Review - Joe Satriani- "Strange Beautiful Music" (Ben Bella Books)

 I can't play guitar, not a note and yet I love Joe Satriani's playing. Maybe it's down to the simple fact that I'm a hard rock kinda guy but there's more to it then that. His music just sounds so damn good. Anyone who isn't touched by Always With Me, Always With You or Flying In A Blue Dream has a wooden heart. When The Extremist came out I thought it was one of the best albums I had ever heard and yet sounded nothing like most of the stuff in my collection. Like where's the singer to glue it all together and yet I still got it.

There was a little resistance on my part to dive into this. Simple reason really, I thought here's where he will get too technical on me. Maybe part of me thought this would be 250 odd pages of sheet music. I'm glad to report it isn't for the most part. What Joe and collaborator Jake Brown have done is produce a book that will appeal to all fans. There are great contributions throughout the book from past musicians and producers that have worked on his albums. Funnily enough it is often these guys that get into the technical stuff.

   So what I really learned from the book is the lengths Joe has gone to try different things in what most people would call a small niche market. He has recorded albums with various musicians from all genres of music, done albums quickly, took time with others, rented studio time and discarded most of it, done a mostly techno album in a producer's living room and so on. He really has tried to push the envelope for instrumental guitar music and succeeded probably beyond even his wildest expectations. What I'm never going to understand are his explanations for how and why a song sounds the way it is especially when it comes to instrumental stuff. He says that in the song Borg Sex he wanted one of the guitars to sound like a female Borg and others like a male Borg. I was like.....huh? One of these stories you had to be inside his head to get it.

   The live stuff for the most part is ignored except for the first G3 tour. I would loved to have heard more about the shows he did with Deep Purple. Also included are the 2 Chickenfoot albums which add a nice break from the solo stuff with contributions from all members. Plus a couple of chapters pre-Not Of This Earth and a nice forward from Brian May. Oh and for all you gear freaks there's a list of all the equipment he used to record each album. Nice.

Richie.