KILBURNFLYER
Have ignored this blog - if that's what you can call it - for a while.

I saw the phenomenon that is Steve Vai at Hammersmith Apollo (bollocks it will always be the Odeon) last night and like many in the audience was left open mouthed by his excellence. We all trudged out at the end of almost 3 hours in excited disbelief leaving the air thick with over used descriptions; awesome, genius. I even heard one older chap say "better than Hendrix" and when challenged scornfully by a younger fellow said "well I fucking saw Hendrix, did you". Like the chastised man I never saw Hendrix and the immediate aftermath of a gig is always a time for rash judgement. But is he up there? That is a very high place indeed and few every get mentioned in the same breath as Hendrix. Steve Vai is one of a few who should but to me the two are not truly comparable. Sure there are similarities, both are like great opera singers or classically trained virtuoso pianists - total masters of their instrument. They can get a guitar (albeit with 7 strings in Vai's case) to make sounds that lesser mortals can only aspire to. Technically both are brilliant but we never really got to see how good Hendrix would become. Steve Vai has also grown in stature in recent years and held a very knowledgeable audience spellbound with just the sheer quality of his music. He is clearly a man more at ease with his talent now than he was as a young man backing Frank Zappa or David Lee Roth when he was more like Hendrix - big on showmanship and high speed riffery to which he gleefully added ridiculous shaped and multi necked guitars. Steve Vai has grown up and expanded his repertoire - Hendrix died before he had the chance to do the same. Whether he is or is not as good or even better than Hendrix is irrelevant - I left, as did the rest of the audience, knowing we had seen a true master at work. In years to come I hope to be that man on the tube who says you a young upstart "well I fucking saw Steve Vai, did you"