G3 in Gothenburg, June 15th 2004

Woke up at 12:00 something, showered, ate breakfast and then me and my brother took the bus into Gothenburg (14:30). There we met up with my cousin and his sisters boyfriend (weird? ). We went to a guitarstore and drooled at some guitars.. yum. The clock started to close in to 18:00 so we went and ate some burgers (yum again). We got to Lisebergshallen around 18:10 and they opened up at 18:15. I struck luck again! ^^
When we got in I realized how small the place where, but also how many people you could get in there. In other words, a place that is fucking hot, waaay to hot. The band Hammerfall shot a DVD in this little concert-hall, which can carry around 1000 people I think. But it didn’t matter that it’s small, it was nice, you got so close to Satch and Vai I stood a few cm from the fence and Satch decided to stand in my exact frontal direction. It was wicked! Anyways, I’ve met up with 2 friends of mine in front-row. Never knew they where going to the show but one of them caught a Satch pick! Lucky bastard!

Taken from Robert Fripps diary

The show started around 19:00 I think with Robert Fripp comming out on the back of the stage, sitting down in a place where not many people could see him and the lights where very dimmed so you couldn’t see his facial expression. No one know it was him when he got up on stage, me and my friends thought he was the soundcheck guy and joked about him being Fripp, he got up there like 10min before he started playing. I read in another review that he did that to catch the atmosphere and base his performance on it, which sounds about right. Personally I think his performance was misplaced, because it was very slow kind of “before you go to bed” kind of music.. and it really wasn’t exciting.. It was intresting for a few minutes, but after that it really just seemed like he repeated the same thing over and over for 30 minutes. Which was his total playing time. People applauded when he got off the stage. A lot of the applauding was because he GOT OFF stage I’m afraid.. I don’t think Fripp was best suited for G3.

A few minutes pass, some soundtechs run around on stage.. then Steve Vai enters. A massive applause begins and he takes a bow and smiles. Then they bring out the gigantic 3 necked guitar and Steve begins with playing “I Know You’re Here” which is a long and variating tune. Dave grabbed the 3 necked guitar and helped out playing the song in the end. Great song! Other songs he and his band performed where “Juice”, “Bangok”, “I’m The Hell Outta Here” (I think that’s the one, it may not have been this song), “Whispering A Prayer” and “For The Love Of God”. A FANTASTIC performance! The band seemed like they had the time of their lives on stage, smiling almost all the time seeming almost extatic of joy, this ofcourse affected the audience and I can say I smiled as much as them. Steve ofcourse was so in his music as always that his body went with it, a friend of mine called it “making love to the guitar”. It certenily looked like it!

Then after a 15min pause (thank god for that, I had to buy something to drink), Robert Fripp reappears on his stool, he started to play a small synthguitaric (just like before) intro. One guy next to me thought Fripp was gonna play again and said “for fucks sake” and left. Fripp only played a short intro thoe, so too bad for that guy. During the intro Satchs drummer comes up and sits down behind the drums.. then a base player and rhythm guitarist.. and then SATRIANI! He immidieatly kicked off with “Satch Boogie” and the crowd went wild He played a lot of new stuff that I don’t know the name of. But here’s the one I know the name of: “Cool #9″, “Up In Flames”, “Always With Me, Always With You”, “Is There Love In Space?” & “Flying In A Blue Dream”. An awesome performance with Fripp helping out on some of the songs, I couldn’t hear him that well. But I heard some spacey sounds now and then I think that was him, so there he fitted more in. After the first song I think, someone yelled out “Nice hat!” and Satch jokingly (I think :D) said he had made it on free time. Satrianis band didn’t seem to have as much fun on stage as Vai’s band, but that might be because they exclusively had rhytm and background stuff to play.

After awhile Satriani called out Steve Vai on stage for the famous “Jam”. They played “Ice #9″ (by Satriani), “The Murder” (by Vai), “Red” (by Fripp, when he was in King Crimson) and “Rockin’ In The Free World” (by Pearl Jam). During “Red” Satch managed to play off a string! But it didn’t matter he managed to play his solo without it and after it he quickly switched guitar. All in all it was a fantastic show, I think I made eyecontact with Satch atleast once and several times with Vai. Cool shit There where some songs that I would’ve liked to hear like “Surfing With The Alien” and “Attitude Song” but you can’t as a musician please everyone during live shows if you have so many great songs. It was very wellspent money to go to this show and if they come back next year I’ll see them again no doubt!

• Click here for some more pictures!
• More pictures at satriani.com
• More reviews at vai.com