Showing posts with label Ayreon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ayreon. Show all posts

Friday, November 12, 2021

Joe Satriani - ...and on guitar (2020)

Joseph Satriani was born in Westbury on 15 July 15 1956 and raised in Carle Place, and he started playing guitar at 14, after being inspired by hearing of the death of Jimi Hendrix, and later taking lessons from jazz musicians Lennie Tristano and Billy Bauer. He enrolled in Five Towns College and also began teaching guitar, taking his first notable student in Steve Vai, a musician who would soon be credited with "stunt guitar" on Frank Zappa records. Satriani headed out to Berkeley, California in 1978, supporting himself through teaching, and beginning to gig with local bands, and over the next few years he racked up what would prove to be an impressive roster of pupils, including Kirk Hammett (who would join Metallica), jazz fusion guitarist Charlie Hunter, Larry LaLonde (later of Primus), Kevin Cadogan (who joined Third Eye Blind), and David Bryson (Counting Crows). During this period he started to be noticed as a musician himself, landing his first notable steady gig in The Squares, and then joining the Greg Kihn Band in 1986, just as the hits started to dry up for the power popper. Satriani has said that as Kihn was desperate for a replacement guitarist, he was paid far too much money, and he used that, along with his credit cards, to finance his full-length debut album 'Not Of This Earth', released on the Relativity label in 1986. At the same time, his student Steve Vai was hired by David Lee Roth, pushing him into the national spotlight, and Vai often tipped his hat to his old guitar tutor. This helped set the stage for the 1987 release of 'Surfing With The Alien', which received rave reviews from guitar publications, and it rocketed Satriani to mainstream stardom almost overnight, eventually being certified platinum, which was an almost unheard-of feat for an instrumental album. 
As a result of this notoriety, he was offered the chance to play with Mick Jagger on his solo tour of Japan in 1988, which he readily accepted, and he was also asked to guest on 'Blue Öyster Cult's latest recording. The following year saw the release of his next album 'Flying In A Blue Dream', which included a couple of cuts where he sang lead vocals, possibly at the request of his label, but it did help propel the album into the upper reaches of the charts. Before he started work on his next album, he played on four tracks with Alice Cooper, and appeared with Spinal Tap on the 'Break Like The Wind' album. 1992's 'The Extremist' was his highest-ever chart position on Billboard, and a year later he joined Deep Purple, taking over the lead guitar slot from the absent Ritchie Blackmore on a Japanese tour, after which he was offered a full-time position, but he turned it down and the gig went to Steve Morse. The next big event in his career arrived in 1996 when he teamed up with Steve Vai and Eric Johnson for G3, a tour designed to showcase the three guitar virtuosos, and it was captured on the 1997 live CD/DVD set 'G3: Live In Concert'. More solo albums followed, with 2003/2004 being particularly productive, not only for him personally, but he also guested on tracks from the reformed Yardbirds, Stanley Clarke, and Jordan Rudess. Satriani's next project was the supergroup Chickenfoot, with ex-Van Halen rockers Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony, plus Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith, and they released their self-titled debut in 2009, while at the same time he was keeping his solo career afloat with 'Black Swans And Wormhole Wizards' appearing in 2010. A year later Chickenfoot released their second album 'Chickenfoot III', while an overview of his work was issued as 'The Complete Studio Recordings' box set in 2014, followed by yet another new release with 'Shockwave Supernova' in 2015. A couple times a year Satriani joined other artists in the studio to add his blistering guitar runs to songs by artists such as Frost*, Don Felder, Todd Rundgren, and just last year on the latest release by Ayreon. This collection shows the huge variety of artists that have benefited from Satriani's fiery guitar-work over the years, and if you aren't already a fan then I hope in inspires you to check out his many solo releases.  



Track listing   

Disc One
01 Love And Rock And Roll (from 'Love And Rock And Roll' by Greg Kihn 1986)
02 Montery (from 'Aquamarine' by Danny Gottlieb 1987)
03 The Siege And Investiture Of Baron Von Frankenstein's Castle At Weisseria 
                                                                                (from 'Imaginos' by Blue Öyster Cult 1988)
04 Flow My Tears (from 'Radio Free Albemuth' by Stuart Hamm 1988)
05 Burning Our Bed (from 'Hey Stoopid' by Alice Cooper 1991)
06 Break Like the Wind (from 'Break Like The Wind' by Spinal Tap 1992) 
07 Ellipsis (from 'All Sides Now' by Pat Martino 1997)
08 Labios De Fuego (from 'Soy' by Alejandra Guzmán 2001)
09 Train Kept A Rollin' (from 'Birdland' by The Yardbirds 2003)

Disc Two
01 Hair (from '1,2, To The Bass' by Stanley Clarke 2003)
02 Screaming Head (from 'Rhythm Of Time' by Jordan Rudess 2004)
03 Hang Me Out To Dry (from 'Gillan's Inn' by Ian Gillan 2006)
04 River Of Longing (from 'Collection' by Jason Becker 2008)
05 Nail Grinder (from 'Clean' by Martone 2008)
06 Hold On To The Vision (from the soundtrack of the 1986 film 'No Retreat No Surrender' 2010)
07 Falling Awake (from 'What Lies Beneath' by Tarja 2010)
08 Gaia Tribe (from 'Elemental Journey' by Sonny Landreth 2012)

Disc Three
01 Closer To The Sun (from 'Falling Satellites' by Frost* 2016)
02 This Is Not A Drill (from 'White Knight' by Todd Rundgren 2017)
03 The Healer (from 'Borrego' by Marco Minnemann 2017)
04 When Did Men Rock (from 'Smalls Change (Meditations Upon Ageing)' by Derek Smalls 2018)
05 Power Drunk Majesty (Part II) (from 'Volume II: Power Drunk Majesty' by 
                                                                                                              Metal Allegiance 2018)
06 Rock You (from 'American Rock 'n' Roll' by Don Felder 2019)
07 Tears From A Glass Eye (from 'Old Lions Still Roar' by Phil Campbell 2019)
08 Get Out! Now! (from 'Transitus' bu Ayreon' 2020)

Sunday, December 27, 2020

Steve Hackett - ...and on guitar (2020)

Stephen Richard Hackett was born on 12 February 1950 in Pimlico, London, just one day before his future Genesis band-mate Peter Gabriel. He grew up having access to various musical instruments, such as the harmonica and recorder, but he didn't develop an interest in the guitar until the age of 12 when he started playing single notes. By 14, he was learning chords and experimenting with chord progressions, although he never received any formal training. His first professional playing experience came as a member of Canterbury Glass, where he played on 'Prologue' on their album 'Sacred Scenes And Characters', which was recorded in 1968 but didn't receive a release until 2007. He also played with Heel Pier and Sarabande, and all three bands performed rock with progressive elements. He joined Quiet World in 1970, which featured his brother John on flute, and he used his time with the group to gain experience in a recording studio, playing on their only studio album 'The Road'. In December 1970 Hackett placed an advertisement in Melody Maker in his search for a new band, and he received a response from the lead singer of Genesis, Peter Gabriel, as the band had just lost founding guitarist Anthony Phillips and so were seeking a new, permanent replacement. Hackett got the job, and played his first gig with them on 24 January 1971, and it wasn't long before the band were recording their new album 'Nursery Cryme', which was Hackett's first taste of recording with Genesis. He helped shape the group's sound by strongly encouraging them to incorporate a Mellotron into the songs, and his guitar work is prominently featured through solos on 'The Musical Box', 'The Return Of The Giant Hogweed', and 'The Fountain Of Salmacis'. For the next four years Hackett was an integral part of Genesis, but by 1975 he wanted to show what he could do on his own, and recorded his first solo album 'Voyage Of The Acolyte', before resuming work with Genesis and recording his final albums with them, 1976's 'A Trick Of The Tail' and 'Wind And Wuthering'. He had grown increasingly constricted by his lack of freedom and level of input and was insistent that more of his material be included on the albums, but was rebuffed, and so he left the group. His solo career proper commenced with 1978's 'Please Don't Touch!', and he's released over two dozen albums since then. With such a workload, as well as being part of bands Box Of Frogs and GTR, his guest appearances on other artist's records have been quite sparse, perhaps one every couple of years, but when they happened they gave the track that extra bit of magic, and so it's certainly worth seeking them out and collecting the best of them for this double disc set.



Track listing

Disc One
01 Prologue (from 'Sacred Scenes And Characters' by Canterbury Glass 1968)
02 Knights (Reprise) (from 'Two Sides Of Peter Banks' by Peter Banks 1973)
03 The Wind In The Willows (from 'Wind In The Willows' by Eddie Hardin & Zak Starkey 1985)
04 Voo De Coracao (from 'Voo De Coracao' by Ritchie 1983)
05 A Life In Movies (from 'Guitar Speak III' 1991) 
06 Face In The Mirror (from 'Gallery Of Dreams' by Gandalf 1993)
07 All Grown Up (from 'Arkangel' by John Wetton 1998)
08 Singing Deep Mountain (from 'Emergent' by Gordian Knot 2002)
09 Remainder The Black Dog (from 'Grace For Drowning' by Steven Wilson 2011)

Disc Two
01 12 (from '?' by Neal Morse 2006)  
02 Living From The Inside Out (from 'Sitting On The Top Of Time' by Jim McCarty 2009)
03 Moon Song (from 'Dirty & Beautiful Vol. 1' by Gary Husband 2010)   
04 The Parting (from 'The Theory Of Everything' by Ayreon 2013)
05 Old Man Of The Sea (from 'The Ghosts Of Propyat' by Steve Rothery 2014)
06 Man And The Machine (from 'Citizen' by Billy Sherwood 2015) 
07 Covid Nights (from 'Isolation' by The Backstage 2020)
08 What Have You Done (from 'The Bride Said No' by Nad Sylvan 2017)  

Thanks to Stenn for helping put this one together.