FRIDAY NIGHT IN SAN FRANCISCO

How can such a fantastic meeting between three giants give anything else but a superb result? Having seen this exact trio twice and varying line-upos twice, I always felt the actual record DID fall short of the live experience, as of course is the same with almost all of the live albums around, it just doesn't replace the "being there" experience.

I'd say two things about this album: 1- If JMcL and PDL are indisputable guitar kings in their own right , ADM was only a major challenger,although by now he was raking in all of the awards of those years for best guitarists. Yet, one can feel that ADM is an ultra competitive person, because every time I've seen him in the trio, the evening ended up is a guitar gunslinger, with everybody pulling tricks and trump cards from the back pockets not to be outdone by the other two. ADM trying to be faster than JMcL or being more Spanish than PDL. In general , what this gives is an indigest evening of guitar histrionics, where only the fans of gratuitious virtuosity won something, leaving the other fans frustrated, because the trio played AGAINST easch other instead of the trio playing WITH each other.

2- I saw twice the same type of venture , but this time without ADM, but with Larry Coryell, and the resulting music is so very different and 1000 times more pleasant. Indeed, Coryell is not a competitive beast and comes from the same generation than JMcL, so he probably feels he's got nothing to prove.... And indeed he doesn't and doesn't even try to up the ante with his colleagues. So all of a sudden JMcL and PDL are pushed in the back and can concentrate on being themselves, delivering beautiful music and serving the night's trio.

Coryell having his own style, much the same way that PDL and JMcL do, he is himself. And this is where it hurts for ADM: his lack of style: either speed lightning ala LMcL, or Flamenco ala PDL or Latino ala Santana, he never has his own spot and therefore must gain it by elbowing and shouldering the others.

Let this rant not deter you from having a great time listening to a good album, that might have been only marginally better with images.