John Mclaughlin Guitar Clinic @ Bangkok: My Opinions

On Monday, Bangkok has the rare privilege of having a guitar legend to hold his one-and-only guitar clinic in his Asian tour with a reasonable price for the tickets. 1500 bahts is merely USD 50 and I wouldn't complain about spending such an amount for this guitar clinic!

The clinic started off with Mclaughlin and Gary Husband (on the left) playing Miles Davis "So What". It was definitely a good start for the night but what follows the beautiful music was a bombardment of many ridiculous questions by the crowd. I can't imagine anyone asking a musician a question such as:

"Do you listen to other artists' work? If you do, please name two."

John Mclaughlin (puzzled) replied:

""Do you need me to write a list?"

Honestly, to ask such a redundant question on the ONE-AND-ONLY clinic in his tour (or in the last 5 years) is unacceptable. It goes without saying that of course he listens to other musicians' work. It would have been better if he'd tweaked his question a bit. Otherwise, I would say this is totally a waste of the precious 1 hour of the clinic.

And there was another guy who got all his facts wrong. Mclaughlin studied and played veena. Apparently, he thought he studied sitar and he insisted that he was correct (despite John himself correcting him). There is this another guy who wants to ask a question but goes beating about the bush until Mclaughlin was lost.

There's one other guy who asked him a pretty good question, if only that question was asked to an educator, not an artist.

I am not saying not all questions are ridiculous but many are. I am not making a fuss out of this because my money was wasted (50 bucks is hardly any trouble) but the rare opportunity to ask a question to a legend! You may say I might be exaggerating but I do think that for the benefit of yourself and the rest, you should have crafted your questions beforehand not just for this guitar clinic but all the others as well.

Now I wonder if I will ever have a chance to ask him about his rig idea. Why rig? Well, I am a guitar maniac NOT without a reason, isn't? :)

Loki

Picture credits to Enlightened Planet