Vai Mowed Down Ljubljana’s Show From Two Months Ago Right in the Middle of Zagreb (2005)
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Zagreb / Tvornica Kulture / Croatia
Concert date: 13.11.2005
Attendance: 1400
Ticket price: 230.00 HRK
Ever had that feeling where you come charging up to a gig, all hyped and euphoric, and then a security guy’s iron hand grabs you: “Hey you! Where do you think you’re going?!?!” “I’ve got a ticket.” “No more tickets, folks, if you’ve got a ticket, go on through!” Well, shit, my buddy and I look at each other. Now what? We hung around outside Tvornica, drooling at the endless crowd streaming through the doors, tickets in hand, of course. A few other unlucky souls were stuck outside with us. Eric Sardinas had stopped playing ages ago, and we were freezing out there, just hoping for a miracle. At 22:20 the door for the press-accreditation people opened. “Folks! We found a few more tickets!” Note the wording: “found.” They found tickets, as if a few tickets had been lying on the ground somewhere and someone just happened to stumble on them. These were surplus tickets, because not all the “press gods” who’d been invited with accreditations actually showed up. So check out this paradox. A journalist gets a ticket for free and doesn’t even come to the show. And the two of us, burning fanatics from Ljubljana, were left without tickets…
Anyway, we got lucky and bought the surplus tickets. We caught just the first song of S.Vai’s set. You couldn’t get into the hall anymore, it was packed solid. Hot as a furnace! So, going by what I saw in Ljubljana, I can say only one thing. The S.Vai show in Zagreb was a whole level higher. Both the sound and the performance. True, the band was filming a DVD, so everyone was trying their absolute hardest. But also, this show came almost two months after the Ljubljana one, and the chemistry between the band members had grown even stronger. The band had become even tighter, even more confident and more determined.
An alien, an iconoclast, a child of the fourth dimension, the guitar incarnation of a deity, well, why even lie. Steve Vai. The sound throughout the show was as precise as I can remember at any gig in a long time. Perfect balance. Steve front and center the whole time, in his trademark poses, defined and undefined, a man of a thousand faces, a superb stage performer. Relaxed to the point of unconsciousness, with an excellent sense of humor. A few moments were truly one of a kind and unforgettable. The shaman’s dance with a guitar! Vai announced that they were filming a DVD. The crowd in a trance. Tvornica was bursting at the seams, and during the show a few half-conscious people were led out under the arms for some fresh air. Toward the end of the show, Vai treated himself to an extraordinary trick, something you don’t see every day. He played the first two minutes of For The Love Of God lying on the hands of the audience, who carried him crisscross around the hall. Vai twisted and contorted quite a bit, so people could barely catch him before he crashed to the floor. Of course the fans couldn’t resist grabbing for the guitar and touching the strings and pickups of his one-of-a-kind Ibanez. Two roadies pulled Steve back onto the stage right at the moment the song turns into a musically much more complicated section. Vai played superbly on the audience’s hands, without a single mistake.
The whole band was a full notch more playful than in Ljubljana two months earlier. It’s incredible what a bigger stage does, and the Zagreb Tvornica has one compared to Ljubljana’s VPK. Besides Steve, the one really setting everything on fire was the out-of-this-world bassist of planet Earth, Billy Sheehan. Charismatic as only Billy can be, after his solo spot, which featured the main motif of his song The Suspense is Killing Me (from his new solo album “Cosmic Troubsadur”, 2005), he treated himself to playing Shy Boy, which is actually a legacy of Talas, the band he used to be in. That was a first-class spice for the show, since the song hadn’t been played at any other show on the tour before. On top of that, everyone in the audience who saw Vai in Ljubljana also got to hear Freak Show Excess live, which Vai and co. had left off the setlist in Ljubljana. The jamming was unbeatable. This time Steve told stories about Frank Zappa and made fun of Prince, while coaxing a high sinusoidal sound out of his guitar that recalled Prince’s “girly” vocals. Zappa, supposedly, once answered a journalist with a wooden leg who said in an interview, “Your long hair makes you look like a woman!” with: “Your wooden leg makes you look like a table!”
A night full of positive energy, with goosebumps crawling all over. Only now did I realize what I’d missed in Ljubljana. Even Steve’s vocals in the acoustic version of Rescue Me or Bury Me sounded much more serious. The only little problem, or small minus, was the drums in the acoustic set. Right in Rescue Me Or Bury Me and Sisters, Jeremy simply can’t do sophisticated. These songs call for a great deal of softness to hit you in the vein the way they’re meant to, and this just wasn’t that. So. It’s not all about force, speed and athleticism on the drums. Don’t get me wrong, Jeremy is top-notch! A top-notch wrecker, fast, with an extreme cannon of a hit. When you need to be shockingly fast and destructive, Jeremy is the man for the job.
The energy in the hall was exceptional. Besides the hot-footed musicians, the passionate crowd helped, constantly cheering the musicians on loudly and rewarding them with thunderous applause. In the end, Vai was literally left breathless by the loud chanting and was practically speechless for about three minutes, just staring at the crowd that was giving the energy back to him. You could see he was genuinely moved, and I don’t believe he played the whole thing on routine.
For all the other details, read the report on the Ljubljana show! So, in one word! Mind-blowing. Comments from Zagreb locals, like this one: “This guy is seriously sick!” really fit what we saw. In the best way. It was simply a three-and-a-half-hour concert of stunning, death-defying jamming, unpredictable onstage pranks, and musical moments you couldn’t dream up in your wildest dreams. That’s what a show by Steve Vai and his The Breed is all about. You don’t need to be a fan, you just need to want a total disconnect for one evening, and Steve Vai is the one to take you straight toward it! An event that can only be described in superlatives!
Setlist
1.) Audience-Intro
2.) Glorious
3.) Audience is Listening
4.) Band introduction
5.) Building The Church
6.) Crying Machine
7.) Km Pee Du Wee
8.) Dave Wiener Guitar solo
9.) Reaper
10.) Whispering A Prayer
11.) Freak Show Excess
12.) Tony MacAlpine Keyboard solo
Acoustic set:
13.) Melissa’s Garden
14.) Sisters
15.) Rescue Me Or Bury Me
16.) Boy Girl Song
17.) Call It Sleep
18.) Pusa Road
19.) Jeremy and Vai interaction
20.) Jeremy Colsson solo drums
21.) Midway Creatures
22.) Billy Sheehan bass solo incl. The Suspense’s Killing Me
23.) Shy Boy
24.) I’m Becoming
25.) Lotus Feet
26.) I’m The Hell Out Of Here
—encore—
27.) Liberty
28.) My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama (with E.Sardinas on-stage)
29.) For The Love Of God
30.) 25 Years On The Road Speech
