1987 was year that I was first really introduced to the music of Larry Carlton, thanks to an Armed Forces Network (AFN) segment that always featured the song "Smiles And Smile To Go" from his brilliant, 1986, all-acoustic album Alone/But Never Alone. I'll never get that song out of my head. Of course I immediately ran out got the thing, even though I had always been primarily a classic rock and heavy metal customer up to that point. Carlton can take most of the credit for bringing me over to the dark side of smooth jazz.
In 1988, as I was just starting to explore the back catalog of my new guitar hero, Carlton is almost killed at the hands of some gun-wielding, teenage, asshole who shot him in the throat outside of his Hollywood Hills home for no apparent reason. Fortunately, Carlton made a miraculous recovery, overcoming paralysis to part of his body, which kept him from being able to play the guitar for several months. I ended up seeing Carlton in concert a few times during his prime; once during his tour with bass legend Stanley Clarke, documented on the fantastic 1993 album Live At The Greek; once during his collaboration with fellow jazz guitar legend Lee Ritenour, which produced the 1994 album Larry & Lee, and once on his own. He was always amazing.
Steve Lukather has also been one of my favorite guitarists for the past couple of decades now. Even if you don't much care for his work with Toto, and I do, you can't help but appreciate all of the incredible session work he has done. His resume is staggering, but I'd recommend some of his more recent work such as the last few Derek Sherinian albums, or his Los Lobotomies concert DVD, as a good place to start. You will hear, during the disk's special features, how Larry met Steve when he was only 18 years old when Jeff Porcaro brought him along to one of the sessions they were doing together. Steve was always a huge fan of Larry, and they have been great friends ever since.
This DVD was recorded at the New Morning club in Paris, France on July 9th, 2001. The set features a few of Carlton's best songs along with a few classic rock covers. Although the setlist is only seven songs deep, the performance runs a good 91 minutes, which means that a couple of these songs turn into some seriously long jam fests. They waste no time making my point as they kick things off with a 20-minute version of Jeff Beck's "The Pump", which gets extended by some of the finest guitar soloing you will ever see. They even throw in a snippet of Steely Dan's "Josie" at the end, a song that Carlton originally played on.
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