Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Venue: Boogaloo / Zagreb / Croatia
Concert date: 02.12.2010
Attendance: 300
Ticket price: 140,00 HRK (18,00€)
Two days after the devilish guitar wizard showed up in the Slovenian capital for the second time in his career, Zagreb got the same honor. Paul Gilbert (Mr. Big, Racer X) was fascinating in every way with his performance, so the sinful thoughts about a potential hop over to Zagreb just wouldn’t stop whizzing around my head. Even more than that, my head started flashing like a storm. When I walked out of one of the Eventim outlets with a ticket in my hand, I couldn’t get over the fact that it was a whole 11,00€ cheaper for Zagreb than it had been for the show in Ljubljana.
It’s a few minutes past seven in the evening. Even though the ticket says the show starts at eight, there’s no rush. Over the years, the Boogalooo club in Zagreb has become an inseparable friend of mine. Always a great ambience, a hot crowd, and a venue with high concert intensity and boiling steam rising off wild heads.
But this time Boogaloo let me down. I park a little before nine. Walking into the venue, the sight was really something. Barely the first two rows below the stage were filled, and they had even set up bar tables in the main floor area. A few more people hung around the mixing desk, and everywhere else the club was empty. The guitarist and singer of Hard Time Pišta addressed the crowd solemnly. He revealed that Paul Gilbert’s management strictly demands an acoustic opening act. Anything that doesn’t run on electricity will do, even if all you’ve got is a gusle. So, according to Pišta’s words, the best Croatian acoustic guitarist, Branko Bogunović – Piš, took the stage. For just under half an hour, the man warmed up the audience, first with a few originals, a mix of country folk ragtime trickery with massive use of fingerpicking, and then with boldly rearranged versions of classics by the likes of The Police (Every Little Thing She Does) and Led Zeppelin (Stairway To Heaven, Kashmir). A really likable, fun and utterly genuine experience.
The Paul Gilbert quartet (guitar, vocals), Craig Martini (bass, backing vocals), Jeff Bowders (drums) and the all-around utility man on this Gilbert tour, Tony Spinner (guitar, vocals, backing vocals), jumped on stage a little after half past nine. They shuffled the song order in the set a bit compared to the Ljubljana show. The stage was higher, longer and wider. The effect of the lighting and the spotlight play was completely different. Paul put on a black shirt; in Ljubljana he wore a white one. You could say it was a touch more ceremonial than in Ljubljana, but also a touch less intimate.
The sound was very solid. Up front, at times loud! Well, that’s why people come to the front at gigs. Because they love it loud! So it blows the lid off your head and up to the ceiling! The band, though, came out far more reserved than in Ljubljana. You could simply feel that the Zagreb crowd just isn’t as receptive to Gilbert as we easily experienced and figured out in Ljubljana two days earlier. Even when Paul and the gang tackled the only Mr. Big song in the set, Green Tinted Sixties Mind, the barely 300 people at Boogaloo hardly flinched. Not to mention the indifference at the announcement of the Yes classic The Roundabout and during its performance. Spinner and Gilbert once again thrilled with their skillful harmonizing of the tougher parts (especially the toughest ones). Gilbert of course played the role of Rick Wakeman – that’s actually the most impressive element of Gilbert’s version of this song – while Spinner doesn’t play guitar while he sings in this tune. The first note of the song belongs to Craig Martini, when he hits the harmonic string and then rolls off the volume pot on the bass. An excellent approximation of the original. Spinner’s (“Bobby Kimball II.”) vocals once again worked very gratefully at this point.
After Olympic, Gilbert stopped and, for the first, last and only time in the show, said a few words to the audience, saying that the stage had already heated up seriously and the instruments were stretching because of it. “The band is very worried about this, so it’s obliged to tune up,” Gilbert added, while fiddling with the tuning pegs on the guitar neck. Sadly, we didn’t get any more of such mischievous comments from Paul later on. As mentioned, the band seemed somewhat reserved. With a crowd as lukewarm as the Zagreb one turned out to be this time, expecting anything different was simply utopian. If you only wake them up with The Doors evergreen Light My Fire at the end of the regular set, that’s a pretty sad concert mood. Gilbert, for example, didn’t work in the lead phrases of Beatles songs before launching into both Racer X numbers, and we didn’t get the naughty short Johnny Cash parody this time either, which Gilbert did pull off in Ljubljana.
The overstuffed encore with covers of Muddy Waters, Jimi Hendrix and AC/DC once again proved a bit distracting, even though it did help the band squeeze out a few more atoms of feedback from the crowd. They even recognized the song Down To Mexico. But sadly, this time the element that is one of the main trademarks of a Paul Gilbert show – I’m talking about that feeling of “silliness and boyish mischief,” the standard Paul normally brings to the stage – was simply castrated.
The quartet is steeped in the routine of professional musicians. So they masked all these remarks about the crowd’s reserve brilliantly with a virtuoso delivery of the material. Once again Paul took your breath away with his one-of-a-kind precision, speed and absolute control, mastering every tricky situation, however delicate, that even highly schooled guitarists struggle to handle. The man carries that dash of spontaneity. Sudden eruptions of unbridled explosiveness through the wild strolls of his devilish fingers are deftly balanced by listenable passages of a massive wall of sound. And that’s roughly how the mood and vibe pulsate dynamically through the concert, too.
Gilbert proves he really is a perfect musician. Songs from his last two albums made up the bulk of his own material presented on stage. The studio versions are certainly fun, but the live show is where the real musical treat, with the unique “a la Paul Gilbert” recipe, is something you simply have to savor. So the enthusiasm stays! Even after visiting Zagreb! And judging by what he showed on stage and by his current creativity and inspiration, Gilbert is without a doubt in the form of his life. And the Mr. Big tour is coming soon! So let’s stay on the lookout, tense and ready. Alert and above all responsive.
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Setlist
1. Silence Following By A Deafening Roar 2. Fuzz Universe 3. Olympic 4. Rock Me Baby 5. The Last Rock And Roll Superstar 6. Scarified 7. Norwegian Cowbell 8. Green Tinted Sixties Mind 9. Will My Screen Door Stop Neptune 10. Technical Difficulties 11. Paul Vs. Godzilla 12. The Roundabout 13. Batter Up 14. Light My Fire —encore— 15. Propeller 16. I Want To Be Loved 17. Little Wing 18. Down To Mexico 19. I’m Not Addicted 20. Go Down
Photo gallery
