Caught Steve Morse with Angel Vivaldi last night

General Music Discussion
#1

Hell of a show. I met @eric_divers and a bunch of other guys I know from another site for some pre-show beers and BBQ, and then watched these two guys just absolutely light the stage on fire last night.

Morse is a living legend and at 71, I think, he age hasn’t slowed him down at all - Eric thought maybe he’s had to change up his technique to more of an elbow-driven motion for faster stuff thanks to arthritis, but if so, the effect is comical - it looks like he’s doing really fast tremolo picking across a whole bunch of strings indiscriminately and yet just hitting everything cleanly. I think he reminds me a little of Jeff Beck in that I’ve found a lot of his tone on his studio recordings a little too “polite,” but his dual Engl rig sounded spectacular last night.

And Angel is, I think, the best guitarist of our generation, and just one of the nicest guys in the industry to boot - I’ve had the good fortune to know him for ten or fifteen years now, and somehow the guy just keeps getting better. The Morse gig is very much a supporting role so he was holding back a bit more than he might on his own stuff, but he got to rip on a few occasions and after going through a few rig changes earlier in the tour his JP2C half stack sounded huge, as well.

Really, really fun night - great to meet one of the other regulars around here, great to see a few old friends, and great, great, great music. If they happen to come anywhere near you, definitely a show to catch.

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#2

AAAA I GOT TO SHAKE STEVE MORSE’S HAND

I WAS VERY NORMAL ABOUT IT I SWEAR

(Thanks for the invite, Drew! It was a blast)

Tone was fantastic. If I had room and money I’d want one (2) of those Engl half stacks for myself.

Elbow technique: looked quite pronated to me. Sounded damn good, either it’s extremely tight swiping or he’s got something REAL weird going on there. Notably no Tumeni Notes, so there might be limits to it.

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#3

Oh right, yeah, I met Morse on the way out too, just shook hands and said hi basically, but comes across like a nice, genuine dude. Totally coincidentally, my playing has been on fire the last 24 hours. :laughing:

Angel I’ve known forever so we walked in and he gave me a bear hug, haha. His pick of choice was just nuts - this giant 6mm thick carved monstrosity he passed around the group, in the context of requesting the band play “Attila the Hun,” and then realizing he’d have to play that ultra-fast rhythm strumming part which made my hand hurt just watching and took temporarily switching to a 0.5mm whenever the figure came up, which I didn’t even see him doing onstage.

Eric’s got a far better eye for technique than I do, I think, so I’d trust his read here. Whatever the case, it looked like it shouldn’t work, but it did, exceptionally.

We were both talking about how we need to do a slightly bigger Boston-area meetup with the one or two other guys around here, so watch for that. :+1:

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#4

Y’all in Boston? I love it there! I was last there in June.

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#5

Ahhh I am jealous! What a great show that would have been! Awesome!

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#6

Yeah it was awesome. And I think they played their last leg in CT last night. The good news, if you missed it, is that Angel had a blast and there seems to be some genuine affection between the two, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they do another tour some day.

And yeah, @Pepepicks66 been here since… 2004? Geez. Hurts to think about that. :laughing: Really cool city. It’s a major metro area, almost any tour you’d want to see comes through here, and it’s a major biotech, education, and finance hub… but it’s an old enough city that it still has an old world feel, the downtown area , all the retail space is too small for big chains to want to come in so it’s a lot more small business friendly than most cities and has a lot different feel to the downtown for it (at least, outside of the Seaport, haha), and it’s a very walking-friendly city. If I were ever to leave, it almost certainly wouldn’t be for another city, I love it here.

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#7

Seconded on Boston area being great. I can walk to two different venues within 10-15m of my house: one has a bunch of small-to-medium metal shows, the other does fantastic jazz. Hop the T and you can be at several more within 20 minutes.

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#8

And you used to be right next to one of the better cocktail bars in the area. Btw, if you haven’t yet made it into Backbar… 10/10, IMO that’s the best cocktail bar in Boston, even before Drink closed.

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#9

You know, I haven’t been in there yet!

Hands down best cocktails I’ve had here were from Sarma, so far. But the journey is endless.

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#10

Sarma IS very good - food is exceptional there, too - I used to live just on the other side of Prospect Hill in Union and I didn’t make it in there nearly enough. But, Sarma is much more a restaurant that also does excellent cocktails. Backbar occasionally works with a food truck and sometimes has some small bite snacks to order, but it is 100% a cocktail bar; periodically changing themed menus but always with the option to go off menu and ask the bartender to make recommendations. Heavy Star Wars theme to the decor, and they do an annual Lord of the Rings month as well. That kind of a place.

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#11

My wife feels the same way about moving to a “big city”: if we did, Boston would be it. I just wish Regina pizza in the North End were easier to get into, lol. We went there every weekend for a month some years back (almost ten).

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#12

There’s a pretty solid pizza place in Harvard Square too fwiw.

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#13

Regina’s fine, but we have better pizza places. IMO, the best pizza in Boston is Area Four, near MIT. slow fgerment sourdough crust, loosely neapolitan style. Absolutely amazing.

There are a few other places around here I really like, and even one whose crust I thought was slightly better than A4’s ( Si Cara, in Central), but I don’t think their sauces and toppings were quite as good.

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