G3 Part 1 - The Glasgow gig.
June 30, 2004
Last week was G3 week 
.
As I mentioned previously, I bought tickets for both the Glasgow and Manchester legs of the G3 UK tour to get a good dose of both Vai and Satch. I was also keen to see and hear Robert Fripp who’s material I was generally unfamiliar with. Here follows part one of the saga, the Glasgow Gig.
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On Wednesday I met up with Paul Simpson, who had travelled all the way to Edinburgh from Leeds, and headed through to Glasgow to meet up with our other G3 gigmates, Paul McCrone, Neil and his mate Steven. As it was ‘chucking it down’ we got a Taxi over to the venue and split up to find our respective seats. Paul McCrone and I browsed the Merchandise counter where I picked up a copy of Dave Weiner’s, guitarist in Vai’s band, new CD ‘Shove The Sun Aside’. And if I may add, having now listened to it, a truly fine CD. |
As I had hoped our seats where right down at the front of the stage, giving us a perfect view of the stage and as we were being led to our seats I could hear ambient, flowing music which I at first took to be background music being played before the start of the gig. As I sat down I was suprised to see that in fact Robert Fripp was currently onstage performing. He was sitting quite far back on the stage, seated on a stool and occasionally moved to tweak the rack units to his side. There has been much debate on the web about Fripp’s suitability being on a G3 tour, some dimissing his music as ‘pointless whale music’ etc. At some gigs he has even been ‘boo’ed 
. Personally I enjoyed what he was playing, it was soothing and calmed things down before the eventual ‘loud rock’ we were about to see/hear. At one point he played a swooshing panning sound that sounded very cool!
After Mr Fripp, Mr Vai walked onto stage unannounced ( as per the G3 concerts in the US ), sat down with his triple neck and played the improvised intro to ‘I Know You’re Here’, at this point my excitement levels rose considerably.
| Vai, as usual, was visually and sonically stunning playing through the mighty riffing ‘Giant Balls Of Gold’, ‘Answers’, ‘Reaper’, ‘Juice’, an amazingly emotional ‘Whispering A Prayer’, ‘Bangkok/Bullwhip’, one of my faves ‘Get The Hell Outta Here’ and a ‘Metropole’d version of ‘For The Love Of God’. It was awe inspiring to see ‘the man’ once again having seen him play in the orchestral context of the Metropole shows the previous month. Yes I am a hopeless fanboy, but I can’t help it, I just love the man’s music. |  |
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After a quick break, the ‘bad hat afflicted one’, Satch bounded onto the stage opening up his show with the simply amazing ‘Hands In The Air’ from his latest CD ‘Is There Love In Space?’. This song simply blew me away live. Seven string goodness, what a riff!  . Over time I can see this becoming a crowd favourite. I was pleasantly surprised with Satch’s set, he played through plenty of new material from his new CD namely, ‘Gnaahh’, ‘I Like The Rain’ (apt considering the weather at the time), ‘Up In Flames’, ‘Searching’ and ‘Is There Love In Space?’. Of course some of the old favourites were there too, ‘Satch Boogie’, ‘Cool #9′, ‘Always With Me, Always With You’, ‘War’ and ‘Flying In A Blue Dream’. Satch was solid throughout and was the most animated onstage I have ever seen him, he was clearly enjoying himself. |
Once Joe finished his set, he asked the crowd if we were ‘ready for some G3 action!?’ which was met with a huge cheer as Vai and Fripp joined Satch onstage. Having seen the G3 Jam setlist prior to the gig I was looking forward to Vai and Satch jamming on one of Satch’s tunes, ‘Ice #9′ and boy it didn’t disappoint. Robert Fripp was again sat at the back of the stage and it seemed more like a G2 jam with Vai and Satch at the front of the stage. To me they seemed more relaxed with this, compared to previous G3s, , two old jam buddies together again feeding off each other’s vibe.
After ‘Ice #9′ they jammed through King Crimson’s ‘Red’, ‘The Murder’ and the now G3 default jam song, ‘Rockin In The Free World’ for which Vai managed to convince people to get out of their seats and come to the front of the stage for a mini mosh pit ( much to the security guards unease ). This raised energy levels even more. At the end of the night huge cheers roared for what we had just witnessed, I was glad to hear Fripp getting a huge cheer as well, all the G3 members were well received for providing us with an unforgettable night!
Fame at last on Vai.com!
June 17, 2004
Vai.com has now posted pics from the Steve Vai & The Metropole Orkest ‘Aching Hunger’ performances .
Who’s my Stalker!?
June 16, 2004
| markmcg’s LJ stalker is neilomac! |
| neilomac is stalking you because they think you are rich and they want your blingbling. They are also stalking you in real life. Look out! |
iTunes UK is Launched
June 15, 2004
Today after many months of waiting iTunes was finally launched in Europe.
First impressions, the general layout, browsing capabilities and ability to preview songs before purchasing in iTunes are all very slick. Sadly I wasn’t too impressed with the catalogue as it is right now, hey they didn’t even have any Vai 
. To be honest this is probably due to the fact that it’s early days yet and over time the catalogue will grow.
Pricing wise individual songs are £0.79 each with albums coming in at around £7.90, which is slightly more than current iTunes US pricing. Of course I have recently been downloading music from weblisten.com which offers a fantastic song-for-your-buck rate but has notable missing entries in its catalogue.
Being an iPod owner I’m also drawn to the iTunes + iPod synching of purchased music via iTunes, which is quick a seamless process. For the moment though I imagine I shall jump between the two services, weblisten and iTunes Music Store, to find the best deal or availability 
.
Beller Blog
June 10, 2004
Bryan Beller, who played bass for the Metropole Orchestra during Vai’s ‘The Aching Hunger‘ performance in Holland, has written about his experiences.
Again!!
June 8, 2004
It appears I will be meeting Mr Vai again as well as Mr Satriani and Mr Fripp! 
More weblisten.com
June 7, 2004
More music from weblisten.com on my 1 month voucher :
Bon Jovi - Bon Jovi
Bon Jovi - New Jersey
Tool - Laterus
Stone Temple Pilots - Core
Backyard Babies - Stockholm Syndrome
Aerosmith - Honkin’ On Bobo
Stevie Ray Vaughan - The Essential (Discs 1 & 2)
Slipknot - Iowa
Kyuss - Welcome to Sky Valley
Fear Factory - Archetype
Korn - Take A Look In The Mirror
James Taylor - Sweet Baby James
Lamb - What Sound
Kosheen - Resist
Portishead - Portishead
Bjork - Post
Meshuggah - Nothing
Mclaughlin, Di Meola and Lucia - Passion Grace and Fire
Jimi Hendrix - Blues
Creed - Weathered
Ronny Jordan - At Last
Lacuna Coil - Comalies
Fear Factory - Concrete
Fear Factory - Digimortal
Enigma - The Cross of Changes
Iron Butterfly - In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida
Iron Maiden - Dance Of Death
Muse - Showbiz
NIN - The Fragile
The Stone Roses - The Stone Roses
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