Crossroads Guitar Festival 2010 is the third installment of the concert event that Eric Clapton launched back in 2004 to benefit the Crossroads Centre in Antigua, a drug and alcohol addiction rehabilitation center that Clapton founded in 1997. The 2004 and 2007 festivals were both captured on a couple of outstanding DVDs, and this latest installment, which took place on June 26, 2010 before a sold-out crowd of more than 27,000 fans at Chicago's Toyota Park, has also recently been released on both Blu-ray disk and DVD.
The video opens with someone driving around the south side of Chicago in a classic Buick Invicta convertible, soaking in the scenes of this year's host windy city. Native son, Bill Murray, returns as emcee of this year's festival, and he welcome's "Chicago's own" Eric Clapton to the stage to join Louisiana slide guitar wizard Sonny Landreth as they kick off the festival's impressive opening set. Watching Clapton and Landreth trade licks during the show's opening number, "Promise Land," was one of the highlights of the entire concert.
Shortly thereafter, blues-guitar prodigy Joe Bonamassa joins Robert Randolph and the Family Band onstage for a blistering performance of "Going Down," which only begged the question - why the hell didn't smokin' Joe get his own set!? If you have not yet laid witness to Bonamassa's career defining set at the Royal Albert Hall last year, where Clapton joined him onstage to essentially pass on the blues-rock torch, do so now, and you will understand what I mean.
This year's Crossroads Festival was not quite up to snuff with the previous two events. There were just too many of the same performers and same old songs being performed. With such an incredible catalog of songs, why would Clapton possibly choose to repeat most of the songs he has already performed at the other two festivals - and performed much better. Same goes for the set with Steve Winwood. Yes, "Had To Cry Today," and "Dear Mister Fantasy" are two of my all-time favorite songs, but we've already got better performances of them on the 2007 Crossroads DVD, and on the Live From Madison Square Garden DVD.
And did we really need another Crossroads DVD with Jimmy Vaughan and Hubert Sumlin playing on half of the damn songs? Jimmy is to Stevie Ray, as Tito Jackson is to Michael, and Mr. Sumlin, who must be about a 100 years old now, was just painful to watch. But I guess Eric feels he can't not re-invite certain people. And what the hell is Sheryl Crow doing there again? This is a GUITAR festival, is it not? Sure, she is a fine enough singer, but even I can outplay her on the guitar. And could this Citizen Cope guy have possibly looked more wasted during his performance with Clapton? Eric was looking over at him the whole time like, "I better get this guy down to Antigua before it's too late."
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