Posted by If I’m not mistaken I came into awareness of Al Di Meola through his association with John McLaughlin on the Friday Night in San Francisco album, a recording that is a legendary must-have for guitar players everywhere. Incidentally it was through this same recording that I first heard of the great Paco DeLucia*, which tips my hand that I was (and remain) a McLaughlin fan first.
And why not? McLaughlin is a musical Jedi, a long lanky spirit-animal drained of ego and filled to the brim with something very much like The Force, which in this case is an uncanny ability to vibrate the molecules in any room with a uniqueness that is almost magical, were it not for all of the blatantly obvious training. But this ticket story is not about Obi-wan McLaughlin, nor is it about Paco DeYoda (for certainly the force is strong with each of these masters). No, this story is about Al “Mace Windu” Di Meola, who I saw hosting his own group at the Ottawa Jazz Festival on the Fourth of July**, 2009.
(Anyone familiar enough with the Star Wars universe to know that Mace Windu is Samuel L. Jackson’s character in the prequel series [that is, Star Wars I, II and III] will also know that Windu was one of the lamest Jedis to make knighthood; he was wrong about both Anakin and Dooku and then he dies. The only ‘victory’ he ever scored as near as I can tell was when he killed Jango Fett which, while good for the galaxy on the whole, was terrible for entertainment value…Everyone knows that Fett family is cool. Anyway, my point is that Star Wars geeks [and only Star Wars geeks] will easily notice that by labelling these men the way I have I obviously think of Al Di Meola as dramatically lesser than Paco or McLaughlin. Being cryptic like that is one of them “writer’s tricks’ that I’m working on.)
(Okay, I’m going parenthetical again to explain my position on Di Meola because I’m feeling a bit like a jerk right now for being so ungenerous with him. The thing was, when I listened to the Friday Night in San Francisco album I had no idea who was who, all I heard was an impossible patchwork of maelstromic notes thickly overlaid onto one another creating a blanket of acoustic sound that nearly smothered me with disbelief. When I actually got to see the three of them recreating the album at a show in Montreal I could finally put names to the phrases, and it was then that I noticed that the bulk of Di Meola’s contribution sounded like the same rapid-fire line played over and over anytime he could wedge it in. It was a good line, but enough to rest a career on [thought I – rather snarkily – at the time]?
Now – years later – I have grown enough to realize that my opinion was based more on ignorance and much less on actual analysis, and I have grown as a person and as a musician enough to realize that I will never be a big enough fan of Di Meola’s to bring myself to truly analyze his work, so out of a combination of maturity and laziness I can now give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he is probably quite brilliant. Maybe I should re-nickname him Anakin Di Meola, for he is redeemed***.
Still, it would’ve been nice if this had been a Paco show instead.)
I’m sure it was a pretty good concert; I don’t remember much.
*I am only now noticing that all three of the guitar legends on this seminal album have surname prefixes, and they are all different. I can’t believe they didn’t call their group McDeDi. Or DeMcDi.
**People ask me, “Todd, do you folks have Fourth of July up there in Canada?” to which I reply: “Of course we do, we just don’t celebrate it.” But let’s be honest here: that’s a lie; people don’t really ask me that.
***But I probably won’t. It’s not like Star Wars injected prog-classical guitarist references come up very often.
Todd Man Out 