Posted by Gerald Witkowski
on February 28, 2009, 12:06 pm
82.83.192.193
Dear Brian,
thanks for shipping your Live DVD “At The Baked Potato” to me in Germany. I have been watching and listening for several evenings now – and am more than completely satisfied!!
I first happened to listen to your and your band`s playing when by chance buying a copy of your album “Second Wind” in 1972. I was fascinated very much right from the beginning!
Two years before I had started off playing keyboards in bands. My first instrument to own was a one manual Farfisa organ - there seems to have been only one halfways reasonable sound in that machine.
When playing I was standing behind my Farfisa “Fast V” like I had seen you with your B3... I tried to be quick as my idol, and my friends admired me getting bloody fingers from wiping over the organ’s manual which was not designed for doing so! Amongst other tunes, my band were trying to do a “reduced” version of your song “Truth” in those years.
I went to a rock festival in Hanover at the end of 1972. There must have been at about 20 bands playing, and the only announced group who did not show up was your BAOE... a major bit of a disappointment.
Later on I had the opportunity to listen to you at the Klaus Doldinger Jubilee concert and was impressed very much again.
During the following years I turned to playing the Rhodes piano and some synthesizers, and after your reunion album “Encore” with Julie Driscoll I seem to have lost track of you a bit.
But in 1993 I got the opportunity to listen to you when you and Eric Burdon and your son Karma were playing your “Access All Areas” program in my hometown Hildesheim. I was fascinated again! But I kept in my memory that the sound of your keyboards was not ideal. I could hear and watch you doing helluvaplaying but did not hear what you were playing exactly – in contrast to the guitar player. One single guitar tone and the sun was rising, just due to inadequate bad sound mixing!
As an amateur keyboard player I had been used to similar conditions but I would not have expected it that very evening.
A few weeks ago by chance again I happened to step on your website and ordered your Baked Potato Live event as a DVD. When listening the old spell from the Seventies is there again!
I already adored your organ playing in 1972 – and in the meantime you still have improved so much! You’re a rock’n’jazz animal to me. Your fellow musicians seem to fit in your music better than all the illustrious colleagues you’ve been playing together with before.
I like Savannah’s voice very much, Karma’s drumming is absolutely crazy (with a similar wildness to his father’s!) and Derek simply is the most gifted bass player I ever heard in BAOE. Very impressing soloing by both Karma and Derek...
Thank you so much for your playing which has been enriching my life since about 40 years!
Hope to see BAOE near my place in Germany sometime!
My regards by heart to you and your band’s members! (Never mind my fading school English...)
Gerald.
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