Light On Dark Water

Joe Satriani

 I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that Satriani was Steve Vai's teacher. I like Satriani better, to the extent that I know his work. His material just seems more appealing to me, more overall-musical. I reviewed his Flying in a Blue Dream album several years ago, and am still of more or less the same opinion. Here's something from that album, "The Forgotten."

I don't know what album this song–"Always With Me, Always With You"–is from, but it must be an earlier one, because he looks pretty young, and not bald. For some years now he's always appeared with a shaved head, or occasionally a stocking cap, which I take to be his solution for the problem of balding. Anyway, it's pretty, and also includes a very expressive solo. And it's a pretty video.

Something more recent: 

My memory is really getting bad. I was thinking, after having featured Eric Johnson, Steve Vai, and Joe Satriani in this series, that I would close it out with something from G3, which is a trio of guitar heroes featuring Satriani and a varying list of others. So I looked on YouTube, and I didn't find much featuring the Johnson/Vai lineup. This is one of the few. "Red House" is a blues, well-known to Hendrix fans (Johnson starts it off with Hendrix's riff). So I set up the link here. And then when I searched the blog for Satriani's name so that I could link to my old review above, I discovered I'd already posted this, and only six months ago. Well, here it is again.

Whose solo do you like best? I like Vai's a whole lot. Maybe the limits of the blues kind of kept him a bit more down to earth.