Saturday, December 02, 2006

Wow, what a show! We arrived about half way through John Petrucci's set and to be honest I wasn't all that interested in him anyway, don't get me wrong he's an awesome guitarist and he sounds great on record (or should that be iTunes!) but he lacks the showmanship and charisma of Vai and Satch, and even though I don't really like his music, I think Yngwie would have put on a better show! In fact he is very boring to watch he seems to spend the whole time standing like a statue and really concentrating on what he is playing... someone of his calibre shouldn't make playing look like hard work?

Anyway at 8.30 ish Steve Vai comes on stage and the atmosphere is immediately transformed, I don't know if I am imaging this as I had one or two drinks last night but I seem to remember him opening with Blue Powder? He played a few tracks of Passion & Warfare a brilliant version of 'Answers' and a jop dropping 'For the love of God', within half an hour I think he reminded everyone that he is a phenomenal musician and technical master. He really looked liked he was enjoying himself too and doing things to his Ibanez that would probably break most guitars in 2! Oh and he was backed up by Billy Sheehan, Tony McAlpine (who strangely spent most of the time playing keyboards which must be frustrating for such an amazing guitar player) and Dave Weiner. The experience took me back to my early teens driving my parents mad trying to learn 'The Riddle' with my TAB book on my knee and my Ibanez in hand... I miss that guitar :(

Ok so John Petrucci had shown everyone he was a great guitar player (even though he has his guitar too high, bit geeky!) Then Steve Vai had proved that he is the one of the best rock guitarist in the world so how was Joe going to top that?

Easy. As the spotlight started to fade up on Joe Satriani he stood coaxing feedback from a sustained C (yes I am that much of a music nerd) which was instantly recognizable to me as I'd spent so many hours learning 'Flying in a Blue Dream', what a track to open with. I was blown away. In 1 track Joe managed to remind me why I started playing guitar 18 years ago and why I still love it today. He also showed that he is on a totally different level to anyone else. This guy is 50 years old, can you believe it? 50! And yet he plays with the same agility, passion and enjoyment as when I saw him on the 'Flying in a Blue Dream' Tour at the Hummingbird in Birmingham (England) which must have 1990?? He went on to play tracks from the Extremist, Surfing with the Alien, Not of this earth and some of the new Super Collosal material. I loved every minute of it! During 'Always with me, Always with you' Steve joined Joe on stage and then John Petrucci came on, it was a nice segue into the final part of the show.

Ok, so onto the G3 experience... what can I say. The first track I think was 'Voodoo Chile' and all I could think was that Jimi would have been spinning in his grave, it was an absolute massacre. Too many cooks... It just didn't work for me, I think Satch and Vai together would have been good as they play off each other and don't do obvious repetitive runs whereas Petrucci seemed to just do some fast scales, arpeggios or whatever with little emotion or feel. I really would have been happier if I had walked out before the 3 played together, but it was still a pretty amazing thing to see these guys play together on stage and it certainly won't stop me going to the next one!!!!!

By the way the Hordern was packed, don't know official figures but I'm guessing 10,000? I'll get the photos off Dave and Jamen this week and post them on Flickr, in the meantime I hope Mattbooy doesn't mind that I've linked to a few of his.

UPDATE
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Found 6 great photos from friday night on Flickr, Check them out here

Jon 12:10 PM Permalink