Roger McGuinn live!

I mentioned awhile back that I was going to see founding Byrd Roger McGuinn live.  Well, I saw him and he was great.  He looked and sounded healthy and in good form.

The location was the Hopkins Center For The Arts, in Hopkins, MN, a small, intimate and acoustically sound venue.

The above picture is actually not from the show, but cribbed from here.  But he looked the same, and interestingly enough, the accompanying review from 2006 could just have well been from the show I saw.

Kudos to Roger for making it sound fresh because I have a performance of his on XM Radio from 2004 that sounds damn near identical to what I saw, both in music and banter.

The thrill of hearing him pick the opening notes of Mr. Tambourine Man on his Rickenbacker 12-string was tangible.  This evening, as the other review above alludes to, he also played banjo, 12-string acoustic, and a specially made 7-sting acoustic [yes, 7!...I'd never heard of that before].

He hit all the right touchstones, opening with My Back Pages and deftly mixing in You Ain't Going Nowhere, Turn! Turn! Turn!, Mr. Spaceman, I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better, Ballad Of Easy Rider, Chestnut Mare, Eight Miles High and others.

While I'm not really a fan of some of the more obscure folk numbers Roger champions, I nonetheless appreciate his passion and commitment to preserving/passing on those same items.

If McGuinn comes to your city, PLEASE see him.  It's a great show by one of the seminal figures of early-60's pop and beyond, who carved his initial niche by marrying the sonic crunch of the Beatles to the heady wordplay of Dylan.  After McGuinn, the 12-string Rickenbacker would never be the same.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_McGuinn

http://www.ibiblio.org/jimmy/folkden/php/search/

P.S.  Now I'm a bad pussy cat.

P.P.S.  If you like it, let me know.