One of the things I’ve noticed since I stopped listening to regular radio is that I’m finding out about music from a lot of sources I never considered before.  NPR is a strange source since you only hear 20-30 second clips of songs but they avoid the mainstream stuff for the most part.  Guitar World may be guilty of running articles about the same people over and over, but thanks to them I’ve picked up on groups like Children of Bodom and Rodrigo y Gabriela.  I’ve never seen Rodrigo y Gabriela mentioned anywhere else other than a few websites, so I’ll have to give Guitar World credit for covering new stuff even though I see their latest issue is yet another tribute to Led Zeppelin.

Several years back I read an interview with someone (Michael Hedges maybe) who described his music as heavy metal played on an acoustic guitar.  Well it wasn’t, but that seems like a close approximation to what Rodrigo y Gabriela make - close but not exact because there are a variety of other influences coming into it as well.  Their songs are acoustic guitar instrumentals, amazingly intricate without falling into the “wanking” category.

I picked up their self titled album a year or so back, and while it was good it didn’t seem to live up to its potential.  This live album/DVD focuses mainly on their last album and vastly improves on those songs with an energy that wasn’t apparent in their studio recordings.  The music is spot on and hearing a live crowd so into the music really enhances the performance.

In addition to their own material the set contains covers of “Orion”, “One”, “Take Five”, and “Stairway to Heaven”.  Other than “Orion” the covers don’t really do anything for me - maybe because I think the other three songs are overplayed in general but they don’t seem to have the energy that their originals do.

My main complaint is that the DVD only contains a subset of the songs on the CD.  I would have at least like to have seen their solos, both of which contain phenominal guitar playing.

Just as an aside, I picked this up at Target which doesn’t seem like the sort of place that would carry it.