It was a summer full of concerts here in Athens, Greece, but the best was kept for last. Hard rock and heavy metal fans had their last chance to enjoy some really good music from FIREWIND and Joe Satriani. At about 8:00pm FIREWIND hit the stage and played heavy metal music of quality we aren't used of by Greek metal bands. With Mark Cross on the drums and Gus G. on guitar they seemed to handle very well the power metal style of playing, that is - for sure - not that easy. After playing songs from all their albums, Gus G. decided to pay a little tribute to the upcoming Joe Satriani performance by playing a piece of a well-known Greek tune from a bouzouki virtuoso player Manolis Chiotis, entitled (in Greek) as Perasmenes Mou Agapes. They covered that song in a way we never imagined it could be played; a difficult song, indeed.
30 minutes later everything was ready for Joe Satriani; his assistant tuned the guitars and handed over the Ibanez JS Chromeboy to Joe. It was time for some magic to begin. The first notes came out and everyone just stop talking. I think that the majority of the crowd should be guitar players, so it was the respect that made us stand still with the though of never touching a fuckin' guitar again...Joe seemed in very good mood even though it was the last concert on this European Summer tour; he enjoyed every note interacting well with the audience and gave a superb performance musically and on-stage.
The sound was very good with excellent Jeff Campitelli on drums (Joe's follower and partner over the years and literally his 'rhythm' in most of his albums) and Dave LaRue (DIXIE DREGS, STEVE MORSE BAND) on bass. The man has toured with G3 as Jon Petrucci's bass player and the next year with Joe on the Collosal tour. These are the kind of musicians someone like Joe Satriani can work with and focus on his part of the job; the melodies. You can say that Joe Satriani is the kind of the musician that can put melodies and melodic make-sense solos even on a Slayer song!
In an almost-2-hour setlist these fantastic musicians gave a taste of the wonderful music Joe Satriani composes, with outstanding guitar parts like War, Up In Flames, Flying In A Blue Dream, (Panagiotis, that was for you man!), The Mystical Potato Head Groove Thing, Redshift Riders, Just Like Lightin', The Extremist, Crystal Planet ,Cool #9 etc.
And, as Satch said during the concert, it is 20 years since Surfing With An Alien came out and made such a big impact on Rock instrumental music, so we heard a big part of this masterpiece with Surfing With An Alien, Circle, Always With Me, Always With You, Ice # 9 and Satch Boogie. He came out again with Crowd Chant, with all the people (that could still speak) participating warmly, and sung the infamous melody from Gabriel Faure's Pavane; a classic piece that, very cleverly, Joe puts in a song that for the people to sing. It was a breeze summer night near to the sea of Athens and Summer Song was the best way to wrap up the gig. Before leaving for good, he thanked all the people for coming and made this night wonderful.
Joe Satriani made us feel what is like to make love with a guitar, plus we all witnessed what a man can do if he 'has' music in his heart. Sometimes, during the concert, I wondered if he is really a man or an alien, with his K-Pax sunglasses and the constant smile on his face, as if he is trying to communicate with other worlds through music. Satriani took us with him to that journey high 'in a blue dream'.