Most people I know would never listen to anything instrumental. It's sad. They all idolize these so-called musicians that couldn't play a instrument if there life depended on it. I'm so happy rock n roll stood the test of time otherwise id have nothing to listen to.
@@Hawgfrog that's what i like about the "dan" - they also sing, or at least, have one or more singing performers...and fagen and becker are/were beyond criticism, anyway..and they managed, most of the time to gather the best possible musicians around them.. but i like these four great dutchmen as well !
Akkerman never hid behind distortion or compression. His pick was just that you could break up concrete with it. The range of beautiful tones he has come up with over the years is second only to none. No thin strings and floppy picks here.
But he is using distortion/sustain as is clearly evident in the video, as he is driving the amp power tubes to distortion. His jazz solo stuff is clean (and fantastic). He can paly with or without distortion, and he still one of my all time favourite guitarist and one of the original technical rock players. Great acoustic player too.
No floppy picks but definitely thin strings. He stated himself in 1975 that he used 08, which is pretty damn thin, extremely low action and a delicate touch with an violin vibrato mostly. He played extremely good clean, and had a Colorsound treblebooster on during this tour which he'd just clean up through turning down the volume on the guitar knobs
@@nogbadthebad2609 Not much distortion at all really. And he's playing through the Acoustic, the Fender is not plugged up. He sure made some unusual equipment choices. I have an Acoustic amp, and while it has a nice jazz tone there's no disguising the fact that it's a solid state amp. I personally can't tolerate having speakers aimed anywhere near my ears, and yet he always does that. And to make things even more punishing he has cabs with horns! OUUUUCH!
Seems like Jan Akkerman lost some of his creativity after Focus go be honest.. not saying he didn't create great material but he became much more predictable. Here he is doing licks i never heard him play After focus i hear many of the same licks all the time. Saying this as a fan.
1972/3 was Focus at their best. That rare mixture of Van Leer's melodies and Akkkerman's often harsh but brilliant guitar playing perhaps meant they had nowhere to go after that. Focus 3 remains one of my Favorite albums.
It's Santana syndrome. His creativity as a musician and guitarist really shined from '69-1974 when it was a group effort but once Santana became basically his backing band he didn't really develop further. I think most of Akkerman's work since Focus was solo stuff or maybe features/one time collaborations and he never joined a band again where he had to put his talents towards a greater goal.
