In 1989, Joe Satriani had the world by the tail. He had gone
from a virtual nobody to becoming one of the most esteemed guitar
gods ever thanks to his album
Surfing With The Alien. Wanna-be guitarists had their jaws
scraping the floor thanks to Satriani’s pyrotechnic playing. Both
his use of hand-tapping the strings and his using the guitar as a
“lead vocalist” helped to create a unique voice for his songs, so
that you knew when you were listening to Satch.
With all of this land conquered, why would he want to branch out
into singing? That was the question on a lot of our minds in 1989,
when the follow-up release
Flying In A Blue Dream came out. (In between, Satriani also
released an EP,
Dreaming #11.) To people like me, adding vocals to the music
was sacrilege – I mean, why would anyone want to top
perfection?
It took me a long time to be able to appreciate this album – in
all seriousness, it was probably a good five years since I last
listened to my copy of the tape. Had it not been for the thrill of
seeing Satriani perform live, I probably wouldn’t have been willing
to give this tape another try – but something about his live show
clicked with me.
It’s obvious that Satriani was going to have a difficult time
trying to top
Surfing With The Alien – and, in retrospect, maybe the
reason he turned to vocals was his way of distancing himself from
his previous output. What is also obvious is that Satriani’s talent
on the six-string (as well as bass, keyboards, banjo, harmonica…
good grief, is there anything this guy can’t do?) hadn’t diminished
at all. Tracks like “One Big Rush” (which was featured in the movie
Say Anything), “Day At The Beach” and the title track all
proved without a doubt that Satriani could well be the best living
guitarist today.
At times, it seems like Satriani dips into the cosmic weirdness
of one of his pupils, Steve Vai. Tracks like “The Mystical Potato
Head Groove Thing” sound more eclectic than they really are (in
fact, it’s another solid rocker from Satriani), while “Strange” is
a little off the beaten path for Satriani, delving a bit more into
psychedelic funk than we’re used to hearing from Satriani.
Now that I’ve made a big deal out of Satriani tackling some lead
vocals, something should be said about them. And, fact is…
Satriani’s pipes may not be the greatest, but they’re not bad. On
tracks like “I Believe” and “Big Bad Moon,” Satriani handles the
chores rather well. Also impressive is the distorted vocal on “The
Phone Call,” which is a raucous, enjoyable tune.
But there are times where I wished that Satriani had let his
guitar do the singing. “Strange” is a tune that just isn’t cut out
for Satriani’s style of singing, and ended up getting on my nerves
on occasion. “Ride” is the one song where I would have preferred to
let my mind decide where Satriani wanted to go with the song; in
this case, the vocals take away from the song.
However, Satriani only sings on six of the album’s 18 songs (16
if you combine “The Forgotten” and “The Bells Of Lal”‘s two parts),
so it’s not like Satriani totally abandoned the idea of letting his
axe sing out. While
Flying In A Blue Dream definitely is not on the same level
as
Surfing With The Alien, in some ways, it’s not meant to be.
Rather, Satriani challenges the listener to attack it on its own
ground, judging its merit on what you hear, not what you remember
from the past. On that playing field, it turns out to be a pretty
decent album.
