Joe Satriani: Satriani Live!
This two-disc offering from hard rock guitarist Joe Satriani encompasses a two-hour concert, a 45-minute documentary with plenty of additional live footage, and various other bonus material that includes still more playing. Put it all together andSatriani Live!offers a good three hours' worth of fast and furious fretwork--in other words, a whole lotta notes (hard to say how many, exactly; like the size of the universe or the number of atoms in the human body, it's a figure that's difficult to calculate and nigh on impossible for the finite mind to fathom). Of course, this is exactly what the guitar freaks who sell out Joe's shows want, especially since his performances are uncluttered by any pesky vocals or lyrics. Concentrating primarily on his 2006 CDSuper Colossal, "Satch" unveils his usual bag of virtuoso tricks and techniques here, using harmonics, fret hammering, his whammy bar, various pedal effects, and such to wow the choir he's preaching to. That's all well and good; despite his obvious and enormous debt to predecessors like Jimi Hendrix (his music publishing company is called "Strange Beautiful," taken from the Hendrix classic "Third Stone from the Sun") and Jeff Beck, Satriani is as accomplished as any of the other guitar gods of his generation, with the possible exception of Edward Van Halen. But as skilled as he may be, the guy's songwriting is nothing to pop a string over. Simply put, riffs are not melodies and grooves are not songs, so anyone whose interests go beyond guitar pyrotechnics will have a hard time paying attention for the duration (and even then, the hard-core guitar dudes who comprise most of his audience will complain that there's insufficient focus on Satriani's hands and frets). Truth is, "Flying in a Blue Dream," the documentary of Satriani's 2005 tour of India, is arguably the most entertaining thing here; watching and hearing a stadium full of young Indian men singing along to his every note is a genuine trip.--Sam Graham