John Martyn Band The Smiling Stranger In Bremen - Live At Schauburg 1983 (2-CD)

(MIG Records) 18 tracks

John Martyn (born September 11, 1948 as Iain David McGeachy in New Malden, Surrey, died January 9, 2009 in Thomastown, County Kilkenny, Ireland) was an exceptional guitarist and accomplished singer / songwriter.

He combined different styles into a new whole in his music, he was "an electrifying guitarist and singer whose music blurred the lines between folk, jazz, rock and blues." (The Times) Nick Drake, the melancholy songwriter born in Burma, now Myanmar, was a good friend of John's and roommate in his shared apartment, and also like John Martyn was considered an insider tip of the singer / songwriter scene for years.

When Drake died in 1974, John Martyn had just really got his career going, signed a record deal with Island Records and celebrated his first chart successes with his 1973 album "Solid Air", whose title track was dedicated to the depressive Drake. In 1977 came the album "One World", the final breakthrough for John Martyn.

An album of music somewhere between folk and jazz, recorded under the direction of Chris Blackwell with musicians such as Stevie Winwood and Jamaicans Rico and Lee Perry. On this album Martyn had already brought his amazing virtuoso picking technique on the guitar to perfection, he also created a unique sound by often running his acoustic guitar through fuzzbox, phase shifter and especially Echoplex and other effects units. Tracks from "One World" like "Couldn't Love You More", "Smiling Stranger" or the title song wrote rock history and were from then on an integral part of the live repertoire. This was also the case at the mercilessly intense concert that John Martyn gave together with his band (Jeff Allen, dr., also Snowy White and Van Morrison, among others, and Alan Thomsen, b, also with Robert Palmer, Chris Rea and Eric Clapton) in June 1983 at the venerable Schauburg in Bremen.