who surprised and who disappointed

Probably the most disappointing show I saw, relative to my esteem for the performer, was Albert King in a NYC club in the mid-80's, but this may be unfair since he might not have been in the greatest of health anymore. Nevertheless, backed by the competently polished local blooze-boogie band who opened the set, he came out with his electric guitar cranked up to godawful volumes, about twice as loud as the whole rest of the band put together (I'm not kidding, I mean literally -- the disparity was so enormous it would have been comical if it hadn't been so painful), played through a horrible sounding solid-state amp with a piercingly discordant tone, kept what sounded like both a phaser and a chorus turned on one setting the entire night, completely inappropriate for the material, and proceeded to sloppily repeat the same licks over and over in each and every song, with no regard for the songs themselves, and continually wandered out of time away from the changes since he was so loud he couldn't hear the band during his solos. At one point he did apologize for his rather disconnected demeanor, saying he'd been ill. I've been to a few shows that were even harder to sit through for me than this one (Dave Alvin & the Guilty Men, Evelyn Glennie, James Blood Ulmer, Foo Fighters were some squirmers I'd rather forget), but won't detail them because my expectations weren't as high. (Well, there was that legendary DC show where Minor Threat opened for UK punk heroes The Damned and wound up basically blowing them off the stage, to our hometown delight yet major disappointment...)

Biggest surprise at a show? When Robert Plant made an impromptu mid-set appearance at a club where the Stray Cats were playing (again mid-80's), spontaneously joining them onstage after his own concert at the local arena for rousing off-the-cuff renditions of 50's rockabilly standards. I initially feared the Zeppelin-esque banshee overkill worst, but he was actually much better at singing in the authentic style than Brian Setzer, and clearly having a total ball wringing out "Be-Bop-A-Lula" and the like. Have you ever heard a packed-house crowd all of a sudden become twice as loud? I think the most shocked guys in the whole joint were the Strays themselves.

Dan: Don't forget Ani Difranco too (not that I've had the displeasure of seeing her live... ;^) About Evelyn Glennie, my comment as our group filed out of the hall was to the effect that it only makes sense, when you think about it, that what we'd just witnessed came across as an assault of rote mechanical virtuousity totally divorced from any feeling of artistic communication or musical soul -- after all, the woman *is* completely deaf. A technically awesome but ultimately meaningless (to me) oddity that I'd like never to endure again.

Tvad: By the time of that Stray Cats show I mentioned, they were already well on the down slide of their rather meteroric little career, and the Plant surprise was by far the highlight of that show. Contrast that with a few years earlier when I saw the band on their first tour in '82, before they even had an American record deal -- if anybody ever thought these guys were pretenders or some kind of joke (which they quickly began to justify thinking of them as), that first show was one the most amazing I've ever witnessed in my life. Yeah, I know in one respect they were simply mining a style that had come and gone before they first picked up instruments, but they recombined it, very successfully at first, with a contemporary punk approach, and you would not believe the explosion of music, energy and sound that came off that stage, from just three guys with a grand total of one slap bass, two drums (kick + snare) and one cymbal, and one old Gretsch guitar plugged into only an echo box and an old Fender amp. Absolute excitement, could more than hold their own alongside vintage Dave Edmunds, Blasters, X, Rockpile, Cramps, Robert Gordon, Shakin' Pyramids (seen 'em all), too bad they weren't ever near that great again in later years, but more recent claimants to the throne like the Reverend Horton Heat or Southern Culture On The Skids have nothin' on the Cats in their heyday. Even so, their singin' and lyrics do seem pretty unintentionally comical in retrospect if you go back and listen to the records. Hadda be there, I guess. BTW, I've never been able to stand Setzer's Big Band, which to me is either a pale imitation at best, or a smarmy desecration at worst, of the postwar jump-band style ;^)

Big disappointment last night, even though I didn't have any major expectations going in. I won't say who the band was because they were local heroes from the 60's, with one album to their credit, who recently re-formed but with only 2 of 5 members from the original lineup intact. The most recognized among them -- the guitarist who went on to form a hard rock band on a major label which recorded extensively and toured internationally in the 70's, and the bassist who co-founded a very long-running and nationally-known blues/rock band -- both did not participate. Instead on lead guitar was a local hot-shot whose name I've been aware of for over 20 years, who has national recognition in guitar circles with many albums to his credit and is also a teacher and author/columnist, but who I'd never heard or seen before myself (except for one time on local radio). Anyway, I thought the entire show was awful in every respect, including and especially this guitar-god guy, plus the vocalist (one of the original members), so I got up and walked out after only several songs despite the $20 admission, 'cause I just couldn't stand listening another minute. Oh well, c'est la vie...