TODAY.
Claremont Showground.
AT LEAST a dozen times during this overwhelming 12-hour festival, blues and rock fans must have been pinching themselves to see if they had died and gone to heaven ... or wherever it is that the devil's music is played.
This unbelievably strong caravan of 14 of the biggest names in music - including four or five bona fide musical legends and a strong contingent from Australia is the kind of bill you would expect to see at some major overseas event like Glastonbury, Knebworth or The New Orleans Jazz and Blues Festival.
The goofy-handed, home-grown, slide guitar maestro Dave Hole kicked off the afternoon with a screaming performance of electric blues. Then it was the turn of the authentic Louisiana swamp-rock hero Tony Joe White - who didn't need much more than a Stratocaster and harmonica rack around his neck - to bring to life his bayou classics Polk Salad Annie, Willie and Laura Mae Jones and High Sheriff Of Calhoun County.
Billy Thorpe, the hero of the 1972 Sunbury Pop Festival and the unassailable monarch of Australian blues, proved that real blues players never get old - they just get D-E-A-E
The founding father of British blues, John Mayall. - whose band the Bluesbreakers, over the years, has proved to be a finishing school for aspiring bluesrock megastars - was in dynamic form on organ and harmonica, showcasing songs from his new album Stories.
Inner-city band The Cruel Sea turned in a blistering performance of gritty rock that climaxed with their signature tune This is Not the Way Home, before allowing Beth Orton and her band to take the tempo down with her strong, clear soaring voice, backed by upright bass, violin, cello and acoustic guitars on fan favourites such as Stolen Car and This One's Gonna Bruise.
As the sun set in front of the twin stages, Aussie singei-songwriter Alex Lloyd, backed only by his acoustic guitar and a keyboard player, crooned through what he described as his "chill out" set, including an energetic version of Mystery Train.
On to the fiercely independent, guitarflaying whirlwind Ani Di Franco and her bare bones acoustic folk-rock that speaks to both* militant feminists and straight-out rock fans. Her confessional, wordy songs a jumble of tunings and tempos - had her huge female following at the front of the stage pumping the air with delight.
In complete contrast to his tours in 1998 and 2001, the inscrutable rock'n'roll poet prince, Bob Dylan, did not strap on his electric guitar until five or six numbers into his set. On Saturday, it was all with "piano man" Bob, standing to the left of the stage, as he powered through Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum (from his most recent album Love and Theft), Highway 61, Just Like a Woman and Things Have Changed, with the kind of intensity he displayed back in 1965.
There was that voice which redefined the whole idea of singing. Nasal and nasty, sour and ragged as barbed-wire - a medium for expressing both aesthetic and emotional outrage. The unmitigated assault of his words in the timely protest song Masters of War was as relevant today as when written 40 years ago maybe more so.
We also got a glimpse of Dylan as songand-dance-man, as he shuffled through Bye and Bye, before lifting the tempo for the rockabilly-infused Summer Days, performed at breakneck speed. After the usual unnerving stare-off with the audience, he was back with his tight fourpiece band for an edgy version of All Along the Watchtower.
Unfortunately, 62-year-old enduring sou legend "The WickeW Wilson Pickett did not quite make it through his set. His voic - featuring a heart-stopping soul scream - up and left him during the second number. Impeccably dressed in a pearlywhite suit, and backed by a funky, horntwirling, eight-piece "badass" backing outfit called The Midnight Movers, Pickett's high-octane, James Brown-like energy, that symbolised R&B at its most kinetic, all but fizzled out.
The man - who was the invisible figure and role model in the 1991 movie The Commitments - managed to get through In the Midnight Hour but was reduced to rambling monologue ("I got a gun and sho at the man, and they put my ass in jail") while the band endlessly vamped behind him.
He called on the audience to help him out with his mid-60s Stax hits such as Mustang Sally and Funky Broadway, whicl instead of being a disaster was quite entertaining. But by the time it came to hh last number, Land of 1000 Dances, there was absolutely no "naa - na-na-na-na naa" left.
Even though he seemed somewhat fazed at being sandwiched into the closing spot on the bill, it was still easy to see why thej don't call Ray Charles "the Genius" for nothing. He is the source of soul music effortlessly melding blues, jazz, country and gospel into something entirely his own.
Backed by his spare jazzy quartet, the 72-yearold legend began his riveting performance with the gently rocking Route 66, followed by an emotional cover of Leon Russell's A Song For You, in which he sang, "I've been so many places in my life and timeslI've sung so many songs, I've made some bad rhymes".
Transported by the music, Charles' cool, fearless voice seemed to have an inner buoyancy that breathed life into lesserknown songs such as Stranger In My Own Hometown. In no time at all, he was into the home stretch with a string of classics including the impossibly wistful Georgia On My Mind and the up-tempo Hallelujah I Just Love Her So.
Call it all too much ... but surely this was musical heaven.
Feb 17th 2003
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