This year the blockbuster movie Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer came out to theaters all over the world, introducing to most of the people the Silver Surfer that is exiled from his planet and comes to earth, adding another 'super' hero that lives among us humans. Maybe this Silver Surfer that appears on the cover of Surfing With The Alien is Joe Satriani himself, exiled from his home planet of guitar melodic fantasy coming to Earth to give us a little bit of his magic.
That is the way of the human mind to explain what is not easily understandable; the ability of Joe Satriani to create rock instrumental music easy for everyone to listen is beyond this world. It is the 20th anniversary of Surfing With The Alien release and the best way to celebrate that is this remastered deluxe edition with a bonus DVD.
As Joe himself explains in the booklet of this edition, himself and John Cuniberti wanted to make a unique sounding instrumental record. And they did! In about 8 months' time Joe Satriani's inspirations, along with the help of these fantastic four musicians and music technology experts, finally came to life. Bongo Bob Smith on drum programming, sound design and percussion , Jeff Campitelli on drums and percussion, John Cuniberti on percussion and Jeff Kreeger on pre-production programming and sound design, all together created a 37-minute masterpiece (with no vocals or words) that says everything with sound and guitar notes.
The self-titled Surfing With The Alien is the opening song with the alien surfer arriving to your stereo passing by from the left to the right speaker and then grabbing the whah-whah distorted guitar. The melody is still grooving, balancing on the wave, and we are flying along from the planet Zenn-La to Earth and back.
Ice #9 is a material that can freeze everything in seconds, the bluesy rhythm and the cold clean guitar in the back makes you wonder what would happen if this material was true and not the imagination of the writer Kurt Vonnegut.
Crushing Day describes the stress of everyday life, with the melody again playing the main role that sticks to your head and transfers the feeling that Joe wants to give.
Always With Me, Always With You is a love song, a very special song for Joe. You can feel both sides of love with the major scale first giving you a beautiful feeling, and with the minor chord change in the middle showing that love can be trouble sometimes. So what, the songs ends with a wind of hope. Satriani is giving his best here choosing his notes and dynamics very carefully.
Satch Boogie; a song that sounds like swing on speed. With drummer Jeff Campitelli grooving very nice, adjusting the power and speed nicely. That gives Joe the freedom to improvise and unfold his extreme talent.
Hill Of The Skull is what could be the soundtrack of Christ's crucifixion, a giant bass line with a melody in agony transports us to the place and time Joe Satriani chose.
The intro sounds remind me AEROSMITH's Janie's Got A Gun but is the Circles with the multi-chord changes of Joe's clean guitar you can feel calm and secure. Suddenly the double kick drum comes in and you wake up. Satriani takes his time with this solo building it phrase by phrase and then back again to the clean part.
Lords Of Karma was meant to be the album's main title, an eastern sounding chord and then another one. As Joe Satriani reveals in the booklet of the CD, these two chords troubled his mind for 19 years. A with an augmented 11th and A13sus4 are the chords responsible for these song. The sitar sound makes it more Indian and the music scales going up and down with extreme speed without being uncomfortable to the listener's ear.
Tapping technique is not easy but Satriani made it look even harder with Midnight by tapping half of the guitar string with his left hand and the other half with his right. As a result he gave us a Baroque style music journey just by touching his fret board.
With a 5/4 time signature and muted clean guitars on the back with Joe playing the bass here too, Echo is the last song of the album. Once again the guitar is flying up and down, left to right in the room and all you have to do is play the album from the beginning.
It is a common thing, 're-master' releases of well known albums; but everybody compresses the music so much that the result is unsatisfying. In the case of Surfing With The Alien John Cuniberti respected the frequency spectrum of all the instruments and gave us a clearer sound, with clarity and lucidity that captures the dynamics and feeling of Joe Satriani's playing style.
The bonus DVD includes a previously unreleased Joe Satriani concert at Montreux Jazz Festival on July 15 1988. The band was scheduled to go on stage at midnight, but when you have to deal with jazz musicians that improvise and jam for a long time it is easy to get out of you time plan. So Joe Satriani and his band mates got on stage in 4 AM. With a plane to catch at 8 AM and tired from the previous trip they where tired (again).
But Joe Satriani gave his best with a slight problem on his guitar sound and a strange alien-like outfit. It is a magic thing to watch a concert that took place under these odd circumstances 19 years ago, with Joe trying to introduce to the European audience some of his best melodies. Jonathan Mover (MARILLION, Steve Vai, GTR, Alice Cooper, BLUE MURDER, Aretha Franklin, Peter Frampton, Mike Oldfield, Joe Lynn Turner) is on drums and of course the legendary Stu Hamm (Steve Vai, Frank Gambale, MSG) on bass that with his outstanding solo elevates the crowd at 5 AM. The DVD also includes an interview from Nigel Tufnel (SPINAL TAP) and the Satch Boogie, Always With Me, Always With You videos. The package also includes a card which can make you win Satch's stuff by entering www.surfingwiththealien.com.
All of you old guitarists that already have Surfing With The Alien on LP and refuse for years to buy a god damn CD, now it's the time to do it. As for the ones that have never felt the magic of Joe Satriani, this is a moment...
I am jealous of you guys, I wish I could listen Surfing... for the first time again.