Location: Ljubljana / Hala Tivoli / Slovenia
Date: July 9, 2004
All black along Celovška, a metal holiday? Not quite, it’s just that their blackness always sticks out so furiously from the gray. But joking aside! It was 8:30 p.m. and we barely found a spot in the parking lot. Packed with hominids, including ones with Croatian and Italian passports. People were swarming in front of the hall like an anthill. That’s why the hall was swallowing them much more slowly than usual. And people kept streaming in from every direction toward the entrances. Wild. Merchandise? A poster signed by the G3 members for a measly eight grand. Pocket change, right?
9:15 p.m., Fripp on stage. Robert Fripp, a legend. A bar stool, a Gibson LP and his magic chest, which he himself describes as “guitar devices”. The crowd, of course, stomped loudly in excitement and delight. The floor was packed so densely that I couldn’t get any closer to Fripp than 10 meters. Naturally, most of the crammed-in masses were expecting guitar shredding. And for the first 10 minutes they listened attentively, thinking it was just a long intro. But that intro just kept dragging on and on, and after 15 minutes the first whistles rang out. “Wonderful and fantastic!” I thought. “Why didn’t these folks just wait outside the hall if they can’t stand Fripp’s music?!?!” But the folks kept fidgeting nervously and whistling, and a few of them demonstratively abandoned their spots in the front rows. Poor Fripp, for his part, didn’t let it bother him, even though that’s a seriously distracting factor for an artist (read his diary on Discoipline Global Mobile for what he thinks of audience reactions on the G3 tour). Fripp comes across as almost arrogant, since he didn’t even properly greet the audience on his way off, and during the set he seemed ice cold. And what did he offer? For those who know his music, a dream come true. There were obviously few of us, an endangered species, and the audience’s grumbling robbed us of the pleasure of his esoteric intergalactic sounds and the magical atmosphere he was creating. Soundscapes, as he calls the music he’s presenting on this G3 tour, are made up of many sounds. I wouldn’t bet my life on it, but I believe the Soundscapes are different every night and are the music of the artist’s momentary inspiration, which is why Fripp doesn’t repeat them in the same tonality even at two consecutive concerts. Fripp, of course, shrewdly makes use of delay effects and combines the sounds by layering them, palette upon palette, one on top of another, and not just ordinary sounds, either. That gets him a majestic, full orchestral sound. So that uniqueness, what we were listening to, only Robert Fripp can reproduce. Fripp the musical genius. Fripp offered contact with the beyond, took us past infinity, past the horizon of the visible. The music was transcendental, music of astral images. Music of exceptional beauty. There was extraordinary peace and serenity in it, music of inner harmony of body and spirit. Music without templates, without frames, music that knows no time and space, music that radiates eternity, immaculateness, a certain primal naivety, and at the same time exceptional tenderness, fragility, grace… in a word, the purest language of the soul.
To keep me from drifting off too far into the fields of the fourth dimension, the ungrateful crowd saw to it, whistling Fripp off and reminding me with their presence that the material world exists, where the culture of money rules and to which we are enslaved. Anyway, Fripp left the stage after half an hour, which the audience greeted with a roar, and just half a minute after Fripp shuffled off backstage, Steve Vai jumped onto the stage. Like his predecessor, Vai was also alone on stage and he, too, sat down on a stool for the first track, which scared everyone to the bone, since they thought Vai had caught Fripp’s syndrome. A guitar with a triple neck and the track I Know You Are Here, which Vai wrote for his upcoming new studio album. Next came Giant Balls Of Gold and Vai suddenly found himself in the company of the incredible guitarist Tony MacAlpine, whom many in the hall would rather have seen in G3’s company than Fripp, and one of the best bassists around right now, Billy Sheehan (?). Hm, Billy cheats on speed, since he’s plugged into two outputs, so when he hits one note it sounds like two, and people consequently roll their eyes at this “apparent” speed. When Steve Vai introduced him with “Who’s the best bass player in the world?!!?” everyone naturally yelled in unison: “Billy Sheehan!”, but lo and behold, from somewhere a saboteur’s voice crept up, screaming to the heavens: “Tony Levin!!!” Then they stepped on the gas with Answers from the legendary “Passion And Warfare” (1990), and Vai couldn’t help but sing a few too (The Reaper, “The Elusive Light And Sound, Vol. 1.”, 2001). Vai’s vocal is satisfactory, satisfactory for a guitarist in general, and fits tastefully with his compositions, and it was the same live. Given the slightly lukewarm atmosphere during that piece, Vai then skillfully hit the gas with Juice (“Alien Love Secrets”, 1995) and continued with the phenomenally calmer composition Whispering A Prayer (“Alive in An Ultra World”), where he created an extraordinary mood, opening it by first kissing his pinky and then touching the first note of the track. And there were plenty of these tricks and contortions of his body and guitar in all possible and impossible poses throughout the concert. Here Vai was especially immersed, playing the track in a trance, twisting, swirling, weaving with his fingers. It’s incredible what kind of playing Vai is capable of. And I can never “figure him out”. Is he infinitely rehearsed, or infinitely spontaneous? In my opinion, one takes the lead over the other depending on the situation, but both are taken to the extreme with Vai, so at his live performance all I can do is stare with my jaw hanging open down to the floor. The atmosphere kept building with Bangkok and Bullwhip from the fantastic “Fire Garden” (1996) and then one more track from “The Elusive Light And Sound, Vol. 1.”, called Get The Hell Out Of Here. Of course, Steve conjured up the peak at the end with the song For The Love Of God (“Passion And Warfare”), surely one of the most beautiful compositions he’s ever written, during which the crowd was visibly delighted. It was around 10 p.m. and Steve winked off the stage. A longer break followed. People caught their breath after the shocking opening experience with Robert Fripp. Vai is out there, since the “little italian virtuoso” used to hang out with Frank Zappa, and Adrian Belew, a permanent member of King Crimson since 1981, also played with Zappa back in the day. And now if we add that the boss of King Crimson is none other than Robert Fripp, the Hala Tivoli audience’s darling #1, we can conclude that Vai and Fripp would offer the scene an interesting joint record, if they decided to collaborate.
First, Robert Fripp showed up on stage for three minutes, scaring the audience to the bone again, which turned out a little later to be an innocent act, since Fripp only played the intro. A prelude to another star of the evening, Joe Satriani. Satriani opened the show with Hands In The Air and then continued with Satch Boogie. The crowd went wild. The audience was at its most rambunctious during Satriani’s set. Satriani is nicely well-behaved, schooled down to the finest detail, a doctor of every possible musical doctorate, and it was a real pleasure to watch him so neatly and correctly fulfilling every possible school rule. Your breath caught while he hung off the tremolo, with supersonic flashes of clean, extremely fast scale runs along the neck. Vai is, after all, Satriani’s upgrade. He brought spontaneity into the academic elements, along with a great deal of play, leaving plenty of room for expressing his own musical genius. Vai is still developing as an artist even today, his music grows and with it his unique language. So Vai knows how to pleasantly surprise with every new record. With Satriani, it’s hard to say he’s so out there that he ever slips the reins of rationality, that he ever sails off into his hidden world. He’s constantly on the ball, in his head. That’s why the measure of originality is also the smallest with him. Even his latest studio records have become as alike as two peas in a pod. But it’s an indisputable fact that Satriani threw the biggest party at the concert. Simply because the songs are built more simply, they have a head and a tail. They have well-crafted main motifs and are tastefully seasoned and noodled over with solos and sonic transitional ornaments. And so people could identify with them most easily. Likewise, the musicians surrounding Joe on stage offered simpler, more “linear” rock lines, in places even built on rhythm and blues. The drummer had deeper toms in his set, the drums crashed fuller, more alive, more real for this world and calmer than Vai’s predecessor, who with his wildness wanted to fly right into the audience. Satriani also played Cool #9, Gnaahh, I like The Rain, Up in Flames, Always With Me, Always With You (where the crowd helped sing the melody at the start of the solo), Searching, and when they got to the track Is There Love In Space, Crimso Frippoman joined Satriani on stage again until the end of the show. He unfurled a brilliant sonic curtain, which he used to cover the band on stage and create an atmospheric backdrop. The sound of Steve Vai and Satriani was fantastic. But watch out! You had to stand 10 meters or more from the stage, and even then in the middle, the ideal sound was once again at the mixing desk. People in the front rows got shortchanged again, and the bass was drowning out the sound picture all over again. I don’t know what it was like in the stands, but a buddy who stood at the start of the arena floor during Vai’s performance, where they were selling the T-shirts, was equally horrified by the sound. The hockey arena is a tricky beast, what can you do. Fripp couldn’t be heard at all during Satriani’s set, not even at the spot where I’d been bragging that the sound was excellent. But I moved just a little more to the left and immediately heard the magical “frippertronics” distinctly. A unique sound, really, and goosebumps were no exception. Satriani “played” the track War and, to finish, Flying In A Blue Dream. A madhouse. Compact, precise, tight, pure perfectionism. Satriani had the best sound of the holy trinity. Stylistically, too, he was the one who went over best “live”. Maybe he could give up constantly looking through sunglasses during the concert and so get closer to the people, but that’s a side wish and already too nitpicky.
The jam was really the “bis”, the encore. They kicked it off with Satriani’s repertoire, namely Ice Nine, and continued with the treat of the evening. It was Red by the wonderful King Crimson (“Red”, 1974). And of course in yet another newly improvised version. It opened (and closed) with the main motif of In The Court Of The Crimson King, which many metalheads in the hall recognized too, namely the ones who know the Saxon cover of that King Crimson track. Each member of G3 offered a solo (Vai and Satriani even a few huge ones), and I waited nervously for Fripp. Fripp used a sound in his solo spot that leaned slightly toward that “elephant” frippertronic in the King Crimson track Elephant Talk (“Discipline” 1981). Ahhh, what I wouldn’t give to swap the people on stage for the King Crimson lineup in that moment. I’m so thirsty for a King Crimson concert, the thought of the “official bootleg” Live At Berkeley from 1982 I’d just heard, which my brother had picked up only yesterday, totally got me hyped.
Well, my delirious wish wasn’t granted and The Murderer followed, a Steve Vai song, naturally a song from a completely different batch, a leap in mood to a new level, a song that fit tastefully into the jam’s set list. And finally a cover of Neil Young’s Rockin’ In The Free World, with Joe singing the vocals. His singing is awful, but in this track, considering how dreadful it is in his regular stuff, it came off as oddly fitting. Joe’s vocal suits this track because the song is rebellious, and Joe sounds like a 15-year-old adolescent in it. Rockin’ In A Free World was filled with a million solos and transitional ornaments, and even Robert Fripp wasn’t left out at one point. During the jam, Satriani’s band was on stage. Joe and Vai rode their own guitars the whole time, side by side, while Fripp with his miracle box quietly enjoyed the peace on the other side of the stage. If anyone doesn’t know Fripp and thinks soloing doesn’t come easy to him, let them try the supersonic “hammering” motif in the King Crimson track Frame By Frame.
Four hours!!! Madness! Truly unforgettable. This year is the year of nothing but guitarists. Pat Metheny, Paco De Lucia, then Satriani, Vai, Steve Morse (Deep Purple) and the legendary giant Fripp, and if I add one more fine fellow, Steve Howe of Yes in Munich this year, for me it’s a year of pure guitar bliss. Let’s hope the 5,000-head crowd gave the organizers the push to find some courage and soon conjure up dreams like the ones we got with the G3 show here at home. I think I’ve rambled on enough. Hey, after the concert we went to my place and, over coffee, beer, the new Fripp/Eno record and cookies, we philosophized until 3:30 a.m. We successfully pooled our fresh impressions and bleated together in one voice that we’re heading off together to see Jethro Tull in Graz on August 4, 2004.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Bojan Horvat
Setlists:
Robert Fripp:
1. “Soundscapes” (30min.)
Steve Vai:
1. I Know You Are Here
2. Ginat Balls Of Gold
3. Answers
4. Reaper
5. Juice
6. Whispering A Prayer
7. Bangkok
8. Bullwhip
9. Get The Hell Out Of Here
10. For The Love Of God
Joe Satriani:
1. Hands In The Air
2. Satch’s Boogie
3. Cool # 9
4. Gnaahh
5. I Like The Rain
6. Up In Flams
7. Always With Me, Always With You
8. Searching
9. Is There Love In Space
10. War
11. Flying In A Blue Dream
G3 Jamming:
1. Ice 9
2. Red (incl. In The Court Of The Crimson King)
3. The Murder
4. Rockin’ In The Free World
