Jeff Beck . . . Blow by Blow à Sète

As any fule kno, Blow by Blow was Jeff Beck's most successful album; a wonderful sequence of off-beat jazz rock and fusion from a guitar player who was always ahead of the game, and even now, 30 years later, still just seems to get better and better. I don't suppose it hurt to have George Martin producing on both Wired and Blow by Blow, but it has to be said the boy himself remains something special.

Beck headlined the last night of Jazz à Sète a few days back in the open-air intimacy of the 1,000-seater (or something like that) Theâtre de la Mer, an offer that me and my mate Jay, for two, couldn't resist. Just us and a few seagulls. You just don't get to see people this good in venues this small for 35 quid in the UK. Many of the small summer festivals around us here in southern France are incredibly good value.

Sète itself is an intriguing collage of canals, bridges, cars, fish, chaos, possibly a lurking étang or two and some quite classy architecture au bord de la mer, somewhere near Montpellier. There's also a Theâtre de Molière as France's top thesp apparently got his first big break at nearby Pézenas. Don't cut it too fine as it's murder to drive in Sète. Much better, indeed it's a great idea, to pig out at one of the many seafood restaurants before the show. We did: it was brill.

But back to Beck: Always bracketed with Page and Clapton, less well-known than the other two but in my (not at all humble, actually) opinion a much better player than either of them. And seriously more modern. While it's possibly hard to credit that a 65-year-old rock star retains jet-black hair entirely by natural talent, there's not a note of nostalgia in Beck. This is up-to-the moment, relevant playing. He uses a few effects, but most of them, he seems just to grab out of thin air. It's soaring then spiky, sometimes weird, and rhythmically often very strange indeed.

Maybe that's why Beck never had a wider following, he never offers you the easy way round, but I was spellbound. Ritchie Blackmore once commented that Beck always took risks; when they came off he was incredible, when they didn't, he was crap. Well, it all came together at Sète.

He seemed to be really enjoying himself too. Beck was always notorious as a fully paid-up member of The Awkward Squad but maybe he's mellowed. And why not? From the opening Beck's Bolero to his monumental take on The Beatles' Day in the Life, both he and his band were astonishing.