E. Doctor Smith's Blog

Friday, December 8th at San Francisco’s Warfield Theater, saw the penultimate performance of the legendary jazz guitarist John McLaughlin. Following his final show in Los Angeles the next night, McLaughlin officially retired from all live performances in America, ending this tour with his stellar 4th Dimension band. It was a bittersweet show indeed, however McLaughlin didn’t disappoint his fans, closing out his career with an incendiary outing of music both old and new alongside bassist Etienne Mbappe, keyboardist/drummer Gary Husband and drummer percussionist Ranjit Barot. Earlier in the show, McLaughlin recalled his 1981 performance at the theater with the late guitarist Paco De Lucia, Al DiMeola, and their memorable live album “Friday Night in San Francisco”, described by jazz author and critic Walter Kolosky as “a musical event that could be compared to the Benny Goodman Band’s performance at Carnegie Hall in 1938; And may be considered the most influential of all live acoustic ...

When it comes to open handed drumming mastery, Rayford Griffin is among the very best I have ever seen. Proponents of that "left-handed" technique include the legendary drummers Lenny White, Simon Phillips and of course, Billy Cobham. I was taught to play open handed by the great Paul Sears after seeing the Mahavishnu Orchestra with Cobham. I immediately knew that I wanted to learn how to play drums like that. Last June, I was able to catch violinist Jean-Luc Ponty's recent "The Atlantic Years Tour", reuniting him with guitarist Jamie Glaser, keyboardist Wally Minko, bassist Baron Browne and of course Rayford Griffin. A few months earlier I saw this line-up in support of the "Anderson-Ponty Band", featuring the founding member and lead vocalist of Yes, Jon Anderson. As much as I enjoyed it, I longed to see the Ponty group performing their all-instrumental material. This most recent tour didn't disappoint. For this tour, Griffin added an addition...