Joe Satriani - Forum Karlín 2015
Joe Satriani is becoming a relatively frequent visitor to Prague. This may have been the reason why his last concert was attended by less than 2000 people. The overall impression of this extremely gifted guitar virtuoso's performance was not helped by the change of venue, which was apparently due to lower ticket sales.
The start time was delayed by half an hour for organizational reasons. Joe had invited several openers for his tour, and Prague was quite lucky that Dan Patlansky and his two-piece rhythm section was the October opening act. Patlansky is a very skilled guitar player, as he demonstrated with, for example, an interesting and technically challenging solo played without the use of his right hand. He is visibly comfortable with his battered Fender Stratocaster and audience sympathy was evident. The problem was the uncertain intonation of the otherwise pleasantly raspy vocals at some points, but the brisk single "Backbite" from 2014's Dear Silence Thieves sounded convincing, for example.
After a half-hour intermission, Joe Satriani and his backing band took the stage. The show, unlike the previous ones (2009, 2011), was a bit more about the band and not just Satriani's solos. Mike Keneally, who was completely in the background four years ago, was not only a very good keyboard player this time around, astonishing with unison runs played with his left hand on the fretboard of his Gibson SG and his right hand on the keys of his Korg. Mike also got the opportunity to cut an attractive solo guitar duet with Satriani on the nearly quarter-hour version of "If I Could Fly" from the album "Is There Love In Space?" (Incidentally, this is a copyright issue that was the subject of a lawsuit between Coldplay and Satriani, where Joe, who demonstrably had been preparing the song for over a decade, accused Chris Martin of stealing the theme. Marco Minnemann made a great impression. The 45-year-old drummer, originally from Hanover, Germany, not only carefully kept the bottom end treading along with bassist Bryan Beller, but flashed a polished solo, which included playing the conch shell or cymbal stands. Overall, the concert didn't stray from the Satriani standard (not to be confused with the general standard!), either down or up. The tracks from the current album "Shockwave Supernova" (2015) were no exception, including the title track, the third track "Crazy Joey" and "Butterfly and Zebra". The audience reacted more to the tried and tested "Always with me, Always with you" from the album "Surfin' with the Alien" (1987) or "Flying in a Blue Dream" from the album of the same name (1989). So to promote his latest album, Joe mixed in a few of his own classic instrumentals and the result was a solid concert. We've become accustomed to the requisite dark glasses, the black - and by the end, a bit sweaty - shirt, the beautiful examples of Ibanez guitars, the JS series, the flawless playing of this nearly 60-year-old guitar wizard, but it doesn't change the fact that experiencing it "live" is always a breathtaking experience.