Flex-able wasn't great. Vai was (is I suppose) technically brilliant but artistically was very immature when he recorded Flex. It was all about showing off how fast he could play a lot of notes, which it did very well but there weren't many of what you might call "tunes". Passion and Warfare was much better but still a bit out there.
Satriani, for me anyway, always seemed to find a catchy riff or melody and then work his twiddly bits round that. I'm a huge fan but even I would admit that later on things felt like they were repeating themselves. Flying in a Blue Dream and The Extremist are absolute masterpieces though.
I'd probably say Extremist is the more accessible album.
(and I say all this as someone who has never once managed to get a tune out of a guitar and didn't have the patience or talent to try very hard either)
Ah, ok Nellers that Satriani is much more preferable to Vai’s Flexable. Think I’ll still avoid Vai’s other solo stuff, though I really liked his playing with David Lee Roth & Billy Sheehan & I may well invest in some Satriani now.
I guess Flex-able was indicative of the speed merchants of the time like Tony Macalpine, Vinnie Moore, Dave Chastain, Yngwie Malmsteen. It was all apparently technically superb & if you knew what you were listening to fabulous. It just sounded like noise to me.
Sorry Stilldreaming, just realised I hadn’t replied to you. I forgot I wasn’t ignoring you. I guess people from Tamworth are most likely to have heard of Wolfsbane, I think 3 still live there and 1 escaped to the bright lights of Dudley 😀
I think this may be my latest, from the year before last iirc, The Dollyrots supported Jarret Reddick of Bowling For Soup fame on a small acoustic European tour, I saw them in a tiny room in the basement of place called Dynamo in Eindhoven. It reminded me a lot of being back in the students' Union.
They're a lovely sort of classic pop rock band with a cite rock'n'roll aesthetic that I really like (also a couple who've been together since high-school)
[should have said *cute* rock'n'roll aesthetic up there, by the way] There's a collaboration project between Jarret and Kelly from the dollyrots as well, though I've not got round to listening to it yet.
I'll definitely try and see them if they come back to Europe with the full band in the future, and would recommend anyone else who sees them nearby give them a go too.
I don’t think that tour t shirts were a thing when I regularly W ent to gigs in the 70’s. Latterly I’m too stingy to even consider buying one
When I saw Free in 72, I bought a blue satin scarf with black tassels. It had the name of the band and a picture of the band members. It was fairly unique for the time.
There’s a thread for Fetch t-shirts on tour, so I thought there might be a niche for tour t-shirts on Fetchies...if you’re really good you could get a fetch tour T-shirt on a Fetchie on tour. That’d be mind blowing! Doesn’t have to be a tour shirt, anything band related’ll do just fine.
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