Jeff Beck in Kansas City

I normally try to keep Pointy Guitar entries more universal, but I thought I’d file a brief report on something I saw with my own two eyes: last night’s Jeff Beck concert at Starlight Theater in Kansas City, MO.

It was incredibly fucking incredible.

Phone shot from the show. Photo by: ehh, who would claim it?

Ok, I won’t be quite that brief: Beck’s set—a satisfying concoction alternating the rude and funky with the sublime and ethereal—was perfection on a brilliant spring evening. His unearthly tone and playing passed briefly through our ears and minds in a straight line from the outdoor venue’s stage to the cosmos. Holy shit, what am I talking about? I guess if you’d been there you’d understand the folly of trying to describe the experience in anything other than hyperbolic pronouncements.

Admittedly, I haven’t heard Beck’s new album Emotion & Commotion and hadn’t been following the tour’s set lists online, so I was a bit surprised by what I didn’t hear (“Freeway Jam”) and, more importantly, what I did hear. Beck standards like “Led Boots” and “Big Block” were seamlessly interspersed with newer numbers to constitute an outstanding ebb and flow. Ever the crafty interpreter of others’ works, Beck took a turn on “Over the Rainbow” like only he could; and no sooner had I thought to myself that his phrasing had kept me engaged and hanging on every inflection like the cascading syllables of an operatic tenor did Beck close the show with the Puccini aria, “Nessun Dorma.” Pretty overwhelming stuff.

When a man and his band play and communicate with the audience and with one another like Beck and company did, there isn’t much that needs to be said. So Jeff didn’t say much. But even his quick asides were amusing. Referring the penetrating melody of “Mna Na Eireann,” he noted with a smile:

You’ll be … singing this for the rest of your goddamn lives.

I’ll certainly be thinking about this show that long.

Geoffrey Arnold Beck coaxing some enchanted squeak from his Strat.