Zouave said:Terry Allan Hall said:DeanS said:In the throes of Joe Satriani and Steve Vai...out of nowhere came this kid from Texas...and I thought the heir apparent to Stevie Ray Vaughn...only far superior! Well...he remained relatively low key, but here's Eric Johnson with Cliffs of Dover...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15eu7ar5EKM
The difference between SRV and Johnson is that Johnson isn't a hyped-up creation from the record company...he's really original!
<mouth hanging open>
wh-wh-wh-wh-WHAT!!????
LIEZ!!!
Live at the El Mocambo (Toronto, Canada)
1:01:07
[video=youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CfutuQYcBY[/video]
An excellent imitation of Hendrix and Earl Hooker, no doubt. The dude could put on a show, alright, but also consider that Double Trouble (Tommy Shannon and Chris Layton) is such an outstanding rhythm section that they can (and have) made some fairly uninspiring artists sound quite a bit better...w/o them creating the pulse, SRV often didn't have that impact (ever hear him w/ David Bowie?)...
Many years ago, when SRV was just getting some notice, he was the opening act for Willie Nelson And Family at Armodillo World Headquarters, and Willie very kindly invited him to sit in on "Milk Cow Blues"...SRV came out and made all the obligatory "guitar faces" and all the cute guitar tricks like playing it behind his back...every time SRV would do his "Guitar slinger" act w/ his Stratocaster, Willie'd play the same stuff back to him on "Trigger", his well-worn Martin gutstring. Finally, Willie took off on a Django-meets-Les Paul-meets-Wes Mongomery-flavored solo (I assume you know who those guys are) and brought down the house...
SRV was lost by that point, as that was outside of his genre (he eventually got to where he could hang, though). SRV just took off that plumed hat of his and bowed his head, humbbled, to the roar of applause from that audience.
SRV played pretty good Blues-Rock, but Willie plays pretty good guitar, period.