How did I get into Joe Satriani’s music? Well, let me tell ya a little story. Back when I first started playing guitar 20 years ago, there was a guy who used to own this little bookstore in my hometown of Greenwich. Well, the bookstore owner happened to be an expert guitar player and I hired him to start teaching me how to play guitar to help get me started ’cause I didn’t know where to get lessons. This guy wasn’t much of a teacher either and he was willing to teach me beginner stuff. Well, the guy’s bookstore had a small CD section where he was selling CD’s. I was browsing the CD section of his little store and one day he came up to me grabbed a CD and handed it to me. It had a cool cover on it with a photo of the Silver Surfer on the cover and the album was Joe Satriani’s “Surfing with The Alien”. My guitar teacher says, “You should check this out. Every guitar player should listen to this kind of music when you start”. So I said sure and bought the album as he reccomended. Well, that album “Surfing With the Album” is when it all started for me. That album is such a masterpiece, I’ve been a fan of Joe Satriani ever since.

Over the years, I would try to catch up with Joe’s music but I only bought like 4 or 5 of his albums on CD. Then when Itunes and Apple Music came around, I started to listen to the rest of his albums. Just finished listening to the rest of his discography today. This morning I listened to three Satch albums: “Black Swans and Wormhole Wizards”, “Super Colossal” and “Time Machine”.

All of Joe’s albums are really really good; however, three of his best albums in his career are “Surfing with the Alien”, “The Extremist” and “Strange Beautiful Music”. Nothing will ever top “Surfing” although “The Extremist” came pretty close.

Joe has a new album coming out next Friday called, “Shockwave Supernova” and looking forward to checking that out as well. I’ve been a long time Joe Satriani fan and still am today. I like how he makes his albums sound different. He’s always going different directions. He’s not just shred music, he makes his music sounds like actual songs… his lead guitar playing is the one doing the singing. His lead guitar is the lead singer. That’s why I love listening to him. Joe Satch is a genius and a hero of mine. Got the opportunity to see him live in concert once when he opened for Deep Purple. Plus, Joe seems like a super nice guy and there’s no ego in him at all.

Kev