Hello Rok. Been wondering where you were. Would say "welcome back" but that might be kind of presumptuous on my part (johnny come lately as it were)...never the less, WELCOME BACK! :-)
Hey Frogman & O - my bad taste comment was made a little tongue in cheek but thanks for the consideration. Frogman - I have to agree a little bit with O on the Metheny. Now, I could be talking out my southern orifice and I do need to give that Baltica vid another shot but what O said is almost exactly the feeling I got. That is, Pat was sort of doing an imitation of something that just didn't come across with any conviction, energy, passion...whatever. Just seemed kinda tired to me. Like I said, could be southern orifice talkin'. On the other hand, I DON'T agree that young musicians playing old jazz material is automatically "bankrupt". The improvisational wonder of jazz should prevent that so long as they make it their own and bring something fresh to the game...or so I think. On another point, as i wrote in reply to Rok a while back, I'm one that thinks there are parameters by which music CAN be objectively evaluated. There's good and bad sh** independent of what I or anyone else thinks. I think this can influence the subjective experience too....education whether book learning' or on the job training (years of listening!) can inform taste AND taste as a discriminatory ability can be cultivated. Point being, the opinions of some are worth more to me than the opinions of others. The subjective response of someone with good taste carries more weight with me than someone without the education - however that eduction was gained. You realize, the two of you, that you are sort of the Yin & Yang of what's been (at least recently) an ongoing theme in this thread. Two sides of one truth.
As far as the Pat Martino, Joey DeFrancesco "The Great Stream" - I missed that first time around. I don't keep up with all the music posted here. It's like this major buffet. Just can't eat it all. Pat's quite a talent. It blows my mind that he suffered an aneurysm and had to relearn his art from the ground up more or less. So props to Pat but after the first few minutes of his soloing I was getting a little restless. That's just me. How do these guys get up there night after night and find something new to say? I'm sure it's not all brand new every night. Passages get reworked and reused. Still the creative flow is amazing. Clapton has commented about the "burden" of being lead guitarist in Cream and sometimes running out of ideas - on stage! Got to be scary. I don't get any sense of that with Martino - not in that performance, anyway. For whatever reason, however, I sort of preferred Joey D.'s solo a bit more. Maybe because it was shorter, more concise? or I just like that Hammond sound. Will definitely share that clip w/my bro-in-law...a musician. So thanks to you both for my on-going jazz education.