The Vinyl Brothers, Session 1: Tommy Shaw & The SoundBard on Eric Clapton’s Underrated Clapton LP
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BY MIKE METTLER
180-gram, and other assorted love songs.
Get Tommy Shaw and me, Mr. SoundBard, in a room talking about music, and chances are you’ll have to drag us out by our respective ears to get us on the way to our next destinations. (Just ask Styx’s ever-patient, ever-gracious tour manager and assistant tour manager.) Tommy and I bonded over a mutual passion for music, and especially vinyl, years ago, and we share our LP love regularly in text, photo, and email. A typical message might begin along the lines of “Look what I found!” and subsequently “You won’t believe how GOOD this album sounds!” — followed soon thereafter by a fervent discourse on all of the aural subtleties and production nuances that cause us to pick the needle up and play that record again and again and again.
Everything will be alright… within the grooves.
That’s my ’round-the-bend way of saying welcome to the debut installment of The Vinyl Brothers videoclip Q&A series, wherein Mr. Shaw and I will discuss the sonic merits of a cherished album, whether it be a longtime favorite, a remastered classic, or a new discovery. Our initial subject is Eric Clapton‘s underrated 2010 release, Clapton. Sitting in his dressing room backstage after Styx had performed a particularly rousing set at Bergen PAC in Englewood, NJ on October 19, 2013, Tommy asked me if I had heard this album, as he had been particularly taken with the tone and tempo of Track 1 on Side 1, “Travelin’ Alone” — so much so that he often found himself picking up a guitar and playing right along with it. While I had indeed bought the record when it came out almost 3 years ago, I admitted that I had hardly spent any time with it, so I clearly needed a 33 1/3 refresher spin or two. I duly pulled it off the shelves (it was slotted in between EC’s current Old Sock LP and the three-LP box set for EC & Steve Winwood’s Live From Madison Square Garden) and brought it to Styx’s gig the following night, October 20, at State Theatre in New Brunswick, NJ, so we could talk about it after the show. We tell the double 180-gram Clapton LP’s tantalizing tale in the YouTube clip at the top of this post.
And, as always, enjoy the music.
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