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Where The Wild Things Are is a 2 DVD set recorded live and filmed in high definition at the State Theatre in Minneapolis, MN during Steve Vai s recent Sound
Theories Tour. Where The Wild Things Are features a world-class group of musicians, unlike any other band Steve has ever assembled.
-Two DVDs containing nearly 3 hours of Steve Vai in concert, along with cool bonus footage that includes exclusive interviews with Steve s band members and Steve s viral hit promotional video for the Jemini distortion pedal.
-The highly anticipated follow-up to his Visual Sound Theories and multi-platinum Live At The Astoria DVDs.
-Special digipack and accompanying 20 page booklet, featuring beautiful live photo spreads from the tour.
-DVD contains both 5.1 and stereo mixes, and a commentary track featuring Steve and some of his band members.
-13 Grammy nominations, including 3 wins.
With over 15 million career album and DVD sales around the world, Steve Vai will soon be adding to these figures with the||release of his new concert film, Where The Wild Things Are. Where The Wild Things Are is a 2 DVD set recorded live and filmed in high definition at the State Theatre in Minneapolis, MN during Steve Vai’s recent Sound Theories Tour. Where The Wild Things Are features a world-class group of musicians, unlike any other band Steve has ever assembled. A single disc CD featuring select tracks from the concert will also be released
Taken from a two-hour-and-40-minute sold-out show recorded at the State Theatre in Minneapolis, Where the Wild Things Are is yet another live showcase of meticulously mapped Steve Vai compositions. Much of the material is new, and tested out in front of an unfamiliar but eager audience, with Vai exercising his chops to the limits. It's a chance for him to bust out every trick in the book: blazing through ridiculously difficult scales, double hand-tapping extravaganzas (where he plays the guitar like a piano), and sick string bends and whammy bombs to the point where his custom Jem neck should be left, imaginably, in the same shape as the rubbery guitar on the cover of Flex-Able. The listening experience is more geared toward frequent guitar clinic attendees than someone seeking background music for a day drive. It's not easy listening. It's the kind of stuff that deserves full concentration, and while most will furrow their brows while focusing on the guitar pyrotechnics, the rest of the instrumentalists are tightly locked and highly ambitious in their own right. Touring for the first time as a collective, violinists/keyboardists Ann Marie Calhoun and Alex DePue join Vai, along with bassist Bryan Beller, drummer Jeremy Colson, and guitarist/sitarist Dave Weiner. The virtuosic tendencies run high, the musicianship is incredible, and as a whole, the group sounds more like one of Zappa's stage bands than, say, Roth's. Things are still flamboyant and over the top, as expected from the owner of a three-pronged heart-shaped guitar, but there are signs of maturity. As a guitarist and as a composer, Vai's only getting better with age, as proven by Real Illusions: Reflections' sprawling, elastic "Freak Show Excess" and "Building the Church," running the gamut with haphazard emotional shifts, flawless changes, and otherworldly playing. [Where the Wild Things Are was also released as a 27-track, double-disc DVD set.] ~ Jason Lymangrover, All Music Guide
Steve Vai
Active Decades: '80s, '90s and '00s
Born: Jun 06, 1960 in Carle Place, NY
Genre: Rock
Styles: Instrumental Rock, Hard Rock, Fusion, Heavy Metal, Guitar Virtuoso
Along with his one-time teacher Joe Satriani, six-string wizard Steve Vai set the standard for rock guitar virtuosity in the '80s. Born on June 6, 1960, and raised in Carle Place, NY, Vai became interested in the guitar via such legendary artists as Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, and Alice Cooper as a teenager and, upon starting high school, took lessons with an older player from his high school, Joe Satriani. Playing in several local bands, Vai quickly picked up on the instrument, and by the age of 18 was attending the renowned Berklee School of Music in Boston. As a student there, Vai transcribed several of Frank Zappa's most technically demanding compositions for guitar, and even sent a copy of one such transcription, "Black Page," to Zappa himself. Zappa was so impressed with the young guitarist that upon meeting him, he invited Vai to join his band.
Subsequently, Vai toured the world with Zappa (giving Vai the nicknames "Stunt Guitarist" and "Little Italian Virtuoso") and played on such albums as 1981's Tinsel Town Rebellion and You Are What You Is, 1982's Ship Arriving Too Late, 1983's Man from Utopia, plus 1984's Them or Us and Thing Fish, before leaving to set out on his own. First off was a pair of self-financed, recorded, and released solo albums in 1984, Flex-Able and Flex-Able Leftovers, both of which showcased Vai's guitar playing and songwriting talents, yet were still heavily influenced byZappa.
With Van Halen all the rage by the mid-'80s due to their massive hard rockpop crossover success, Vai replaced Yngwie Malmsteen in a similarly styled outfit called Alcatrazz (which featured former Rainbow vocalist Graham Bonnett), playing on their overlooked 1985 release Disturbing the Peace. The same year, Vai made a cameo appearance in the movie Crossroads (playing the devil's guitarist and shredding away in a guitar duel with Ralph Macchio) and got an invite from his friend/bass master Billy Sheehan to try out for the guitar spot in singer David Lee Roth's solo band (Roth had just split from Van Halen), and eventually landed the gig. 1986 saw the debut release from Roth and his stellar solo band, Eat 'Em and Smile, which went on to become one of the year's top hard rock releases. Both Vai and Sheehan were catapulted to superstardom due to their instrumental talents, as they took top honors in numerous guitar magazines for years afterward.
But although the quartet showed great promise, Sheehan jumped ship just after their sophomore album, Skyscraper, was issued in 1988. Although the album was more pop-based than its predecessor, it became another sizeable hit -- with Vai earning a co-producing credit on the album along with Roth. The same year, Vai issued his own line of snazzy guitars, the Jem 777 series, via the Ibanez company. After the ensuing tour with Roth wrapped up in late 1988, it was Vai's turn to jump ship. In addition to working on another solo album, he was invited to join up with chart-topping pop-metallists Whitesnake, an offer he accepted. His one and only album with Whitesnake, Slip of the Tongue, was issued in 1989, as was his third solo album overall, Passion and Warfare, a year later. The album was based on dreams that Vai experienced as a teenager, as the largely instrumental album became a sizeable hit, earning gold certification and solidifying Vai's standing as one of the top guitarists of the day. It was also around this time that Vai created a seven-string guitar through Ibanez. Although the instrument didn't catch on initially, it would by the mid- to late '90s, when the guitarists in such metal acts as Korn and Limp Bizkit would utilize the instrument to achieve super-low tunings.
After an extended hiatus, Vai formed his first conventional rock band (called...VAI) along with newcomer Devin Townsend on vocals, T.M. Stevens on bass, and Terry Bozzio on drums -- offering their one and only album in 1993, Sex & Religion. When the album proved to be a disappointment both critically and commercially, Vai returned back to all-instrumental work with the 1995 EP Alien Love Secrets. For the remainder of the decade, Vai continued to issue solo releases, including 1996's Fire Garden, 1998's Flex-Able Leftovers (a re-release of his long out of print second solo album, with added tracks), and 1999's The Ultra Zone. It was also during the late '90s that Vai and Satriani reunited for an annual co-headlining tour (with a different third artist added each year), called G3, unleashing a live album, G3: Live in Concert, in 1997.
The early 21st century saw a flurry of releases from Vai, including a compilation of instrumentals, The 7th Song: Enchanting Guitar Melodies Archive, in 2000, and his first full-length live release, Alive in an Ultra World, in 2001, as well as his mammoth career-encompassing ten-disc box set The Secret Jewel Box. In 2002, he collected several pieces that he had contributed to films through the years, including the guitar duel from Crossroads and the theme to Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey and put them together in a 40-track collection called The Elusive Light and Sound, Vol. 1. A series of compilations came next and after a five-year hiatus from the studio, Vai returned in 2005 with Real Illusions: Reflections. A tour with the Metropole Orchestra followed and he released a ambitious double live set documenting his performances, titled Sound Theories, Vols. 1-2, in 2007.
Over the years, Vai guested on countless albums by other artists, including Gregg Bissonette's self-titled debut and Submarine, Alice Cooper's Hey Stoopid, Randy Coven's Funk Me Tender, Al di Meola's Infinite Desire, Public Image Ltd.'s Album, Joe Jackson's Symphony 1, and Billy Sheehan's Compression. He can also be found on such additional Zappa releases as Jazz from Hell, Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar, Guitar, and on several volumes of the ongoing You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore series and the live tribute disc, Zappa's Universe. As if his busy schedule weren't full enough, Vai pursued a lifelong interest when he began harvesting honey among five bee colonies in the backyard of his home.
---Greg Prato, All Music Guide |
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