purchase [ Casino / DiMeola ]
purchase [ Electric Dreams / McLaughlin]
They blew me away. That's in the past tense, as in - I don't listen to them much these days. But they were a major part of my musical formation. So .. this is kind of a trip back down memory lane. Maybe these sounds will reverberate with you.
A search of the SMM blog for a few guitar players that came to mind shows that 2 have not been featured much here. Curious. They are both top of the list for fame and, of course, skill, but SMM writers have not posted much about them.
The two are related - in that they collaborated on a 1981 live album together with Paco De Lucia (who I mentioned in our annual memoriam back in 2015. SMM alumnus Geoviki touched on one of my choices previously, as did I at various times in the past. But they haven't been noted as much as it seems to me they ought.
The common thread here, aside from being sterling guitar players, and the <Friday Night in San Fransisco> collaboration album is jazz-fusion. Blisteringly fast fingers/notes. So many so that both of my choices below have been critiqued as playing too many notes.
Al Dimeola's guitar style mostly caught my attention with its Mediterranean sounds. Mixed with a touch of jazz, the result is ... well... listen for yourself:
John McLaughlin has always come across to me as a little more to the east on the world map in terms of sound. Able to bring that sound back west, in my mind <My Goal's Beyond> and the Mahavishnu period are firmly rooted in a more Asian than Mediterranean sound:
