Agree. Though I love Carlos, he does the redundant licks thing. He does have a touch of Zappa’s innovation too. This particular jam, though played well, is very garage. And he needs to play the fills between vocal lines to keep the song interesting.
He’s unique and has potential for greatness as a guitar player but his vocals are less than inspiring, they probably will improve with time.
All in all, he’s SO much better than I could even imagine performing myself.
“Though I love Carlos, he does the redundant licks thing.”
Actually that’s one of the things I love about Carlos’ playing. A lot of times when he plays a lick several times in a row he puts a slightly different emphasis, tone and harmonics on each one, so it’s the same but it’s not. He makes the guitar “talk”, as they say. One of his signatures, along with using 2nd and 6th notes of the chord he’s playing against as passing tones in his solos. Carlos has played with a lot of different artists, but you always know it’s him right away.