Kevin's Watch

I just bought Steve's Blu-ray, Where the Wild Things Are. If you like his stuff, it's an amazing 27 song show. His band is top-notch, a bunch of virtuosos. If you're not familiar with Steve's solo stuff, it's mostly instrumental, jazz-fusion/prog rock type of stuff. The guy is a phenomenal, but can be a little annoying with his stage antics. He thinks of himself as a "showman," I assume. He drips arrogance with every look and move. But if you can get past that, the music is out of this world.

This is a 7 minute preview:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgObLPOUPVA

A couple of my favorites are at 1:30, 3:40, 4:17, 5:00.

Zarathustra wrote:I just bought Steve's Blu-ray, Where the Wild Things Are. If you like his stuff, it's an amazing 27 song show. His band is top-notch, a bunch of virtuosos. If you're not familiar with Steve's solo stuff, it's mostly instrumental, jazz-fusion/prog rock type of stuff. The guy is a phenomenal, but can be a little annoying with his stage antics. He thinks of himself as a "showman," I assume. He drips arrogance with every look and move. But if you can get past that, the music is out of this world.

This is a 7 minute preview:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgObLPOUPVA

A couple of my favorites are at 1:30, 3:40, 4:17, 5:00.

All you have to do is hear "For The Love Of God" live to appreciate what an amazing talent Vai is. I also don't always appreciate his antics on stage but sometimes I just have to trust he's just feeling the music. I've been known to get a bit out of hand on stage myself from time to time.

I absolutely LOVE this song Paint Me Your Face--Now We Run they have a ton of fun and the violinist is hotter than hell! (he owes a lot to Jeff Beck, as do we all...)

danlo - that was excellent. would love to see it live. (really liked the bass btw)

and the turnaround at the 8 minute mark rocks.

Vai's a great guitarist, but needs the structure of a band (Zappa, Roth, Whitesnake) to really shine. This freeform stuff gets tedious quickly.

G3 Jam fun little thing with Petrucci and Satriani...

I get easily bored by all them fretboard wankers. I never get bored of "Passion & Warfare", though.

Honestly, I probably only listen to about 50%-75% of the concert, and skip the rest. I get tired of endless noodling, too. But he does have quite a few really good songs that allow him to work off distinct, pleasing melodies and chord changes. And I love watching his band at work. All their solos are very interesting. The violinists "solo" together (duet), and end up playing the guitar dual from the 80s movie Crossroads. Cool. (Anyone see that movie with the Karate Kid playing a blues apprentice?)

Zarathustra wrote:(Anyone see that movie with the Karate Kid playing a blues apprentice?)

I love that movie - mainly because of the guitar duel at the end. Vai is awesome in that.

I have a couple of Vai's albums - I like his stuff, but like others mentioned, he gets carried away at times.

wish i had seen the Roth/Vai/Sheehan (no idea the drummer) tour.

Vai on his work with Public Image Limited (Johnny Lydon)

Steve Vai (session guitarist, 2004/06): “Bill Laswell, the producer, called and I flew in and out of New York from Alcatrazz shows to cut the [solo guitar] parts. I did basically all the guitar parts in two days.
Bill Laswell took a very interesting approach to the production of this disc. Some of the material I'd never heard and just went in and started playing on it. At the end, Johnny Lydon came in and liked it [...]
There was the consideration of putting a band together - him, myself, Bill Laswell on bass and Ginger Baker on drums. Would have been quite a band.” “I went in in a day and did everything, then I flew back out on tour. And then I went in for another half day, and Lydon came in on the second day. He's just like ultracool and it's the first time he's heard any of my parts and he goes 'This is fucking great, man, how did you fucking know I wanted it like that?' [...]
We were thinking about turning it into a band - me, him, Bill Laswell and Ginger Baker, but well, I was doing some other things, you know? It would have been cool. To this day that's one of the projects I'm most proud of.”

sgt.null wrote:wish i had seen the Roth/Vai/Sheehan (no idea the drummer) tour.

I actually did back in 1988, at the Monsters of Rock festival here in the Netherlands.

One of the things I like about Vai is the way he approaches his musical ideas. These vids are nice examples:

Explains how the main riff of Building the Church came about

'Freak Show Excess' demonstration

Spiral Jacobs wrote:

sgt.null wrote:wish i had seen the Roth/Vai/Sheehan (no idea the drummer) tour.

I actually did back in 1988, at the Monsters of Rock festival here in the Netherlands.

Greg Bissonette was the drummer. Those were great shows.

Spiral, thanks for those! "Tongue twister for your fingers." I like that.

I just bought a Dream Theater concert blu-ray, and their boring, rambling songs make Steve Vai's excesses sound downright accessible. God, how does that band even stand to listen to their own music? Every single person on stage looked bored out of his mind, except the drummer, who kept reminding me of the Muppets drummer. He would have been interesting if he hadn't simply rumbled double-bass beneath every single rhythm he played. So 80s.

Zarathustra wrote:Spiral, thanks for those! "Tongue twister for your fingers." I like that.

I just bought a Dream Theater concert blu-ray, and their boring, rambling songs make Steve Vai's excesses sound downright accessible. God, how does that band even stand to listen to their own music? Every single person on stage looked bored out of his mind, except the drummer, who kept reminding me of the Muppets drummer. He would have been interesting if he hadn't simply rumbled double-bass beneath every single rhythm he played. So 80s.

DT opened for Iron Maiden 2 years ago. Dear God it was awful, self-indulgent masturbation.

I met Mike Portnoy (Dream Theater ex-drummer) a couple years ago at a Rush concert in Kansas City. Got my picture taken with him too - was pretty cool. He was sitting just a few seats away from me. Was funny to watch him air-drumming along with the rest of the crowd He was actually pretty cool about taking pictures with people, even though he was there with his (totally hot) girlfriend/significant other. He could have been a total douche about it and told people he was there to watch the show, but he was very personable.

Dream Theater can be brilliant (Scenes from a Memory, Images and Words, for example), but yeah, their recent stuff is just 'noise'. Their latest album (without Mike) is pretty much the worst of theirs. I just can't bring myself to listen to it and I've been a DT fan for years.

Passion And Warfare is an album I can listen to from beginning to end, anytime. Not so much Steve's other solo albums, though they have their moments. As others have pointed out, Vai can get too self-indulgent (case in point: "John The Revelator" from his Story Of Light album).

I love this gem, from the The Story Of Light album (2012).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31CFyF_1x30

[Steve Vai: Sunshine Electric Raindrops]