I talk about Joe Satriani a lot in this blog. Some of you may ask, how does he inspire me? Well for one, this guy makes me want to play better. Everyone sees him as a virtuoso and shredder type of player, he is, but he is way more than that. The guy is also a songwriter when he plays guitar.

No matter what Satch does in his career, “Surfing With the Alien” will always be the best thing he has done. That album means so much to me for a lot of reasons and that album helped me get motivated to play guitar in the beginning. Nothing will top “Surfing With the Alien”. It’s such an incredible album, I’ll never get tired of listening to it. I’ve always believed that if you’re a guitar player and if you haven’t heard that album yet, you’re not a true guitar player. Every guitar player should have listened to that album at some point.

I do buy Satch’s other albums and I buy his stuff with Chickenfoot, but like I said before, nothing will top, “Alien”. Satch’s other solo albums are pretty good, but he too has been staying away from the hard rock/shred instrumental that he’s known for. He’s been making a lot of electronica music lately. I haven’t been buying his newer albums lately though. His change of direction doesn’t interest me. I want him to go back to the Satch that we knew him before.

Honestly though, I don’t think he’ll ever make a good album as good as “Alien”, ever again though, even if “Crystal Planet” came pretty close to it.

Satch is great. He makes everyone want to play guitar. I had the opportunity to see him in concert one year and I’ll never forget that show. It was a blast seeing him. That “Alien” album is part of what made me want to become a musician and hopefully someday play like him.

Kev