Steve Vai – Nottingham

A week ago, I went to see Steve Vai play in Nottingham. I've seen Vai once before playing with Robert Fripp and Joe Satriani at G3. During that performance he said virtually nothing to the crowd, because he had a bad throat, but still had an amazing presence and was hugely entertaining. This time, Steve's throat was fine. Steve and Band turned in a fantastic performance, playing all the favorites, along with plenty of tracks from the new album. The band each got a solo (some of which were painfully dull, some of which were inspired), there was a brief acoustic set, and overall, the evening didn't disappoint. The highlight, for me, was after the (painfully dull) bass solo: with the stage in darkness, Steve reappeared with what appeared to be the mothership from Close Encounters atop his head, wearing some kind of "Freddy Kruger meets Jean Michelle Jarre" gloves with laser beams set into each of the fore-knuckles. As he played, the laser-beams danced hilariously around. The whole thing was completely over-the-top, and hilariously entertaining. I have no doubt that Steve knows exactly who "wanky" the whole thing is (in fact, during the finale, as he was doing various things to his guitar, using various parts of his anatomy, I'm sure he said "I'm sure a wanker" and smiled at the audience) but he has a very, very camp style (plenty of hip wiggling and winking) and obviously gets a kick out of putting on a good show. Far, far more entertaining than Satriani has been on past occasions, and highly recommended.