Eric Clapton at the MEN in Machester last Tuesday. It was a good show. Eric is an amazing player and the two guitarists that played with him were very good too. One of them is called Derek Trucks. Some of you Americans may have heard of the Derek Trucks band, that is a sort of old fashioned rock 'n' roll/blues band. Derek is a finger picker, who plays an amazing slide guitar.

There were 12 musicians altogether. 3 guitarists including Eric, a bassist, drummer. 2 saxophonists, a tumpeter, 2 keyboardists and a 2 female backing singers. They played a wide range of things from Eric's career, with around 4 or 5 songs from the new album which all sounded good, a few that I didn't know and around 5 or 6 well known hits (JJ Cale's Cocaine and After Midnight, Bob Marley's I Shot the Sherriff, Crossroads that I can't remember who recorded it originally, Wonderful Tonight, Layla, and a couple more I can't remember off the top of my head). I was sat at on the bottom tear on the right with a decent view of the stage and a good view of one of the large screens.

Robert Cray and his band played for arround half an hour as support. They were good and I'm gonna check out some of Robert Cray's songs, although I think they over amplified a little. Eric played for arround 2 hours. Overall the performace was good, but the bass and the drums were no where near as good on Crossroads as what they were when Eric used to play with Cream. Although it's understandable I suppose because Jack Bruce on the bass and Ginger Baker on the drums are two great musicians that are up there with the very best on their respectable instruments.