DVD Review: John Hammond: The Paris Concert

I had the brilliant idea of taking my laptop out to the living room to work on this review while watching the John Hammond: The Paris Concert DVD. The only problem was trying to drag myself away from watching long enough to write anything down. It's hard enough for one man, a guitar, and a harmonica to hold an audience live, but to be able to enthrall you through an entire DVD is the sign of someone special.

That's John Hammond (the younger one, his dad being dead now for quite a while) all right, someone special, and the new DVD John Hammond: The Paris Concert captures everything amazing about him. Normally, you're lucky if these concert films utilize four cameras for a full band, but that's how many they have trained on John for this filming at the New Morning club in Paris.

You'd think listening to one man playing 24 solo traditional blues songs might get a little repetitive – let's face it, in the hands of a lesser musician, that can happen – but with Mr. Hammond, that's not the case. First of all, he throws in songs you're not expecting, like Tom Waits' "Get Behind The Mule".

When you finally get used to the fact he's pretty near unmatchable while playing acoustic guitar blues, he picks up his Resonator guitar and demonstrates that you haven't seen anything yet. Most slide players tend to equate speed and flash with substance, but not Mr. Hammond. He stretches notes with that round bar of metal (he uses a piece from a sprocket set) like he's playing them on one of his harmonicas.

That doesn't mean he can't uncork a slide run that makes you wonder how he doesn't burn the neck off his guitar, he's playing so hard. "Mother In Law Blues" has him running the slide from the bridge up to the head of the neck so fast that you swear you see sparks spraying off the strings.

With his strings howling, his harp crying, and his voice growling, you begin to understand how the blues has come to have so many myths about the devil at the Crossroads attached to it. You either have to be speaking in tongues in ecstasy during church or possessed by the devil. Since no good Christian is going to be singing about those types of things mentioned in blues songs – whisky, women, and wild ways – well, that leaves only one reasonable conclusion.

Article Author: Richard Marcus

Richard Marcus is the author of the forthcoming book What Will Happen In Eragon IV? and has had his work published in print and on line all over the world. The not so long-haired Canadian iconoclast writes reviews and opines on the world as he sees …

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