Shuggie Otis has been a favorite of mine since his first albums and work with Al Kooper.
I had never had the opportunity to see him live, so after all these years you can bet I was looking forward to this show.
The opening act Douglas and The Goodharts was great, high energy, great musicality and a clean rich sound. That's where the show turned. As soon as Shuggie started, it was evident that there were issues with the sound system. There was a constant hum and buzzing distorting the sound. To make matters worse Shuggies microphone was either malfunctioning or not set up correctly. Bottom line is you could barely hear his vocals.
Those kinds of issues are annoying but can be overcome by the performer. First, it would have been good to have Shuggie communicate with the audience and acknowledge that there were technical issues. But, not only didn't he do that, other than dedicating the nights performance to BB King, he said very little.
Then the part that really sunk the show for me. Shuggie's music has always been clean crisp and uncluttered by fancy effects. Not this night. Between the wah wah, reverb and god knows what other electronics effects he was playing with, the quality of his guitar playing was totally masked. I kept having an image of running up to the stage, and taking all the "boxes" away and having him play a normally amplified guitar to let his talent shine through.
I'll admit my expectations were really high, but, by most standards this show wasn't even mediocre.