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Vai, Steve
Flexable (1984)
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 Rank: 4 guitars out of 5 Really enjoyed it |
| Reviewer: lach (96) |
I love it! Flexable contains Vai in his most Raw form. It's fantastic. It's also a very good example of his song writing abilities and orchestration. Some of Vai's best material is on this CD. Virtually all of Flexable was record on a Fender Strat! "Viv Woman" is one of my favourite Vai songs. This album also contains "The Attitude Song", which is a fabulous guitar song. The first song "Little Green Men", contains vocals recorded at half time, and then sped up to fit in time with the music. The result are these chipmunks vocals, very funny. The third song, "Lovers are Crazy" is a very Zappa inspired song, with Steve on vocals. The next one "Salamanders in the Sun", starts with a simple melody played on a Flute. Elevator music, big time. However, after the chorus and verse, the guitar takes over on the melody. Pure magic. The drums are done entirely on a Linn drum machine. Also, if you listen carefully to the 'chorus' section, there is a hi-hat going at 16th notes in the background. I've got a live version of this song, and the drums are psycho, really heavy. It changes the whole song. "The Boy/Girl Song". Recently Aphex Twin did a song named exactly this. I haven't heard it, did they steal any melodies off it? It's a very simple vocal-orientated love song. "Corny but cute" "The Attitude song". Wow... you just have to hear this song. Actually, most of you probably already have, its on the G3 video. This is the song that introduced me to Vai. After hearing it on the G3 video, I bought Flexable and couldn't believe the original version of the song. It's so tight and fresh. An excellent guitar song. I've also got a version of this that Vai recorded first, when he used a drum machine and did a one-take improvisation on the bass. Then he decorated it with guitars. It's very cool. Vai on "Call it Sleep": "This piece was written when I was in school. It was on the original demo audition tape I sent to Frank Zappa. It was re-recorded at Stucco Blue and now appears on Flexable. The sentiment of this song was inspired by a few friends who, in adolescence, met an unfortunate demise. There's something sad, powerful, mournful and beautiful that touches our hearts in such circumstances. I sought to capture those emotions with 'Call it Sleep.'" "The basic Carvin (guitar) and the '77 "Sticker" Strat were used. There was an extra feed taken from the guitar that went into the console direct. A small amount of the direct signal is blended in with the distorted signal in the raging section (approximately 12 percent). A larger amount of clean signal is used on the cleaner melody section (about 50 percent). During the mix for this piece, the D.I. guitar was sent back out to a Carvin amp that was cranked up and mic'd for the raging solo section. This was then blended into the distorted sound (about 15 percent). Very little echo was used; no delays. A stereo chorusing FX was used in the mix to slightly widen the melody tone." Flexible vinyl middle circle thingo You can hear Satriani's famous 'lizard down the neck' technique in this song. "Junkie". Have you heard "Rescue Me Or Bury Me" from Sex and Religion? Well this is kind of the original version of it. The song it totally different, but it follows the same format. Guitar and vocals at start for about 2 minutes, and then a long solo section that doesn't have any time signature. Chad Wackerman played the drums on it (from Zappa). The solo section contains a good introduction to Vai's very fast technique. Next stop Earth: Part of a huge space opera he was writing called "Alien Love Story". Funny, considering his later album named alien love secrets. This song is a bizarre random melody in a cacophany of harmonization and technique. It's great! See that pic on the right? Well it's the label off my original Vinyl record. The 'food for thought' label was the one used in Europe for the second run of Flexable records. Cool huh? My ranking: 4 - Really enjoyed it |
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Concert Review (1985)
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| Reviewer: lach (96) |
Vai then decided to put together a band that would play the music off Flexable. I have a tape of one of these gigs recorded sometime 1985. Called "Steve Vai & The Classified", the members were Stu Hamm on bass, Tommy Mars on keyboards, Sue Mathis on vocals and lyre, and Chris Frazier on drums. Here the set list and some details on each song from this gig: a) Viv Woman - Pretty good, similar to Flex, really! b) Big Summer I love you - sung by Vai, never heard this song before c) Salamanders in the sun - Guitar tapping solo in E d) Answers - Very slow, Vai forgets the change to G, and has words! "Yes you see, everything you do to me, oh, you need answers, can't you see the way- " e) The Riddle f) Call it sleep - Notes from Flexable: "Written in High School, this song is dedicated to the beautiful memory of Lory Goode and Mary Savage, and to all those who mourn loved ones who met with unfortunate demise.") g) I'm angry Crazy - sung by Vai, never heard it before) h) Instrumental Untitled song - similar to Viv Woman i) Untitled song (sung by Vai + Sue) - About the only lyric I can understand in this song is "You will survive your death, We should listen to the voices of our conscious", but contains a cool 3 part melody section. Also a slap bass intro + solo by Stu, with heaps of chorus! j) Junkie! - Goes straight into the solo section, very familiar to the Flexable version k) Blues song in E - "We have a special guest tonight, were really happy to bring him out man. I'm sure those of you who are familiar with Frank Zappa are familiar with Danny Wally. The greatest slide blues player of our current musical situation. We all tuned up?" l) Money hungry scanvenger refugees - "We've got time for one more, this song is called ''Money hungry scavenger refugees". How many people out here are in a band? Well I think you'll know what I'm talking about when you find you have to deal with certain situations, and you find you run in to certain types of people who might be basically as honest as you are." m) The Attitude Song "This song now... is off the little solo album i recorded. You can get the record right over here in the lobby if you like" n) Finale! - Imagine a big brass band finale, play it with a band and this is it! |
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Passion And Warfare (1990)
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 Rank: 5 guitars out of 5 Masterpiece! |
| Reviewer: lach (96) |
This is Vai's classic album. Engineered and produced entirely by Vai, it includes his most well-known song, "For the love of God". Continuing on from where "Flexable" left off, there's a great combination of different tunes on this album, but it all holds together perfectly. Each track runs logically into the next, making the entire album a one-stop listening feast. There's your straight ahead rocker, a couple of heavy powerchord based numbers, a few ballads, and a few completely "let's just out-weird the competition" tracks. Vai still plays a lot of this material live, which is quite a feat considering the amount of overdubs, effects and other sounds there are present here.There are the obligatory strange sounds on this album, especially on "Love Secrets", where he did an audible depiction of one of his dreams. The strange thing about this number is that most of the time you can't tell what anything is! There are sped up guitars, slowed down samples, wierd instruments, sonically manipulating harmonics, and a whole bunch of psycho-weirdo-hippy effects. But turn it up, and it's overwhelming. The longest track on this CD "The Riddle", is probably my favourite track on this album. It's all based around a simple, repetitive bass line, repeated throughout the entire piece. The whole song goes through a series of different key changes and mode changes, that works towards the final climaxic ending. This song is a perfect example of hearing what Vai is all about. By the way, if you want to hear how the lead guitar is normally mixed, check out 0:24.5 for his reverb and delay. The delay is one beat behind, reasonably quiet, but with alot of reverb on it. Another strange but beautiful bit of guitaring on this album is a piece named "Ballerina 12/24". Ignoring the cryptic title, I found out somewhere that a harmonizer is used to do numerous tricky things. First he setup one delay to play a 4th higher, and then another delay to play a 5th higher. Or something like that. So you are actually hearing three times the amount of what he is playing. But it sounds quite strange and nice. Vai performed this track live on Letterman, showing that it can be done! Anyway, it's a killer album. Vai's pick of the bunch. My ranking: 5 - Masterpiece! |
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