Jonas Hellborg/Shawn Lane with Felix Sabal - Lecco - Warsaw Summer Jazz Days, Warsaw, Poland 6/19/98 (DVD)

I puzzled over a number of things in watching this performance, particularly the sorts of judgements that hang over this style of music. Is it fusion or jazz-rock? Sometimes I wonder, most of the time bands like this just sound like extremely excellent musicians playing melodic rock music. However, in watching Jonas Hellborg play, it struck me that he seemed rather disengaged with what he was playing, having almost the same attitude and facial expressions the entire show. So in a way it feels like the “wank” thing is less a matter of the talent of the musicians but a seeming (at least to the audience - or just me) lack of engagement emotionally with what is being played. Lane doesn’t seem quite as affected by this and definitely seems to be moved at times, but after a good 45 minutes of this I was really worn out by a seeming lack of dynamics and feeling in the set. But again, perhaps it’s a certain set of aesthetics that inform my opinion of it and more on that in a sec…

Black Sabbath - Don Kirschner’s Rock Concert, Santa Monica 9/75 (DVD) 

Assuming you’re a Sabs fan, how could this not be very cool? It’s a pretty short performance, I think well within half an hour but they perform material from post Vol. 4 albums and that doesn’t seem to be something as frequently documented as the endless trotting out of Paranoid classics (they do that too, just not as much). I watched it with a friend who seemed to be a bit bothered by the mix, although it was sort of hard to place why it was so, I almost thought it could have been too clean. But overall, this is the band still well within their prime and all I could think of is why don’t these guys get the musicianship kudos they deserve? Top notch, naturally.

Fates Warning - Disconnected

The perfect place where personal aesthetics come up and basically interfere for me, I don’t think all the personal reprogramming in the world is going to get me to like this style of music, despite what is a number of impressive facets from the songwriting to the musicianship. But for some reason the clean vocals/prog metal style just really reminds me of the 80s and hair metal, fans blowing, high concepts, big drama, all the sorts of aspects that just make me cringe. With that said, I do find this band breathes more, than, say, Dream Theater, and that they do tend to reign in the more excessive aspects of the style, which probably puts them close to the top for this style, especially when this isn’t an early canon sort of album. So basically my objective side is nodding and appreciative, while my subjective side is out at the barbers buying some sort of hair trimmer.