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Review: John E Vistic Experience, Thunderbolt
The capricious nature of the gig scheduling deities meant that the discerning guitar fan had to choose between Oli Brown at the Tunnels and the John E Vistic Experience at the Thunderbolt. If you went to the former you no doubt left with a head full of blues, those of us who elected for the latter came home after a skullfuck.
The Experience are fresh from a Sonics support & Latvian dates and were on sensational form. Their psychedelicised blues rock – with a crisp clear live mix – sent the crowd into a go-go dancing frenzy from the opening tune: writhing, squirming bodies all around, snake charming hips and flailing goddess arms abounded. And that was just the blokes. Vistic is a talented player, building on muscular riffs to spiral off into the stratosphere with lengthy solos. Effects peddles were deployed regularly but in service of the solo rather than his ego, and although B24/7 wasn’t close enough to see for sure, there must have been a peddle with a Joe Meek/Telstar setting as there were several nods to that ground breaking sound. In fact rather than rely on blues/psyche tropes, Vistic perverted country/metal/funk guitar tropes throughout the set – a fresh take when too many players are aping Hendrix or Eddie or Bonamassa et al.
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If you’re going to soar off with that amount of fretwork you need a rather good band to provide the launch pad, and the Experience are that band. Despite pounding out monolithic beats during the riffs, Dan displayed plenty of subtlety during the quieter moments, plenty of swing when he locked in with Guy’s bass and all delivered with an (original) rock’n’roll sensibility. Guy’s bass work at the Sonics show brought to mind the muscular riffing approach of Entwistle, but up close and personal it was apparent there’s a lot of Andy Fraser in his playing. During the solos he picked up both melody and rhythm to lock the groove of the song down, allowing Vistic the space & time for his six string excursions.
The performance might have peaked mid-set with Pistolero and Jupiter, but then it got better. New blues Ain’t No Use in Cryin’ exemplified how the band are able to take traditional sounds and make them their own with the combination of interesting time changes and unexpected grooves or vocal twists – whisper it, a progressive take on the power trio format. The crowd refused to accept the single curfew-breaking encore and the band duly returned for a medley built around classic blues and Cash numbers that left us all more than satisfied. The jams had been well and truly kicked out.
Pic credit: John Morgan
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