Guest Book

My $.02 on the Penn’s Landing gig Saturday night -- Naturally I was disappointed when it became clear Warren was a no-show (after MJ opener, Gregg simply said ``Mr. Haynes is not gonna to be here tonight.’’). My first thought was, `Damn, that means there’s no chance for a Layla closer.’’ My second thought was, ``I bet we’re in for a long drum solo tonight.’’ Anyhow, the main reason I was disappointed was I took my 17-year-old son and a friend of his to their first ABB show. My son had already seen DTB and Gregg and friends and was really pumped up to see the entire band together. Oh, well. As other posters have noted, the boys did an amazing job piecing together a set list they could work with. There were several glitches, especially during Southbound (at one point Gregg had no idea what everybody else was doing and just sat back and smiled about it before picking up the tune a little later) and there were some rough edges when Derek and Ron would trade licks or solos. Still, it was fun and worth the price of admission. At one point, some drunk and/or stoned 20-something asked me if I had seen the ABB before. When I told him, well, yeah, about 35 times, he smiled and asked ``Are they always this f***ing good?’’ When I replied that they’re usually even f***ing better because they were missing one of their guitarists, he said ``No f***ing way they could be better than this!’’ All in all, it was a pretty good show, but certainly not a great one. And it was interesting to see Derek take over the role of on-stage leader. It definitely was a memorable show and I’m glad I got the Instant Live.