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Originally Posted by dmbclstj2
Understood, and I miss the the violin at times too, but lets be honest with ourselves, they were phasing out the violin years ago. The even muted him on certain songs. Sure they would toss him a solo here and there but as a whole, he wasn't really utilized very much.
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Yeah, if you listen to BW, he's barely there. Buried, almost never featured. He showed back up on AFtW, but didn't maintain it live. Or is it that he couldn't maintain it live.
His priority hasn't been his musicianship. And to an extent I can understand this with musicians, but I'm thinking either better musicians or more creative musicians.
A highly skilled musician can play great off of muscle memory and years of playing...being able to play almost anything that comes to mind and certainly their written/worked out parts. Boyd, stopped being able to that latter part consistently. As to the creative aspect, he's not a "great" songwriter and certainly not a ground breaking violinists. Sadly, DMB didn't require him to be either, but the band and the fans deserved for him to be concerned about musical performance as well as stage presence. While it's great to see players really feeling it (if, in fact they are feeling it and not just performing the feeling...not that we can always or even ever tell), but NOT at the sacrifice of the music. An impassioned performance can be executed without unnecessary movements, gestures, choreography, guitar-face, etc.
Anyway, I don't know think Boyd would still be in the band had he paid off the guy bringing the suit. I think it was another justification for his dismissal, although they claim that it wasn't part of the decision to have him "take a break".