Heh… I’m not even gonna *TRY* to review the concert I went to Saturday night, instead choosing to make a somewhat different commentary. {OK, if you’re curious anyway, then suffice it say that I waited 12 years to see Joe Satriani, and WOOHOO am I glad I went!; if you don’t know of these guys then let’s just say the ultimate guitar heroes’ guitar heroes strutted their stuff for three or four hours last night, to a very happy crowd. You can watch excerpts from last year’s similar gig at Epic Records’ G3′03 Site}… note that the photo at right, from Carl Bergman, is from a two-week earlier gig, but gives you the idea;

But I wanted to say something ELSE, because reviewing these guys is like reviewing a religious experience (so a textual review would kind of miss the point, at least coming from me, until I figure out how to write music reviews). I’ve had the very good fortune in my life to see many (non-classical) guitar legends, representing many different genres from Delta Blues, City Blues, and Bluegrass, to Jazz, Rock, Psychedelic, Heavy Metal, Progressive Jazz, and, well, ‘Insane’. With this in mind, my comment is more on the nature of ‘genres’… and please note that I can’t even hope to name all the genres that have emerged nor even classify them very sensibly any more!

In the early 1980’s I deliberately avoided a concert by Queen that was taking place less than a mile from my house. Reason: I was in rebellion against ‘guitar heroes’, ’strutting/posing on stage’, ‘glamour’, ‘wailing guitars’, and was generally much more enthusiastic about various local punk and progressive groups. BIG MISTAKE. I discovered in 1985, watching the famous Live Aid gig on TV at the time, that Freddie Mercury had more charisma in his little finger than all the other famous acts put together, and he knew it, too! The moral of this little story: if you have a chance to see living legends, even if you’re not a convert to their particular ‘genre’, then GO. Satriani and Vai are such legends, in a genre that, if you’re not already well into it, will probably give you a permanent headache. Go anyway!

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