Author: Peter Podbrežnik
Location: Ljubljana / CUK KIno Šiška / Slovenia
Concert date: 11.11.2014
Attendance: 700
Ticket price: €32.00 (advance) / €34.00 (day of the show)
Good things come to those who wait! After last year’s visit as part of Remember Shakti, the legendary guitar grandmaster John McLaughlin landed in Ljubljana again, this time in his long-awaited ‘electrified’ jazz fusion incarnation, with his own backing band The 4th Dimension, which he founded in 2007. With it he started reviving the style that first made him famous and that most people still value him for most today. After the totally unexpected death of Indian electric mandolin virtuoso U. Shrinivas, a longtime member of Remember Shakti, John refocused on active solo work and this year hit the road with his fascinating The 4th Dimension quartet, which operates on a jazz fusion foundation and keeps collecting praise from music connoisseurs.
John’s backing band, which showed up at Kino Šiška right on cue, after a stretch when jazz fusion gigs on the home turf had been in a pretty serious drought, features drum and keyboard wizard Gary Husband (best known for his work with Level 42, Allan Holdsworth, Jack Bruce and plenty of others), Indian drummer Ranjit Barot and bassist Etienne Mbappe, three superb musicians with whom the guitar maestro recorded the live album »The Boston Record« this year. The setlist that evening was built right on that live album, which offers a nice cross-section of John’s The 4th Dimension material so far.
After a short introduction by Brane Rončel, the guitar master and his three virtuoso buddies hit the stage and started building an eclectic atmosphere with the opening number, which instantly won over the crowd, which, to everyone’s pleasant surprise, turned out in much bigger numbers than originally expected. Even past seventy, Mr. McLaughlin is still unbelievably fast at working his guitar strings, and his fiery improvisations took our breath away more than once during individual songs, while his three bandmates hardly lagged behind.
The crowd was especially taken with the ‘multi-tasking’ Husband, who started the show on keyboards but about a quarter of the way through ‘switched seats’ to an additional drum kit, where he got tangled up with Barot in a thrilling drum duel. That happened several more times later on, to everyone’s delight. Bassist Mbappe is also one of those rare virtuoso heroes who can play bass strings as if it were an electric guitar, with an incredible mix of speed and precision at the same time, something he surely picked up from hanging around with John. John himself was in great spirits that night, both musically and in the rare moments when he addressed the audience. He also surprised everyone with a funny comeback to a short but annoying outburst from some drunken lout, who, after John’s words, »yeah, I was playing here before you were born«, shut up immediately.
A few songs also featured vocal contributions, like »Abbaji«, where the band, led by Barot’s vocals, repeated John’s beloved spiritual mantra ‘love and understanding’ several times, though it has to be said that Mr. McLaughlin, with his droning voice, is a pretty sorry singer, something he probably knows full well, so he mostly steers clear of the mic. Besides his vehement drum solos, Barot also let loose with some fiery vocal improvisations several times that night, in the vein of the long-running and beloved Remember Shakti tradition, although John’s The 4th Dimension were most convincing when they let intelligent, variably spiced instrumental variations flow freely, rocking us into a total ambient trance more than once. Some critics have accused John’s virtuoso guitar playing, with its ‘supersonic’ solos that often recall the buzzing of an irritated bumblebee, of excessive technicality, which is far from true, since his improvisational ideas are full of spontaneity, lucidity and passion, and listening to them you can always feel they come straight from the master’s heart.
Most jazz fusion fans surely still rate John highest for his achievements early in his career, when he was a member of one of the most beloved lineups of legendary jazz trumpeter and musical visionary Miles Davis, and a little later of the cult jazz fusion supergroup The Mahavishnu Orchestra, so the excitement in the hall hit boiling point when he revived, in the encore, one of the chapters of his magnificent musical past that he doesn’t return to all that often at his concerts. John saved the best for last and played a great version of »You Know You Know« as an encore, a Mahavishnu Orchestra standard from the unforgettable album »The Inner Mouting Flame« (1971).
By playing one of his most beloved classics, Mr. McLaughlin gave his practically flawless show a near-perfect finish, after we’d feasted on a heaping helping of jazz-fusion lucidity and the John’s quartet’s boundless knack for building and expanding vast, constantly shifting ambient shades, with plenty of fiery rhythmic leaps, all fueled by superb instrumental chemistry within the band. So it was no surprise at all when the ovations wouldn’t die down and the band had to come back out twice to take a bow in front of the thrilled crowd. At Šiška, John proved that at seventy he’s still incredibly vital, which means the years have absolutely no effect on his stunning guitar playing. It also means we can look forward to plenty more great music from him in the future, even if (quite likely) only in a solo setting.
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