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July 19, 2009

UPDATED! - Eric Clapton & Steve Winwood – Pepsi Center Denver CO. 21Jun2009

After hearing about Winwood and Clapton getting together for shows at Madison Square Garden, I’m sure a lot of Blind Faith fans were on edge about the possibility of seeing these two great musicians together again. They did not disappoint.

The set list was a mixture of Blind Faith and each performer’s impressive canon with a few gems thrown in for good measure. They performed most of the Blind Faith LP except Sea of Joy and Do What You Like. But they did play Sleeping in the Ground, an unreleased track from that session. It was nearly a 2 ½ hour show.
Here is the Denver Set list:
Had to Cry Today
Low Down
After Midnight
Presence of the Lord
Sleeping in the Ground
Glad
Well Alright
Tough Luck Blues
Pearly Queen
No Face, No Name, No Number
Forever Man
Georgia (Winwood solo on Hammond)
Drifting (EC acoustic)
How Long
Layla (Winwood & EC, both on acoustic guitar) a little sleepy, would have loved the electric version
Can’t Find My Way Home (Winwood & EC, both on acoustic guitar)
Split Decision, EC adds some muscle!
Voodoo Chile-EC sings the opening line, I’m a Voodoo chile...and then hands off the vocal work to Winwood. Great, soaring notes. They put their own stamp on it, for sure, but what a great 15 minutes!
Encore:
Cocaine
Dear Mr. Fantasy


They are touring with a couple of backup singers with some pretty impressive pipes. Why not do at least one song from the Yvonne Elliman era? I would have loved to hear The Core a song that also allows a lot of room for soloing by Winwood and Clapton. Oh well.

For Presence of the Lord, they both traded off vocals. Interesting now that we know this was a point of contention between the two men since the Blind Faith days. Winwood sings the song on the original LP release, but always felt that Clapton should have sung it since he wrote it. Tonight they traded vocals and it worked very well.


Clapton started his solo set with and old blues tune, Drifting. A great old song that I’ve never heard him play. It was phenomenal! Both men played the acoustic on Can’t Find My Way Home. But instead of the familiar finger style, they changed it up a bit, even adding the backup singers. It was not how I wanted it played, haha, but it was still good.


I do have some songs from the show to post later, so check back. Until then, check out these great YouTubes.



UPDATE: I've added a link to 6 songs from the show, recorded by me. I wish I could put up more but these turned out the best.
01 - Had to Cry Today
02 - Glad
03 - Well Alright
04 - Tough Luck Blues
05 - Pearly Queen
06 - Voodoo Chile
Denver Show

4 comments:

  1. AnonymousJune 26, 2009 at 1:10 PM

    http://bigozine2.com/roio/?p=236

    ReplyDelete
  2. StephenJuly 27, 2009 at 6:40 AM

    Thanks for these. Great recording quality, I always think live stuff has far more atmosphere when it's recorded from the audience.

    In the spirit of sharing stuff via the comments, I've put up a couple of EC tracks I recorded in 1983. Not spectacular sound, but not too bad either. Hope you enjoy them.

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  3. J. Scott MooreJuly 31, 2009 at 8:39 AM

    Thanks for the EC! Actually, I think that is quite good quality. Better than mine. I'm not too impressed with my own recordings. Perhaps you can email me with some tips!
    Anyway, it's good to hear EC playing well in that era. I saw him live around that time, don't recall the year but I remember Duck Dunn was in the band and it was one of the worst concerts EVER! Thankfully I have seen many since that were MUCH better.

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  4. StephenAugust 1, 2009 at 1:16 PM

    Thanks for the kind words. I think one's always disappointed with one's own recordings; firstly because you know where you got things wrong and notice every time the tape plays where other people don't, and secondly because no live tape ever matches up to the experience of a live gig (how could it?). You know what the night was really like, but other listeners don't have that yardstick to judge the recording by.

    I saw EC several times in the mid '80s and always had a good night. He seemed more relaxed and willing to stretch out live than I'd seen since he left Mayall. The albums were rubbish by then though of course.

    ReplyDelete