I'm a rocker at heart. I love rock and roll. Put another dime in the jukebox, baby. It's what I love listening to the most. I listen to all sorts of music, but rock and roll is what owns my heart. I always come back to it in the end, and most of the music I prefer comes from that particular genre. From modern rock to classic rock and everything in between, I love it.
The stuff I like the very most, probably, is from the late eighties and early nineties, when I came of age. That particular brand of rock is definitely my favorite. It speaks to me the most of all. I love the soaring guitars and the insane virtuoso solos they play. Some of my favorites are people like Eddie Van Halen, Kirk Hammett, Joe Satriani, and Steve Vai. So, imagine my excitement when two out of the four guys on that list were coming in concert together.
My daughter and I went out to the 713 Music Hall here in Houston to see the Satch/Vai Tour this weekend.
It was incredible. I don't know if I could say which of the two guys I like best. Joe Satriani has so many amazing songs that I love. I could probably whistle them note for note...except when I get to the most intense parts of the solos when the notes come way too fast and furious for whistling to replicate. He's had dozens of songs that I love. Then again, Steve Vai's Passion and Warfare is likely my most listened to album of all time. I could play that album on repeat for the rest of my life and never be allowed another thing, and still die happy.
Of the two, I think I preferred Joe's performance. I think he just picked better songs from his repertoire to play. They were the most familiar and made me the happiest to hear. Steve picked songs from a wider diversity of his albums, which is fine, but, as I said earlier, Passion and Warfare is my favorite, and I wanted to hear more songs from that. We only got one, and that made me a little sad.
I love going to shows at 713 Music Hall, because it's a pretty small venue. You can get pretty close and have a great view. For this show, they put out chairs. I guess us rockers are getting pretty long in the tooth and can't stand for an entire show like we used to or something. I did see several people attending the show that had to walk with the use of a cane, so it seems to make sense. If there had been no chairs and the crowd could have compressed a little, though, I could have been twice as close, which would have been even cooler.
Sadly, the first ten minutes of the show I had to stand and move to the far side of the aisle to be able to see anything, because all the people who had arrived late or had spent their first minutes in the venue getting booze came wandering in and then stood in the aisle in front of me unable to see where their seats were in the dark. That was frustrating. We'd chosen the aisle seats because we thought we'd have less people to block our view, but that turned out to be the exact opposite of true.
This time around, I chose to not bother in recording even one song with my phone. I learned in the past that there was no need for me to record any songs. Everybody else in the crowd was doing it too, and they would post their videos to YouTube for me. I could let them do that work, and just experience the concert with my own eyes instead. Usually the people posting videos had better seats with better views and better sound than my videos anyway. For example, here's a video from the show's finale when both Vai and Satriani were out playing together. It's in 4k-60p, so it's not crap, and it's from much closer than I was sitting. So, I'll probably just download their videos and save them as my memories of the show.
These songs at the end were pretty amazing, but also pretty excessive. It was fun and funny at the same time to see these guitar masters go so insanely crazy with their solos. Each of the last three songs lasted about ten minutes a piece, because they would basically stop the song and let the two virtuosos perform dueling solos for minutes on end.
We had a great time, and really enjoyed ourselves. This was the third time I've seen Joe Satriani, but he first time I've managed to see Steve Vai. So, there's another tick off of my bucket list. My daughter is becoming a seasoned pro at concerts as well. A few years ago, she was lamenting the fact that she'd never seen any concerts, and was so jealous when I would tell her stories of the things I'd seen live. Now, she doesn't feel that way at all. We've gone to various concerts together since the pandemic passed and people were allowed to assemble again, and I think she's feeling like she hasn't missed out on a thing...well, except when I tell her that I saw Ben Folds play with the Utah Symphony at the Deer Valley Amphitheater with Rish Outfield, then she whines a little. That's one she wishes she could have gone to. She says she listens to that Ben Folds album a lot. Of course, she was only six then, so I think she wouldn't have appreciated it as much as she might now.
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