V A 2004 06 04-04-06 Crossroads Guitar Festival Dallas TX [Mid Valley]

Crossroads Guitar Festival



2004.06.05

Guitar Center Village

Fair Park

Dallas TX



2004.06.06

Cotton Bowl

Dallas TX



Mid Valley Records

MVR 303/304/305/306/307

plus bonus DVD



BACKGROUND INFO:



Crossroads Guitar Festival (from the Slowhand Tourography website):



Eric Clapton was the headliner and driving force of the three-day Crossroads Guitar Festival taking place Friday, June 4 through Sunday, June 6 at the Texas State Fairgrounds in Dallas. This one-time event, created for music enthusiasts around the globe, raised money for Crossroads Centre Antigua, the treatment and education center founded in 1997 by Eric Clapton and now an independently run entity.



This unique event launched on Friday, June 4 with the opening of the Guitar Center Village, the national retailer of musical instruments. The festival was the first of its kind to create a unique bridge between fans and musicians via leading guitar manufacturer exhibits and guitar clinics. The festival allowed attendees once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to be in an intimate setting as artists gave fans the ultimate look into their craft.



The festival also showcased a selection of Eric Clapton's guitars along with instruments donated by his musician friends, being up for the auction on June 24 at Christie's in New York. Eric Clapton appeared on June 4, just watching the Blues Clinic set with Honey Boy Edwards, Robert Lockwood Jr., and Duke Robillard, though he didn't play himself.



The Guitar Center Village activities continued on Saturday, June 5 and included live music performances on three stages. Sirius Satellite Radio, as a supporting sponsor hosted one of these stages and broadcast from the Festival. Eric Clapton watched from the side of the Guitar Center Village main stage the sets of Eric Johnson, Dan Tyminski, and Doyle Bramhall II before getting up and joining J.J. Cale for his entire set. Closing out the festival's second day was an all-star blues jam in tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughan, hosted by Eric Clapton jamming with Jimmie Vaughan, Robert Randolph, Robert Cray, Hubert Sumlin, and Buddy Guy.



Sunday, June 6 started with continuing clinics and live performances at Guitar Center Village. The Crossroads Guitar Festival culminated with an All-Star special benefit concert event at the Cotton Bowl Stadium, located in the State Fair Park. The concert, beginning at noon and continuing through Sunday evening included performances by all the big acts (see below for the complete list of artists). Eric Clapton joined a loose jam with B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Jimmie Vaughan, and John Mayer. He later showed up joining Carlos Santana for a rousing version of "Jingo", before performing his own set of rock and blues classics, accompanied by his European touring band. The much-anticipated pairing of Eric with Jeff Beck was reduced to "Cause we've ended as lovers", because of storms blowing in. The stage then was cleared for ZZ Top. The announced finale with ZZ Top, Eric Clapton, and Jeff Beck did not happen. There was a major storm on the way, lightning flashing, the wind picking up, causing the show to be closed early.



Slowhand Tourography is © by Ekkehard Mueller.



Slowhand Tourography website: http://www.ectours.de/
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SETLIST & BAND LINEUPS:



Saturday June 5th 2004

Guitar Center Village

Fair Park

Dallas TX



CD 1: The All-Star Blues Jam



01. The Dirty Girl (featuring Jimmie Vaughan)

02. Five Long Years (featuring Eric Clapton)

03. The Twelve Year Old Boy (featuring Robert Cray)

04. Killing Floor (featuring Hubert Sumlin & Robert Cray)

05. Going Down Slow (featuring Eric Clapton)

06. Sweet Home Chicago (featuring Buddy Guy)

07. My Time After A While (featuring Buddy Guy)

08. Six Strings Down (featuring Robert Randolph)

09. Early In The Morning (featuring Eric Clapton)

10. Hoochie Coochie Man (featuring Buddy Guy)



Total time: 1:11:25.08







Sunday June 6th 2004

Cotton Bowl

Dallas TX



CD 2: B.B. King with Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton, Jimmie Vaughan and John Mayer



01. Introduction

02. Every Day I Have The Blues

03. Jam

04. Key To The Highway

05. I Can't Be Satisfied

06. Rock Me Baby

07. Dirty Old Man Jam

08. Blues Jam

09. Five Long Years



Total time: 1:09:45.47



Band Lineup:



B.B. King - Guitar

Jimmie Vaughan - Guitar

George Rains - Drums

Bill Willis - Hammond B-3 Organ, Bass

Billy Pitman - Rhythm Guitar



Special Guests



Eric Clapton - Guitar

Buddy Guy - Guitar

John Mayer - Guitar







CD 3: J.J. Cale with Eric Clapton



01. After Midnight (Soundboard Source 1)

02. Cocaine (Soundboard Source 1)

03. Call Me The Breeze (Soundboard Source 1)

04. After Midnight (Soundboard Source 2)

05. Cocaine (Soundboard Source 2)

06. Call Me The Breeze (Soundboard Source 2)

07. Call Me The Breeze (Soundboard Source 3)

08. After Midnight (Soundboard Source 3)

09. Reality (Audience Source)

10. Ride Me High (Audience Source)

11. Call Me The Breeze (Audience Source)

12. Cocaine (Audience Source)

13. After Midnight (Audience Source)

14. Travellin' Light (Audience Source)



Total time: 1:05:48.51







CD 4: Carlos Santana



01. Venus

02. Upper Egypt

03. Nomad

04. Victory Has Won

05. Incident at Neshabur

06. Sonny Sharrock

07. Jingo (featuring Eric Clapton) (Soundboard Source 1)

08. Jingo (featuring Eric Clapton) (Soundboard Source 2)

09. Green Light Girl (featuring Doyle Bramhall II)



Total time: 0:57:36.16



Band Lineup:



Carlos Santana - Guitar

Dennis Chambers - Drums

Chester Thompson - Keyboards

Benny Rietveld - Bass

Karl Perazzo - Timbales, Percussion



Special Guests



Eric Clapton - Guitar on "Jingo"

Doyle Bramhall II - Guitar on "Green Light Girl"







CD 5: Eric Clapton



01. Me And The Devil Blues

02. They're Red Hot

03. Milkcow's Calf Blues

04. If I Had Posession (Over Judgment Day)



05. Kind Hearted Woman Blues

06. I Shot The Sheriff

07. Have You Ever Loved A Woman

08. Badge

09. Wonderful Tonight

10. Layla

11. Cocaine

12. Cause We've Ended As Lovers (with Jeff Beck)



Total time: 1:12:40.27



Band Lineup:



Eric Clapton - Guitar, Vocals

Nathan East - Bass, Vocals

Chris Stainton - Keyboards

Steve Gadd - Drums

Doyle Bramhall II - Guitar, Vocals

Billy Preston - Keyboards, Vocals

Sharon White - Backing Vocals

Michelle John - Backing Vocals



Special Guest



Jeff Beck - Guitar on "Cause We've Ended As Lovers"







Bonus DVD / Christo and Buckminster:



01. Crossroads Guitar Festival

02. Tsunami Relief Cardiff - January 22, 2005

03. Tsunami Aid - A Concert of Hope - January 15, 2005

04. Jools Holland Hootenanny - December 31, 2004







LINEAGE:



CDs: various unk sources > ? > Mid Valley silver CDs > EAC > FLAC (level 8)

DVD: various unk sources > ? > Mid Valley silver DVD > VIDEO_TS file folder







EDITORIAL COMMENTS:



Geetarz Comments (from the Geetarz website):



The Crossroads Guitar Festival was an amazing, unique event. Plenty of effort was put forth to record the event for posterity as well as to distribute the event worldwide, live, via internet streams. Later, there was even a miserable official DVD release of portions of the event. Lots of press was generated about the recording and distribution of the event - notably, electronics manufacturer AMD even ran a prominent series of advertisements touting their association with the event.



There was only one real problem with all of this: most of the available recordings sound like crap! In this reviewer's opinion, the Crossroads Guitar Festival stands alone as the worst-sounding professional recording from an outdoor event in the 21st century. Granted, many of the recordings suffer as they were taken from internet streaming audio or lossy satellite radio transmissions, but this obscures the fact that even the officially released material just does not sound very good, or at the very least doesn't compare to audio professionally recorded at other events of its size in recent years. It's a mystery to me and I'm not sure if the problems are in the equipment used or perhaps in post-processing techniques that may have been applied to the recordings.



With that said, Mid Valley set out to do the best they could with the materials available and have once again hit a home run. They have obtained many of the various sources for some of the performances, and grouped them here to listeners can pick their favorites - for the JJ Cale / EC set alone one can choose between three different soundboard and one audience source. *This* is the way box sets should be done. Many of the recordings still suffer from the problems inherent in their nature, but at least they are provided here in as good a quality one will find anywhere. Recommended.



One small note: the cover art lists the performance dates as "June 4-6 in Fair Park, Dallas" and this was indeed the scope of the CRGF; however the recordings included on this set only encompass those found on June 5 and 6.



Geetarz Comments are reproduced with the kind permission of Cody Husky.



Geetarz Comments are © by Cody Husky.



Geetarz website: http://www.geetarz.org/
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ARTWORK:



Included. Artwork is for a 6CD jewelcase with a tray insert for the front and a tray insert for the back.







CDs and DVD ripped by BluesFan on 2009.10.27

CDs encoded by BluesFan on 2009.10.28

DVD burned and verified by BluesFan 2009.10.28

Artwork scanned at 300 DPI by BluesFan 2009.10.28







ENJOY !



The ol' BluesFan