THREE GUITARS (WITH BADI ASSAD AND JOHN ABERCROMBIE)

Most of Larry's recent albums that I have tend to be straight ahead jazz, rather than jazz rock/fusion. Nothing wrong with that, but I suspect the Three Guitars DVD and CD would be of more interest to the average progressive music fan. The music is still heavily jazzy, but you can't beat having two Abercrombie classics - Ralph's Piano Waltz and Timeless performed live.

John Abercrombie is all over my record collection, but Badi Assad is new to me. She's a lot of fun to watch live and I didn't realize what a "freak" she was until I saw her in action. She's an excellent guitarist and brings a few of her own compositions to the set here and on the CD. The freaky part is that in addition to the guitar, she also does some mouth and body percussion. I think she is probably also a better singer than John or Larry, although Larry did try his hand at vocals earlier in his career and what I heard wasn't bad.

This isn't a set of strictly three folks playing guitars simultaneously, you also get some duets and solo pieces, two guitars and Badi singing, etc. The show is performed in a small jazz club called New Morning, and I can't think of a better venue to enjoy this kind of music. If you want to explore the jazzier side of prog, this is an excellent DVD

Interesting factoid in the liner notes, Larry was friends with Frank Zappa. I did not know that. It's a small prog world after all.