Clapton, Return to Forever and Patrick Sweany

Of these varied shows I've gone to recently, the most pleasing was the wonderful Patrick Sweany (Band) at the Rock Hall last night. Let me explain.

I saw Eric Clapton at Blossom a few weeks back. I had never seen him before (it's hard to believe because I have HUNDREDS of his recordings), and I wasn't doing anything better, so I grabbed the GPS, jumped in the tC and headed South. Traffic was horrible, and if it weren't for a bold move (passing the Blossom exit and using the GPS to take back roads), I would have been late, as was much of the crowd.

What we were treated to was vintage Clapton - sounding much like a 90's show of his. Doyle Bramhall II was his second guitarist. Even though he is a major talent, I wished I could see Clapton with Derek Trucks - or both Trucks and Bramhall. Trucks is amazing. As it was, it still was a quality show, and very exciting in parts.

I had poor seats, and the venue is too big - these are the reason I had never seen him anyway - he always plays big venues. Schoolboy was there with his iRiver H120 Rockbox and was sitting right in front of a speaker, so the recording sounds pretty good.

I saw Return to Forever last week in Cleveland's lovely (sort of) Plain Dealer Pavilion (at least the place is lovelier than the name). It's a 5500 seat outdoor venue with a pretty urban setting and a cute tent. Unfortunately, the seats (at least on the floor) are very uncomfortable (too close together), and the sound is bad. It was a first for me for both the band and the venue.

Return to Forever always was one of my favorite fusion bands. This re-incarnation of the band is the perfect line-up of virtuosos - Lenny White, Stanley Clarke, Al Dimeola, and Chick Corea. They played some of their challenging repertoire and schoolboy's recording shows that the performance was somewhat sloppy. The solos by Al and Chick made it all worthwhile, but the poor sound and seating made the concert a disappointment.

Patrick Sweany is one of the treasures of Northern Ohio. I've seen and recorded him several times. At last night's Rock Hall performance Patrick was his usual energetic and spontaneous self. Pretty much throwing the set list away after the first song, he worked the crowd, trying hard to include everyone. He was especially good at bringing the small children in attendance into the show - inviting them on stage and letting them screw up his songs.

It was all very entertaining and I wished I could have gone to Patricks other gig later that night, but I'll just have to vow to catch him more frequently. Keith (the frequent taper) was there with his family. I forgot that he has recorded Patrick hundreds of times. The crowd consisted of maybe 50% tourists and 50% hard core fans. We all enjoyed it.

I was disappointed to see he had a new bass player and drummer, but they were great. Part of Patrick's act is for the bass and drums to jam in between songs. The new guys did up some classic jams in the vein of John Entwhistle and Jack Bruce. Wonderful. The opener, Christine Jackson, was also very good. She had a full band (I had previously seen her open for Buddy Guy as a solo act).

So of these three shows, I enjoyed Patrick Sweany the best. Better than Eric Clapton or Chick Corea and Return to Forever. And it's not because I'm cheap (the Rock Hall show was free).