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The Experience Hendrix Tour
- Thread starter lilcrate
- Start date
Here it is if anyone is interested. Wish the tour was coming near my town..
Went several years ago, and really enjoyed it. Chris Layton played, and the Ampeg SVT/810 died in the middle of a song. Good thing they had a spare on stage. One standout, and in a bad way, was Joe Satriani. Not that he was bad, but his style didn't seem to fit. Saw a Jimi Hendrix look-a-like in the bathroom taking a leak. Some guy was handing out flyers to see this 'Hendrix' somewhere, stating that it was an actual relative of Jimi himself. He sure looked the part, though. This one looks pretty good, but I don't see any LA dates. Bummer.
I went recently. All in all, happy I attended. It's lots of bang for the buck.... nearly four hours worth of music.
Not a lot of marketing/advertising for this tour... as a result, there are deals to be had on tickets the day of the show. If you feel like you can wait, you can score a real bargain.
A few things I liked:
- Eric Johnson. Super-tasteful (as always). At times, it's as if the guy was channeling Jimi, yet he could slide into sounding like himself. That guy is a joy to listen to.
- Dweezil Zappa. First time seeing him and I was impressed. He laid down some mammoth solos without over-playing. Unassuming personality and stage presence. Even Dweezil's rhythm playing was brilliant. You can hear his intelligence when he plays.
- The two guys from Los Lobos. Great stuff from those fellas. David Hildalgo can SOLO! Classy playing out of those two.
- Chris "Whipper" Layton. The guy is a machine... fantastic hearing/seeing him again.
- Doyle Bramhall, Jr. He was his usual laid-back self. But make no mistake -- that cat has had chops for decades. He's a dang good singer as well. Just a soulful, classy spirit.
- Kenny Aronoff. Kenny, you're a beast of a drummer.. seen ya before... but playing with Joe Satriani on the Hendrix tour isn't your best career move (see below).
- Billy Cox. Probably the coolest guy to take the stage the whole night. Funny and simply a rock-solid bassist.
A few things I didn't like:
- Zakk Wylde. "Hey, everyone... my name's Zakk and my "thing" is to have this obnoxious, unoriginal, mountain main beard... try to make people think I'm some kind of crazy, drunken, wild rocker... and to play a MINIMUM 5-minute solo in every song on this tour... sometimes play two or three of them in a single song... and have I shown you I'm WYLDE??? Yup, that's me -- I'm Zakk Wylde." Hey, buddy... one of the keys to a great solo is you step in and play what the song needs in a very finite amount of time. You've got a few chops (yes, they're repetitive), but your 10- and 12-minute solos are boring your audiences to tears. I left during one of your solos... went to the men's room... grabbed a beer... returned to my seat... and your solo was still taking place... and it sounded just like all your other solos all night. That's a problem, Zachary. And running out into the crowd with a 90-foot-long cable loses its novelty after about 45 seconds... no need to try to make it the main part of your act. Oh, and you sing like Axl Rose recovering from laryngitis. You hogged the stage for WAY longer than you should have. The producers of the tour should cut your time in HALF.
- Joe Satriani. Joey, you bored the SNOT out of me. [YAWN] There's only so much I can take of watching your shaved head in gawdy, giant Oakley sunglasses make stupid "solo faces" all night. [YAWN] You and Mr. Wylde were the only guys to play Hendrix tunes and only end up sounding like your same old boring selves from the early 90s. [YAWN]
- Jonny Lang. Remember after Stevie passed, all the guitar mags were saying this guy and Kenny Wayne Shepherd would be the second coming? Welp, that didn't happen. I got good dose as to why at this show.
YMMV.
Not a lot of marketing/advertising for this tour... as a result, there are deals to be had on tickets the day of the show. If you feel like you can wait, you can score a real bargain.
A few things I liked:
- Eric Johnson. Super-tasteful (as always). At times, it's as if the guy was channeling Jimi, yet he could slide into sounding like himself. That guy is a joy to listen to.
- Dweezil Zappa. First time seeing him and I was impressed. He laid down some mammoth solos without over-playing. Unassuming personality and stage presence. Even Dweezil's rhythm playing was brilliant. You can hear his intelligence when he plays.
- The two guys from Los Lobos. Great stuff from those fellas. David Hildalgo can SOLO! Classy playing out of those two.
- Chris "Whipper" Layton. The guy is a machine... fantastic hearing/seeing him again.
- Doyle Bramhall, Jr. He was his usual laid-back self. But make no mistake -- that cat has had chops for decades. He's a dang good singer as well. Just a soulful, classy spirit.
- Kenny Aronoff. Kenny, you're a beast of a drummer.. seen ya before... but playing with Joe Satriani on the Hendrix tour isn't your best career move (see below).
- Billy Cox. Probably the coolest guy to take the stage the whole night. Funny and simply a rock-solid bassist.
A few things I didn't like:
- Zakk Wylde. "Hey, everyone... my name's Zakk and my "thing" is to have this obnoxious, unoriginal, mountain main beard... try to make people think I'm some kind of crazy, drunken, wild rocker... and to play a MINIMUM 5-minute solo in every song on this tour... sometimes play two or three of them in a single song... and have I shown you I'm WYLDE??? Yup, that's me -- I'm Zakk Wylde." Hey, buddy... one of the keys to a great solo is you step in and play what the song needs in a very finite amount of time. You've got a few chops (yes, they're repetitive), but your 10- and 12-minute solos are boring your audiences to tears. I left during one of your solos... went to the men's room... grabbed a beer... returned to my seat... and your solo was still taking place... and it sounded just like all your other solos all night. That's a problem, Zachary. And running out into the crowd with a 90-foot-long cable loses its novelty after about 45 seconds... no need to try to make it the main part of your act. Oh, and you sing like Axl Rose recovering from laryngitis. You hogged the stage for WAY longer than you should have. The producers of the tour should cut your time in HALF.
- Joe Satriani. Joey, you bored the SNOT out of me. [YAWN] There's only so much I can take of watching your shaved head in gawdy, giant Oakley sunglasses make stupid "solo faces" all night. [YAWN] You and Mr. Wylde were the only guys to play Hendrix tunes and only end up sounding like your same old boring selves from the early 90s. [YAWN]
- Jonny Lang. Remember after Stevie passed, all the guitar mags were saying this guy and Kenny Wayne Shepherd would be the second coming? Welp, that didn't happen. I got good dose as to why at this show.
YMMV.
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Am with you for most of that. I thought Jonny was pretty good. Never saw Dug before and don't know King's X and expected more from what I've read about him; Doyle was either off or just not my kind of thing, thought the same seeing him with Clapton years ago; Satriani was just ok, not excellent like I saw him about 15 years ago in his own band, I agree with all of what you wrote even though I love the guy; Wylde was a waste of time - 30 minutes of an uninteresting one-chord pentatonic solo that had nothing to do with Hendrix, he should have been limited to 15 minutes max total, it felt like filler and I left the room twice during his performances, but Eric Johnson is a tough act to follow, he was sometimes brilliant, sometimes seemed out of sync, and had some equipment issues; Zappa was pretty good; the main drummer didn't do it for me, seemed uninspired, the other bass player seemed pretty good but couldn't hear him in the mix. The whole thing was too loud, sometimes painfully so. It was an ok show.
