Best Musicians I've seen play

A Post Script to my post on Chris de Burgh (High On Emotion, 19 June). A few days after the gig, making conversation on a journey, I asked my better half what I thought would be an imponderable question - which band has been the best musicians we've seen play? Not the best gig, or favourite, simply the best technicians. Surprisingly, given the number of gigs we've seen spanning many genres over 5 decades, within a minute or two we had totally agreed on a very short list: 10cc (the team backing Graham Gouldman in their current incarnation), Ian Dury's Blockheads (the classic 70s line up) and Chris de Burgh's 1980s backing band. (His current band are pretty good, too).

Given we've seen, between us, bands such as Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Jethro Tull, Keith Emerson's The Nice and ELP, The Who, Santana, The Rolling Stones, The Clash, REM, Muse and the Red Hot Chili Peppers with many, many more besides I was very surprised this conversation was so short and lacking in contention. Indeed, it rapidly left us wondering what to talk about next!

I hasten to note that we were talking about groups of musicians playing as a band: if we were talking individual players then I'd have come up with a long list of names including  Keith Emerson, Dave Gilmour, Jimmy Page, Robert Fripp, Dick Heckstall Smith, Rick Wakeman, Carlos Santana and John Frusciante for starters.

Mind, there's a lot more to being a good pop musician than good technique and performance. Now I like classical music and I'm very fond of going to see ballet. But in classical music technique is all. Yes that technique must include playing with feeling, not like a robot, but otherwise that's it, apart perhaps from things at the avant garde end of the spectrum. But creativity is king in pop music - and jazz -  and people who know very little about music theory can make exciting new pieces of music. Maybe because they know so little and take risks or break the accepted rules of composition.

But it's still satisfying to watch musicians who are masters of their instruments.

Another post for another day: best gigs I've been to. I'll need to go and lie down and think on that one for a bit.