Joe Satriani - Guitar Killer

In 1987, Satriani's second album Surfing With the Alien produced popular radio hits, and was the first all-instrumental release to chart so highly in many years. Often regarded as one of the most important guitar albums of the 1980s, the release helped Satriani establish his reputation as a respected rock guitarist. The album contains fast and complex songs such as "Surfing with the Alien" and "Satch Boogie", plus the stranger-sounding "Crushing Day" and "Lords of Karma", in contrast to songs like "Always With Me, Always With You" and "Echo" that are very restrained, slow and melodic and make a change from the faster songs. Also notable is "Midnight", which utilises the odd technique of two-hand tapping at great speed for a sort of Latin-American effect. There are also Nashville tuned guitars (on "Echo") and key signature changes (on "Always With Me..." and "Echo") to vary the album. With so much technic and studio work on this album, the Media started to challenge Satch to reproduce his "repertoire" live. Most of them thought that he would fail. Satch went on tour the same year, bringing with him a terrific rythm section: Jonathan Mover on drums and the bass virtuoso Stu Hamm. Hamm's slapping, popping and two-handed tapping techniques enable him to play the bass line and some melodies at the same time. Listen to Stu work on Memories on this recording. The latter is a broadcast from a San Diego local radio. It was heavily tape-traded until 3 tracks of the show made his way onto the Dreaming # 11 EP. the papillion records release features the full show - as far as I can remember -. the begining is a bit schinted, there is no band intro as on the EP.

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