner, a gregarious aggression you might say.

Monday, May 15, 2017

JOE BONAMASSA v GARY MOORE!

Image result for joe bonamassaBlues guitarist Joe Bonamassa seems to be the white blues guitar saviour of choice for this part of the 21st century, a situation that has me tipping my hat to his technical acumen, his taste in guitar heroes, and the obvious work he put into his woodshedding to have those fancy chops at his disposal on demand. It's just too bad that all I get when listening intently to his long and frequent solos is the work involved in the effort to get all this text-book perfect. This is superhuman execution without commensurate passion. No fire under all that smoke. At a younger and less discriminating age, I might have been a fan, excited by his melodramatic playing and the authenticity of his rasping growl of a voice. No so much these days, not after a lifetime debating the merits and demerits of Clapton, Winter, SRV and the legions of other guitar heroes that populated the sports arenas off American cities in the 70s, Bonamassa seems no more than the advanced student who's perfected every cliche he could from the generation previously holding court without working on his own style, that rare item called an individual voice. What's the point, I suppose, is the enlightened way to take all this in, or ignore it outright. The last white blues guitar slinger to give me the figurative kick in the head was the late Gary Moore.


Image result for gary mooreMoore was the last of the great ones, I think, less so for the originality of his chops--save for the speed tested relish and elan of his riffing, little in the way of his velocity seemed new. Moore came by his flashiness naturally, as he loved the work of his defacto mentors--B.B., Albert and Freddy King, Buddy Guy, Peter Green, Erick Clapton--that he didn't want to insult what he perceived their greatness to be by merely mastering their licks faithfully, performing them on command with machine-tooled precision. His work sounds like the energy of someone who picked up on the tweaks, twists, and inventions of all his heroes and sought to find his way to play the blues Over the Top. There is a beautiful aggressiveness to his solos, a sublime benevolence to his fastest and flashiest note clusters. His lengthy expositions are not to everyone's taste, and ours is not a time when music fans of a younger generation speak obsessively of guitar heroes as a concern as essential as food, clothing, and shelter, but to the degree to which this musician committed himself to a style and particular approach to that style, Gary Moore's guitaring--to my tastes --was an inexhaustible font of inspired, riffing epiphanies. Moore mattered, or at least impressed the Dickens out of me, because of the obvious glee with which he took command of the blues-rock form. He might not have invented it, but he certainly ownership of it. He knew what to do with the prize he commandeered.

Joe Bonamassa just bores me with all his pro forma shuffles, boogies, rockers, and rave-ups. Slick, well constructed, and stiff as Disney robots. Technique without spirit, that distinguishing attribute that gives mastery of complex concepts a personality that distinguishes it from other virtuosos-in-waiting, isn't art but merely mechanics.