About.com Rating



Guitarist Jeff Beck first came to prominence as Eric Clapton's erstwhile replacement in the legendary British blues-rock band the Yardbirds. Better than four decades have passed since that time, and Beck has shown a maddening propensity for confounding the expectations of any observer. His impressive catalog of music ranges from blues-rock and proto-heavy metal to jazz-fusion, pop, and even reggae.

Performing This Week...Live At Ronnie Scott's documents the highlights of a week's worth of performances from 2007 by Beck and his hand-picked band of bassist Tal Wilkenfeld, keyboardist Jason Rebello, and drummer Vinnie Colaiuta.

Jeff Beck's Performing This Week...Live At Ronnie Scott's

Beck used his five-night stand at Ronnie Scott's club to revisit a wide range of musical memories. Performing This Week... opens with Beck's classic rock chestnut, "Beck's Bolero," first recorded in 1966 with members of the Who and what would eventually become Led Zeppelin, and originally issued as the B-side of an early Jeff Beck single.

The song is, structurally, a confused mess of martial rhythms and neo-classical riffs paired with Beck's soaring, mournful guitar riff that speaks in its own otherworldly voice before the song breaks down into a blues-rock romp amidst a squall of instrumentation. By any theory, it shouldn't work, but it does, and the song has thrilled audiences for over 40 years now!

Blues, Rock, Jazz-Fusion and Beyond!

From this point, Performing This Week...

runs fast and loose through a set of songs that showcase Beck's broad musical palette. The guitarist's love of jazz-fusion is on display with the band's scorching cover of John McLaughlin's "Eternity's Breath." Beck's fingers dance across the edge of a breathtaking song that reveals elements of blues, funk, rock, and jazz sitting in wait beneath a storm of percussion, Beck's fretwork moving from silence to a scream and back in the blink of an eye.

Beck's reading of jazz drummer Billy Cobham's classic "Stratus" is both subdued and elegant, the guitarist not attempting to merely mimic the underrated Tommy Bolin's original 1973 fretwork, but rather build upon it in a re-imaging of the song's aggressive mix of rock, jazz, and blues.

The energetic "Blast From The East" begins with a wiry rhythmic framework on top of which Beck embroiders his golden six-string flourishes, the guitarist's recurrent, mesmerizing riff-like lead punctuated by blasts of psychedelic color, explosive percussion, and a funky throbbing bassline.

Beck's Brush With The Blues

An inspired mash-up of Charles Mingus' "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" with the Beck/Tony Hymas original "Brush With The Blues" falls heavier on the blues side of the musical equation. Beck's dark-hued arrangement of the songs amplify their mournful aspects, his guitar scattering crying notes across a subdued drumbeat and slight rhythm, Beck coaxing tears out of his instrument, duplicating the saddest blues lyrics you've ever heard.

Beck revisits a number of fan favorites with Performing This Week... The lively "Led Boots" is a flat-out rocker with razor-sharp blues-rock riffs and nimble percussion, while Beck's "Scatterbrain" begins with a locomotive rockabilly riff before descending into literal madness, the musicians delving deep into instrumental anarchy before order is once again restored to close the song.

Beck's version of the Lennon/McCartney Beatles' gem "A Day In The Life" has been a live staple of his for years, and here he imbues the song with such lovely grace and dignity that you can literally hear the well-worn lyrics sung through his instrument.

The Reverend's Bottom Line

If you've been wondering why Jeff Beck received the honor of induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Performing This Week... should answer all of your questions. No single guitarist...not even a trailblazer like Jimi Hendrix...has done more to expand the vocabulary of the instrument than Jeff Beck.

Beck's technique is nearly flawless, his ability simply awe-inspiring, and his encyclopedic knowledge of musical styles beyond impressive. With boundless imagination and no little sense of musical adventure, Performing This Week...Live At Ronnie Scott's represents the wealth of excellence that has been the hallmark of Jeff Beck's lengthy and creative musical career. (Eagle Rock Records, released November 24, 2008)