Nice guitar, very nice! Incidentally, how did you manage to get the chance to study with someone like Larry Coryell?
Regarding fusion...I think it's got something of a bad name, hasn't it? But I still love lots of it...just not all. Some of it is mindless shredding, for sure, but there are lots of great moments in it. I love Mahavishnu and John McLaughlin, although that's as much for Billy Cobham's incredible drums as anything. And the Chick Corea Electric Group are pretty damn good...same with Zappa. And there's lots of interesting things happening on the US 'Left Coast' scene, although that veers incredibly close to avant-garde rather than fusion I guess. At the end of the day though, I'd still prefer someone like Charlie Parker or the mighty 'trane to most fusion. Blues is cool but only the originals, I don't really dig the way that what started as the music of the (often racial) underdog has become middle-class middle-aged white man's music. As Frank Zappa sneered, 'make up sad songs...blow your harmonic, boy...' It's just a personal opinion, though.
Rory Gallagher and those players who took blues onwards, I like them very much. :)
