We went to the Steve Morse and Joe Satriani show last night. Great show though I realized why Satch has always left me a bit cold and it all comes down to dynamics.
Steve is still the man. Watching him, from a technical stand point, is always a joy. He is always adjusting volume and tone while playing which is quite hard. He switches pickup during solos, from bridge for lower end stuff to neck for the upper registers. He rolls in and out delay throughout the songs, And he plays like a madman.
Joe is also a madman but his set left me a bit ear fatigued. There was very little dynamic control. Everything was balls out. I can understand that but after a bit the music morphs into a wall of sound. After a little while it all started sounding the same. On top of that, the constant use of delay was, to me, a little annoying. I use effects very sparingly, in fact I own two. A compressor and a wah. I use a bit of delay when recording every once in a while though I prefer to just double or triple parts instead of adding in effects.
The cool thing was Mike Keneally. There was this old guy, dressed in kinda grubby clothes, a button up shirt who didn’t look like he belonged with the band. He played keyboards and guitar with Joe. And he was smokin’. He’d pick up the guitar and match Joe lick fior lick. I thought I recognized him but couldn’t place him. When Joe introduced him, I was like “Holy shit! He played with Zappa!”.
Mike kicked ass. In fact he sorta made Joe look a bit outclassed. It seemed like Mike wasn’t working all that hard to keep up with Joe. But he did play with Zappa so he probably wasn’t working that hard.
I agree, that’s a terrific review of the show you saw.
My take on the players:
Joe Satriani is a terrific technician with a good ear for melody, but he lacks a soul.
Steve Morse is a consummate player with a particular flair for country-flavored music who obviously should be best friends with Robert Fripp. Plus, he’s a terrifically nice guy (I used to do shows with him and the Dixie Dregs a few times a year, back in the early '90s).
Mike Keneally is the closest the world will ever get to having Frank Zappa still be around. He didn’t play with Frank for very long, but it’s pretty obvious that his style of playing as well his compositional tendencies are directly descended from Frank.
I’ve never seen The Dixie Dregs, but I’ve seen Steve Morse play with Deep Purple a few times. Very Damn Good.
Joe Satriani is, of course, technically adept, but the above comment about lacking soul sums him up well for my tastes.
The only time I’ve seen Satriani is back in the Surfing With the Alien days when he opened for Stevie Ray Vaughn.
Steve Morse is my favorite player. If they are able to get together again do yourself a favor and go see Flying Colors. They are putting out a live DVD soon.
I agree with your assessment of the players, too, and I’m a little surprised to see them touring together. Morse is pretty much an exquisitely prepared listening treat, every time. Satriani is a mountain of candy bars by comparison. I’ve never been too crazy about his students (e.g. Vai, Hammett), either. They seem to all play very well, but just have never caught me.
I opened for Joe back in 87 or 88. Didn’t get to meet him as we were the first opener. That show was quite good. Joe was more nuanced. And Stu Hamm kicked ass.
I’ve met Steve a couple times and he is the nicest guy. The first time was a clinic back in the 80s. I bumped into him before it started. Literally. I walked a right into him. He was warming up and blazing through scales and talking to me. I can play but I can’t play and talk at the same time, much less tell coherent jokes. He has always been friendly which is always nice as a lot of talented people become assholes.
Steve and Joe have done G3 a couple of times. I saw Joe, Steve and Paul Gilbert on one of the tours. Hopefully Steve will do a headlining tour soon. His set wasn’t as long as I’d like and he has a ton of material.
The more I think about last nights show, the more I hate delay. Or, more precisely, the over use of delay. Using delay tastefully is one thing but keeping it on throughout solos just turns me off. It becomes a crutch. Soloing fast and clean is hard but throw in a little delay it covers the mistakes.
Forgot to add, Loach, Steve is my favorite player as well. The man has the perfect sense of when to blaze and when to pull back. His skills are scary but there are a bunch of scary players though not many with the breadth Morse has. What sets him apart for me is his compositional skills. He always seems to get the feel/technical balance right and know that a sometimes less is more. When you have chops like he does, that is impressive.
On a side note, the new Fates Warning is coming out soon. Yay.
I remember listening to his double album “Time Machine”. The second disc was of live recordings. The problem was that he played almost every song note-for-note as they were on the original studio recordings. That kind of defeats the purpose of a live album to me.
The exception was “Echo” from “Surfing With The Alien” which he basically turned inside out and went absolutely berserk on. Awesome track, but sadly he doesn’t improvise* like that on a regular basis.
*It probably wasn’t improvisation, just another composition.
