Sleezy E
Shredder
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Mine as well.
I took my dad with me to that show and he was floored by Vai.
We've been to 3 G3's since
Vai Is Still God
- Thread starter DrewJD82
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I took my dad with me to that show and he was floored by Vai.
We've been to 3 G3's since
norminal
Rock Star
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Yeah, got into home recording very early on in his career. Flex-Able is a crude example, but some of his solo work sounds incredible.I never knew he recorded all those guitars in his home studio, that’s pretty crazy for the 80’s and surely having a good amount of pressure to follow up to Eat Em And Smile with something big. Also cool to hear how into recording he already was at that point, he definitely had opinions about wood floors in studios.
Passion and Warfare is
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The '96 G3 tour was my first introduction to Vai in general and I was hooked ever since. I had heard bits of P&W previous to that but wasn't really interested, when I saw him jumping all over the place while playing that shit, it was a different story.
paisleywookiee
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Jesus Harold Christ. So damn good.
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Man, I’d eat up any video of any of his 90’s sessions, but it would be particularly great to see stuff from the P&W recrossing just due to the timing and where he was at in his career. Obviously everyone knew he could play and was a little above the average after Alcatraz and DLR, but that little period before P&W came out and he really solidified himself as the Vai we know today would be cool to get a look at.
Fire Garden is actually my overall favorite album of his
Compared to The Ultra Zone it almost sounds pedestrian
saarangnarayan
Roadie
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IIRC, he mixed The Ultra Zone entirely in the box and even had programmed drums on some tracks. Can't seem to remember where I read this, but I do remember reading that he doesn't really like that album of his as much.
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Cool stuff! In the beginning she says "Steve, I smell skunk?!"
That album changed my life, if not for it, Satch's Surfing and FIABD I doubt I'd even be playing guitar.
Sascha Franck
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It has a few cool tracks/moments but I never was able to really get in to it either tbh
SillyOctpuss
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Every so often I think I should listen to Steve Vai to see it I get it yet but it's just not for me. He always comes across like a really nice guy and obviously an unbelievable player but his music generally speaking just bores me.
saarangnarayan
Roadie
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Jibboom, Oooo, Here I Am, and Blood and Tears are 100% bangers. The Silent Within and I'll Be Around are acquired tastes, but I remember having them on loop when I was 14... The rest is all... well, filler, at best.
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Can't remember if he did the whole thing ITB, it's possible but considering the amazing outboard gear he has/had something must've went out and come back in on the mix. Could be wrong though. I actually like that album a lot. It renewed my interest in Vai after a long hiatus.
Sascha Franck
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Every bit the same for me. I do like some parts here and there but couldn't manage listening to an entire album. Great guy, though.
norminal
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Same. Joe and Steve are who inspired me to really stick with guitar.
saarangnarayan
Roadie
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I want to echo the same sentiment here.
I was brought up on and trained in North Indian Classical music, and was playing the Sitar when I first properly came across a guitar. I was 13 then, and my musical background and context always made me associate the guitar (especially the electric) as something that was "noisy" and "loud" and "unrefined". I dabbled in acoustics for a bit and realised I actually enjoyed the instrument. The somewhat cheesy Bollywood movie Rock On made me take the instrument a bit more seriously (the Rock On soundtrack is pretty cool!). The guitar player in the band that the movie revolved around played an Ibanez JEM7VWH on screen and that guitar looked really interesting to me, so I looked it up and found out it was the signature model of some guitarist called Steve Vai. And so I went on YouTube and looked up his songs. Bad Horsie, For The Love of God, and Tender Surrender really blew my mind and for the first time I realised that the guitar could be played like that. That was it. I immediately fell in love with the instrument and the rest is history. I don't play anything like him or Joe, but those were the two guys who made me realise that the guitar is so much more than just loud and noisy music. It's a wholly different story that I discovered Metallica very soon after, and my abilities and tastes since then are much more geared towards what I would have considered once loud and noisy and brash...
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I know The Ultra Zone was the first album he did at The Harmony Hut in his backyard and before he had a lot of construction/additions to it, so a lot of it most certainly was ITB. I also remember him ranting about hard drive/fan noise back then and getting some custom cabinets made just to house the computers to quiet the noise.
In one of my more “principled” moves, I quit marching band the day that album was released because they ran the practice past 9PM and I couldn’t get to the store to buy it until the next day. I spent the whole summer busting my ass on those quads to even get the spot, never mind the actual parts and when I told the instructor “If you don’t wrap this up in 15 minutes you’re going to need a new quad player”, he thought I was bluffing. “You’re going to quit over a CD? All that work you put in and how much the percussion section is counting on you?”, I told him “He’s my Satchmo” and that was that. At the end of that school year he told me he was very angry at me for quitting but he understood.
“The Silent Within” has one of my favorite Vai solos that I’ve stolen a phrase from and used all over. There’s some great nuggets all over that album but it was the start of me moving away from the instrumental shred guitar music thing I loved for so long. It reminded me of a modern Flexible album when it came out, with the more humorous side of Vai coming through. Tonally, it was my least favorite Vai record. Though he only used the Legacy on “Frank” and the rest of it was Bogner/Egnater/Marshall, his tone wasn’t as cutting and rockin’ around that time.
I need to give that album a listen, it’s been years since I’ve heard the whole thing. Hahahha one day when I feel like torturing myself a bit, I’ll post the cover of “Here I Am” with my horribly out of key playing and singing when I was 16 or 17.
Edit- forgot I already uploaded the solo section of it a couple years ago-
In one of my more “principled” moves, I quit marching band the day that album was released because they ran the practice past 9PM and I couldn’t get to the store to buy it until the next day. I spent the whole summer busting my ass on those quads to even get the spot, never mind the actual parts and when I told the instructor “If you don’t wrap this up in 15 minutes you’re going to need a new quad player”, he thought I was bluffing. “You’re going to quit over a CD? All that work you put in and how much the percussion section is counting on you?”, I told him “He’s my Satchmo” and that was that. At the end of that school year he told me he was very angry at me for quitting but he understood.
“The Silent Within” has one of my favorite Vai solos that I’ve stolen a phrase from and used all over. There’s some great nuggets all over that album but it was the start of me moving away from the instrumental shred guitar music thing I loved for so long. It reminded me of a modern Flexible album when it came out, with the more humorous side of Vai coming through. Tonally, it was my least favorite Vai record. Though he only used the Legacy on “Frank” and the rest of it was Bogner/Egnater/Marshall, his tone wasn’t as cutting and rockin’ around that time.
I need to give that album a listen, it’s been years since I’ve heard the whole thing. Hahahha one day when I feel like torturing myself a bit, I’ll post the cover of “Here I Am” with my horribly out of key playing and singing when I was 16 or 17.
Edit- forgot I already uploaded the solo section of it a couple years ago-
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