LIMS and Guitar Idol 2009

Had a great time down in London over the weekend, meeting up with some mates, attending the London International Music Show and of course getting to see the Guitar Idol 2009 Finals.

We arrived a little late on the Saturday morning, gotta love London Transport! As a result we sadly missed Silvio Gazquez and Alexandros Tefarikis’s performances and arrived halfway through George Marios’s set. Considering how early it was ( the finals started at 10:00! ) there was already a moderately sized crowd assembled.

All twelve finalists put on a great show and let’s face it, it takes some guts to get out there and perform in front of your typical ‘arms folded guitar type’ crowd. My faves, Muris Varajic, Daniele Gottardo, Hedras Ramos and Jack Thammarat, stood out from the crowd with their technique, overall performance and most importantly their songs.

You can see each finalist’s performance ( and the winners ) here in this playlist, see if you agree:

The actual announcement of the winners wasn’t until much later in the day so after the performances we headed out for a nosy around the main exhibition floor. Was nice to see Blackhawk music there with a bunch of Mayones guitars, yeah the guitars from that competition. I had a little feel of the necks ( spot the guitar player ) and they felt very nice indeed!

Barring some amusing Spongebob Pants Ukeleles and a cool Jazz Cafe stand with a live band, there wasn’t much there that grabbed my interest to be honest. There wasn’t even a single stand with Suhr Moderns!

Of course there was something I was really looking forward too, and that was Mr Guthrie Govan and Mr Alex Hutchings.

( Bad Angle Fuzzy phone pics only I’m afraid, as my digital camera died just before the Guitar Idol finals )

I had been really, like really, looking forward to seeing Guthrie Govan and Alex Hutchings playing. Thankfully I had some ‘insider info’ and knew when they were going to play . I was glad I didn’t miss anything!

Guthrie first played through ‘Wonderful Slippery Thing’ and ‘Waves’, fantastic as usual and his new Suhr sounded awesome. A little later on we finally got to see Alex Hutchings and Guthrie Govan jam. At that time the drummers were going for it over in the drum area of the hall so it was hard to hear exactly what was going on, but what we could hear was, as you’d expect, awesome. It was great to see them having a good time and the fact that Alex Hutchings wasn’t phased in the slightest.

Hanging around the Rotosound stand it was funny to see alot of familiar faces from the land of Youtube milling around Guthrie. At various points in the day Jack Thammarat, Silvio Gazquez, Hedras Ramos and Daniele Gottardo could be seen chatting away with him and checking out those Govan licks.

We stayed for the announcement of the Guitar Idol winners and I was delighted when Jack Thammarat was crowned Guitar Idol 2009. A good haul for Jack who ended up with a PRS a Rob Williams guitar *and* the Marshall JVM stack they had all played through!

Daniele Gottardo, Hedras Ramos and Muris Varajic all came away with prizes and I have to agree with the judges, they were the best on the day.

We left slightly after, not staying for the Steve Vai, Phil Hilborne and Nicko McBrain concert. We had been up 22 hours the day previously and we felt it!

All in all a great day out that seemed to fly past too quickly. Looking forward to next year and Guitar Idol 2010!