John McLaughlin is playing on Thursday, September 27, 2007 at Town Hall in NYC.A snippet from a guitarplayer.com article:Born in Yorkshire, England on January 4, 1942, the guitarist is well known for his eclectic taste in music. McLaughlin was a child when he first fell in love with jazz and the blues, and he was just 11 years old when he began studying and playing the guitar. The 1960s found him playing jazz, rock, and blues in his native England, where he worked with Alexis Korner and Ginger Baker, among others, before moving to New York at the end of the decade. McLaughlin had a busy year in 1969--he recorded his debut album, Extrapolation, and started working with two seminal voices in early fusion: Tony Williams (who employed McLaughlin and organist Larry Young in his trailblazing group Lifetime) and Miles Davis. Never afraid to forge ahead, Davis had done a lot to popularize cool jazz and modal post-bop in the past--and he continued to break new ground when he introduced fusion on his 1969 sessions In A Silent Way and Bitches Brew, both of which feature McLaughlin's playing. The guitarist was also featured on 1970's A Tribute To Jack Johnson, another Davis gem of the time.Like bebop in the 1940s and modal jazz in the early 1960s, fusion was controversial. Jazz purists felt that rock and funk rhythms had no place in jazz, but thankfully, McLaughlin disagreed and let his musical instincts guide him. After participating in Davis' and Williams' groundbreaking fusion combos, McLaughlin founded an influential group of his own in 1971: The Mahavishnu Orchestra, which boasted such greats as drummer Billy Cobham and keyboardist Jan Hammer. By the time Mahavishnu broke up in 1975, it had recorded several classic albums for Columbia (including Birds of Fire, Between Nothingness and Eternity, and Visions of the Emerald Beyond) and gone down in history as one of the 1970's most influential fusion outfits.A video clip from John's Mahavishnu days:I got my tickets. Very excited for some mind bending shredding guitar.