Eric Clapton
Beautiful Day (Mid Valley 389/390)
2006 Japan Tour
Budokan, Tokyo, Japan
6 December 2006

Set list:
Disc 1
01. Tell The Truth
02. Key To The Highway
03. Got to Get Better in A Little While
04. Little Wing
05. Motherless Children
Sit Down Set
06. Rambling On My Mind (EC Solo)
07. Outside Woman Blues
08. Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out
09. Running On Faith

Disc 2
01. After Midnight
02. Little Queen of Spades
03. Further On Up The Road
04. Wonderful Tonight
05. Layla
06. Cocaine
07. Crossroads (encore)

The Band:
Eric Clapton - guitar, vocals
Doyle Bramhall II - guitar
Derek Trucks - guitar
Chris Stainton - keyboards
Tim Carmon - keyboards
Willie Weeks - bass
Steve Jordan - drums
Michelle John - backing vocals
Sharon White - backing vocals

Lineage:
Audience>?>silver>EAC>Flac Frontend 6>you

My rating: Audience 6 (1-6)

Artwork included

EAC extraction log and MD5 included for each disc

Torrented by Musicfinder

Enjoy and share the music!

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Geetarz Comments:

All thanks to the original tapers and seeders!

Organizing my torrent file archives, I found this one and didn't see it currently on the tracker, alive or dead.

Re-seeded on DIME, July 2009, by Geetarz. Supervision and Moral Support by Cody the Codependent Husky.

How can this not be on the tracker?

This is a personal "Top 10" favorite Clapton show. The 2006/7 World Tour was a nice one, but overall the addition of both Doyle Bramhall II and Derek Trucks made things a little crowded, guitar wise, at times, so EC stepped back into the shadows a bit.

Near the end of the tour, the Japan shows were a little anticlimacic in some ways ... until the December 5 and 6 shows at the Budokan, in Tokyo. Folks, I'd put this in my personal "Top 10" favorite EC shows of all time, the man was certainly ON FIRE all night.

This is also one of those happy times when an excellent audience recording is preferable to a dry, close miked 'board, as you really get a "live" feel as the guitar is amplified by the PA, and the drums and bass shake the venue.

At times EC shows can have pauses and lulls, I defy you to find one in the open of this show. From the opening notes, it's "pedal to the metal and thingy to the floor" like a Top Fuel dragster. After letting Doyle and Derek stretch a bit for the opening song, EC slams into a blistering "Key to the Highway, to my ears the best performance of this song since with the Fillmore in 1970. During the 2006 tour, "Got to Get Better" lacked some of the fire of the 2004 versions, but not this night, as this is the singular, standout performance of this song from the tour. "Little Wing" ... well, this is my 2nd favorite EC performance of that song of all time - period.

After a rousing "Motherless Children" (again, one of the best performances of this song of EC's career), the band gives themselves and the audience a breather with an acoustic set. "Oustide Woman Blues" has an irresistable groove, and after a nicely arranged "Running on Faith", the band, indeed, is off and running again with the remainder of a blistering electric set.

EC can at times tend to "noodle" his way through "After Midnight", and that's certainly not the case here, and then the band settles into a 15 minute version of "Little Queen of Spades". Anyone who claims EC can't play the blues "like he used to" needs to hear this track.

Finally, "Layla" is one of those songs that's been played so many times that quite often the performance is perfunctory - not in this case, as EC belts out the vocals, and then tears into the solos with abandon. Probably the tour de dorce of this entire set is the wonderful interplay between the guitarists during the coda to Layla - it deserves to be listened to in detail.

The Layla > Cocaine segue was something I would never have come up with, and here it works splendidly. "Cocaine" is yet another of those songs that I haven't felt that EC has really put his heart into since, oh, 1988 (with the exception of 2004), and that isn't the case here. EC's solo is a master class in phrasing, near feedback, fingerpicking mixed with flatpicking, pull offs to open string notes, and the like. Then the band all get into a total groove that goes on for nearly 12 minutes.

The set finishes up with "Crossroads", another song that has in recent years been sort of "over-done" but it certainly doesn't feel that way here.

I personally tend to listen to "Here Comes the Soul" a little more often, because there are a couple numbers (Tell the Truth and After Midnight) that I feel were just slightly better on the first night, but the sound quality is pretty much identical between the two releases, and if I had to pick just one show, this would be it.

A quick check of my iTunes "Top 10 Most Played" shows that 6 songs from this set are in my personal "Top 10 Played", if that gives you any indication. The first 5 songs on Disc 1 were my morning run for many, many months.

If I could suggest one show from the 2006/7 tour - this would be it. If I were sent to a desert island, it would also be one of my "Top 10" I'd take with me.

As always, play this fucker loud !

http://www.geetarz.org

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Enjoy!

~G