In 1970, when Eric Clapton first took the stage with his new band - players plucked from Delaney & Bonnie - they were mistakenly introduced as Derek and the Dominos, though there was no one in the group named Derek.

Now there is. Derek Trucks, one of the hottest American rock and blues guitarists on the scene today, brought Clapton's show on Monday night back home. The bulk of the playlist on Clapton's tour over the past year have come from the Derek and the Dominos album "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs".

On that seminal release, "Slowhand" Clapton traded guitar solos and soulful vocals with the late, great Duane Allman.

It's a sound that Trucks, 27, grew up listening to as the nephew of Butch Trucks, drummer and founding member of the Allman Brothers Band. And though he was born eight years after Duane died, the younger Trucks has grown into one of the best - if not the best - slide guitarists since Duane Allman.

More sounds from the past come from another guitarist in Clapton's current band, left-handed Texan Doyle Bramhall II, who demonstrated an otherworldly style of soloing.

Bramhall, 38, who started out playing with the Fabulous Thunderbirds, is in the Texas blues guitar tradition of such players as Albert King and Stevie Ray Vaughn.

From the blistering opening of "Tell the Truth" from the "Layla" album, the band moved into the blues standard "Key to the Highway", featuring the man himself, Clapton, 61, taking the first solo.

The rapport among the band members was cheerful and loose. It was the second show on the Asia-Australia leg of a world tour that opened on Saturday in Singapore. Early on there was a mix-up between Clapton and Bramhall on who was singing what verse, but they laughed it off and kept playing.

Bassist Willie Weeks and powerful drummer Steve Jordan showed what they were made of on a funkified arrangement of the Dominos' "Got to Get Better in a Little While", a song eventually released on Clapton's 1988 "Crossroads" boxed set.

Weeks and Jordan locked into a groove, with Clapton chicken-scratching a rhythm pattern, and it built up from there into a barnburner.

The mood rose to ethereal with the Dominos' arrangement of Jimi Hendrix's mournful "Little Wing", which featured solos by all three guitarists.

And to answer the question "How can they top that?" they asked another question with the pleading "Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad?", which boosted the tempo once more, but then ended with a drawn-out, meditative solo by Clapton.

Then Slowhand sat down alone and gave his acoustic guitar a workout on "Driftin' Blues".

He was joined on "Outside Woman Blues" with Trucks on a steel-resonator guitar, Bramhall on acoustic 12-string, Weeks on semi-acoustic bass and Jordan astride a box, slapping it with some brushes.

The stomping, gut-bucket sound could have been coming from a front porch on a lazy afternoon in the Mississippi Delta.

But this was Impact Arena, and after a couple more "sit-down" numbers - "Nobody Knows You" and "Running on Faith" - the band plugged in again and got back into arena-rock mode, joined by pianist Chris Stainton, organist Tim Carmon and vocalists Michelle John and Sharon White.

With a drum solo opening, there then came the triple slide-guitar attack of "Motherless Children" from Clapton's solo album "461 Ocean Boulevard".

"Queen of Spades" showcased the piano work of Stainton, who Joe Cocker fans will remember as the "Foxy Prince of Roll" on the "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" album. There were solos from Trucks, who stuck with his trusty Gibson SG all evening, and Bramhall on a Gibson Les Paul. (Except for the acoustic numbers, he'd played a variety of Fender Stratocasters.)

"Anyday", also from "Layla", was offered before Clapton got into "Wonderful Tonight". This is where the capacity crowd came unhinged. If the majority of the show was for die-hard Clapton fans, this was a song for the radio listeners.

One fan planted himself in the centre aisle in front of the stage and swooned before Clapton. He was probably the same wag who spray-painted "Clapton is God" graffiti around London in the mid-1960s. As the song was ending, the man threw his shirt on the stage as an offering to the guitar god, before being escorted away.

Then came the closing number, the often-heard title cut from the Dominos' album, "Layla". Hardly a day goes by without it being cranked out at some beer bar somewhere in Thailand, but how many times can you hear it played live, by Clapton and two other hot lead guitarists, complete with the piano solo coda?

The camera-phone toting fans packed the centre aisle in front of the stage and swayed.

That closed out the show, and left the crowd restless for more. After enthusiastic cheering, the band came back and fired up "Cocaine". Meanwhile, a scent of something that was not cocaine wafted from the front row.

This was followed by the Robert Johnson standard "Crossroads", and there was, really, no better way to close out the two-hour show, except perhaps "Further on Up the Road". But for that, fans had to head out to their cars and pop in a CD, because Clapton and company had to take it to the highway for their next gig in Hong Kong.

Still, they left Bangkok a better place, and in light of the events on New Year's Eve, it's an affirmation that good things do happen here, and that the blues aren't necessarily so sad.

Curtis Winston

 The Nation