John McLaughlin at BT

A few things struck me about John McLaughlin's show at the Theater last Saturday night.

First off, some trivia: McLaughlin's accent seems to have drifted a bit off the French-professor patois we recalled from our phoner with him in 1986. A bit more of the original UK English, a little American, some lingering French. One never knows with this cat.

We're not sure we'd ever say this, but it was arguable that Johnny M was actually trying to keep up with his band, counter-intuitively. Gary Husband's keys were generally warm and created the right harmonic bed around McLaughlin's guitar, a must for any successful McLaughlin keyboardist. Generally fleet and informed, although occasionally drifting into staccato pointlessness (fusion is, believe it or not, an artform that thrives on subtlety).

But the life of the show was their stand-in drummer, Mark Mondesir, a cat McLaughlin first encountered when Modesir was playing with Zawinul's band a decade ago. Utterly unstoppable, one of the fastest riffers and between-beat craftsmen I've ever seen behind a kit, he absolutely propelled the band into thin air at times, and his duo with Husband (no slouch himself) was fun and breathtaking.

As for the maestro, he relied mostly on a medium-to-heavy fuzz solidbody sound, and his playing was generally excellent. It did occur to me that his mastery of tone and micro-harmonics is one of his least lauded skills, and frankly, as far as sheer firepower, any number of modern rock shredders (Buckethead, say, or even Morse) could probably wipe the floor with him at this point in his career, and that from someone who first saw McLaughlin thirty five years ago, and has always counted him amongst my biggest heroes.

I found the quieter sections generally more intruiguing - McLaughlin has always appreciated and nurtured space when he gives it to himself. But he still has a keen sense of dynamics and knows completely who he is. He is undeniably a musical treasure, and still plays like he owes no fusion-skeptic anywhere any apologies. We were pleased to hear "The Last Dissident", a seventies nugget from Electric Dreams, although it took us a few bars before we recognized it.

He was generally engaging with the crowd, tossing a few senior-moment jokes out, and having a good time. He obviously treasures this band, and it's hard to think of a better showcase for the Lion in late autumn.

This guy got better pictures than I did, being up in nosebleed balconyland. His review speaks for itself (uh...), but the pictures are very good.