In 1989, Joe Satriani had the world by the tail. He had gone
\nfrom a virtual nobody to becoming one of the most esteemed guitar
\ngods ever thanks to his album
\nSurfing With The Alien<\/i>. Wanna-be guitarists had their jaws
\nscraping the floor thanks to Satriani’s pyrotechnic playing. Both
\nhis use of hand-tapping the strings and his using the guitar as a
\n“lead vocalist” helped to create a unique voice for his songs, so
\nthat you knew when you were listening to Satch.<\/p>\n
With all of this land conquered, why would he want to branch out
\ninto singing? That was the question on a lot of our minds in 1989,
\nwhen the follow-up release
\nFlying In A Blue Dream<\/i> came out. (In between, Satriani also
\nreleased an EP,
\nDreaming #11<\/i>.) To people like me, adding vocals to the music
\nwas sacrilege – I mean, why would anyone want to top
\nperfection?<\/p>\n
It took me a long time to be able to appreciate this album – in
\nall seriousness, it was probably a good five years since I last
\nlistened to my copy of the tape. Had it not been for the thrill of
\nseeing Satriani perform live, I probably wouldn’t have been willing
\nto give this tape another try – but something about his live show
\nclicked with me.<\/p>\n
It’s obvious that Satriani was going to have a difficult time
\ntrying to top
\nSurfing With The Alien<\/i> – and, in retrospect, maybe the
\nreason he turned to vocals was his way of distancing himself from
\nhis previous output. What is also obvious is that Satriani’s talent
\non the six-string (as well as bass, keyboards, banjo, harmonica…
\ngood grief, is there anything this guy can’t do?) hadn’t diminished
\nat all. Tracks like “One Big Rush” (which was featured in the movie<\/p>\n
Say Anything<\/i>), “Day At The Beach” and the title track all
\nproved without a doubt that Satriani could well be the best living
\nguitarist today.<\/p>\n
At times, it seems like Satriani dips into the cosmic weirdness
\nof one of his pupils, Steve Vai. Tracks like “The Mystical Potato
\nHead Groove Thing” sound more eclectic than they really are (in
\nfact, it’s another solid rocker from Satriani), while “Strange” is
\na little off the beaten path for Satriani, delving a bit more into
\npsychedelic funk than we’re used to hearing from Satriani.<\/p>\n
Now that I’ve made a big deal out of Satriani tackling some lead
\nvocals, something should be said about them. And, fact is…
\nSatriani’s pipes may not be the greatest, but they’re not bad. On
\ntracks like “I Believe” and “Big Bad Moon,” Satriani handles the
\nchores rather well. Also impressive is the distorted vocal on “The
\nPhone Call,” which is a raucous, enjoyable tune.<\/p>\n
But there are times where I wished that Satriani had let his
\nguitar do the singing. “Strange” is a tune that just isn’t cut out
\nfor Satriani’s style of singing, and ended up getting on my nerves
\non occasion. “Ride” is the one song where I would have preferred to
\nlet my mind decide where Satriani wanted to go with the song; in
\nthis case, the vocals take away from the song.<\/p>\n
However, Satriani only sings on six of the album’s 18 songs (16
\nif you combine “The Forgotten” and “The Bells Of Lal”‘s two parts),
\nso it’s not like Satriani totally abandoned the idea of letting his
\naxe sing out. While
\nFlying In A Blue Dream<\/i> definitely is not on the same level
\nas
\nSurfing With The Alien<\/i>, in some ways, it’s not meant to be.
\nRather, Satriani challenges the listener to attack it on its own
\nground, judging its merit on what you hear, not what you remember
\nfrom the past. On that playing field, it turns out to be a pretty
\ndecent album.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27490,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5762],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-38864","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-joe-satriani","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=38864"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=38864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}