For over 30 years shredmeister Steve Vai has been performing miracles on the guitar. On a tour to promote his newest album The Story Of Light, the Guitar God descended upon Sydney to give away a masterclass in six- and seven string wizardry.
When the skinny virtuoso took to the stage with a huge cowboy hat on, spectators in the back of the crowd could be mistaken for thinking “Gee, Ritchie Sambora sure lost some weight”, but as soon as he started playing it was unmistakably Vai.
Where most rock guitarists stick to their pentatonic blues scales, this übershredder gets his distinct sound by using a whole array of modes with ancient Greek names most of us have never heard of such as Mixolydian, Ionian, Dorian and Eolian. The use of these ever shifting scales also makes his high speed fretwork a mixture of ridiculously quick dexterity and advanced mathematics.
The set started out with some uptempo tracks from The Story Of Light. “Racing the World” and “Gravity Storm” held their own against the crowd-pleasers from 1990’s “Passion & Warfare”, still his most accessible and most acclaimed album to date.
The introduction of the band members led to a few corny one-liners, especially when introducing his guitarist (yes, Steve Vai has an extra guitarist on stage for even more guitar) including the introduction of Dave Weiner with Vai proclaiming, “I never go anywhere without my weiner”.
Then again, Vai is still the only musician who has worked with both David Lee Roth as well as David Coverdale, arguably the two biggest egos in rock, so a bit of bragging is to be expected. Throughout the gig the showman-façade wore off and Vai was revealed to be an amiable guy who just happens to be extremely eccentric and ridiculously good at the guitar.
During an acoustic set that featured the night’s only song with vocals in “Rescue Me Or Bury Me”, the show turned a bit lowbrow; tattooed-up-to-the-neck drummer Jeremy Colson showed up carrying a portable drum kit that was lovingly dubbed his strap-on.
This was funny at first but the joke soon got old after being repeated several times. A ventriloquist comedy skit with a talking skull on the front of Colson’s “strap-on” made quite the contrast with the serious musicianship that dominated the rest of the night. The drummer did have a point with his jokes about the audience consisting mainly of guitar teachers, and the only girls in the house being dragged along by their partners.
Right when the show slowed down Vai grabbed the audience again with the visual highlight of a mainly music-focused concert; the catchy tune “The Ultra-Zone” was performed in a spacesuit full of flashy lights that made the guitar god look like a creature straight out of a science fiction movie. This Darth Vai-der even had laserbeams shooting from his knuckles.
Vai also got interactive by dragging a boy and a girl out of the audience who were invited to compose a song on stage by dictating what the band should play by humming it. This was meant to display how easy it is to write a song, but a cynic could say that Vai’s idea of a song is simply giving every band member something to do.
The improvised song was followed by the power ballad “For The Love Of God”, a majestic reminder that this sonic sorcerer does know how to write great songs.
Since the guitar hero sounded inspired and clearly loved every minute of performing in Australia, it shouldn’t surprise anyone if Vai will be back again soon. With a bit of luck he might be promoting an even stronger follow-up to his current album.
