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Guitarist of Passion
Steam slowly rises from beneath the wheels, beginning to roll down the tracks. Just a hiss, the warming up of embers deep inside the core of a giant locomotive. It finally starts moving, picking up speed. Until, mile by mile, it’s pushing tons down the rails with a power that is heart stopping. Energy rushing past the face as one stands by the tracks and feels the rumble beneath the feet. Kinetic… driven. Precise.
That is akin to what I heard as I was treated to a private and exclusive concert by Jimmy McG and his jazz buddy, sit-in, Alex. I knew it would be something out of the ordinary. Jimmy McG doing jazz. I expected, well, I’m not sure what. This is what I got…
To paint the whole picture, I will first depict the backdrop, a very fluent and well adept player, Alex keeping up a nice accompaniment. Experienced and innovative, something McG so appreciates. Imagine a mixture of Eric Johnson does jazz and perhaps Al Dimeola… Alex knows his guitar and that was a very solid ground for the mighty McG to race his engine. What I listened to was not McG doing jazz, but the man and his soul express his answer to the jazz, in the spirit-fire rock he is so well known for. And then some…
Imaginative… presenting emotion like an audio wi-fi, bright and colorful one minute and mysterious and elusive the next. Soul and gut feeling threaded like silver and gold, spun like a tapestry of liquid oxygen and strings… Fingers met each note with unabandoned convergence, two partners, the musician and the instrument. The chords were bold and brash, wrapped delicately inside runs that were ethereal and ferocious all in one tone. The melodic content was entertaining, theatrical and capable of creating mind pictures of the emotion McG conveyed. I saw and felt his passion, able to relate by just the presentation alone. The frets were caressed by his fingers and yet ravished by the passion in his composition.
The voice. Guitar tone that was a golden child of not only a well tuned guitar, but expert fingers that knew how to make it talk. Heart crying bends, literating such drama, while the power and recklessness of the meaner side was easily painted in with athletic grace and well chosen execution.
It was not just a performance to be heard, but to be experienced. Honey and raging fire met and had primal mating… Soul and passion danced and created scorching hot sparks as the conviction rang true and accurate. Pirouette surprises, blossoming orgasm, expressed with dynamic and deeply felt licks of fire. It was all that!
Jazz created the conditions necessary for a raging inferno perhaps, but Mcg brought the torch that made it burn. He told his own story and left the heart shocked and amazed. Fingers that chose and sung well through his tool of the craft. It brought to mind Lynch’s inventive attack and animated phrasing, while it also laced the finer edges with the bluesy tears of Gary Moore and even a bit of Jimmy Page of all players. It was nothing short of delightful. Schenkers turbulence, with Reb Beach’s abstract textures… It had it all. McG had a lot to say with the eloquence that depicted with only the licks of the tasty and most expressive shapes.
The locomotive shook the ground and left the tracks melting hot with the feel.
It left the listener bedazzled and somehow changed by the magic. It left the listener wondering how he did it. A canvass of emotion and performance, displayed like a flag in the tempest. Spontaneous, gutsy and unpredictable… Hmmm, it left the listener deciding, maybe a little bit of the rocker McG likes jazz…
I kid you not… the poetic MysM…
http://www.myspace.com/jimmymcdude
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