Steve Vai – Where The Wild Things Are

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With differently themed tours over the last few years arguably the World’s best, and certainly most adventurous, instrumental guitar hero Steve Vai, has had the chance to put out three live DVDs in the last five years, excluding the ones from G3 and Zappa Plays Zappa tours. His last one was recorded with an orchestra, and this time the main concert comes from his 2008 tour with a brand new band including for the first time who violinists in Ann Marie Calhoun and Alex DuPue. The performance and the playing here are vintage Vai and the editing is superb, giving plenty of excellent shots of Steve’s lightning-fast guitar work. The sound quality is superb, meticulously mixed by Vai himself, meaning the CD version of this show will be a particular treat, but there are one or two things about the DVD that are slightly irritating. First off is the occasional (and it is very occasional) over-use of captions, particularly the cut-screens at the beginning of Tender Surrender, which Vai does admittedly mock after a while. Secondly, the low resolution of the video means that although the footage is excellent and brilliantly shot, it doesn’t look as good as some live DVDs on a large screen. This is evident from the distorted menu screens. The final annoyance is that the main concert itself is split over the two discs, with 90 minutes on one, and an hour on the other. Given that a DVD can hold three hours of video, this seems unnecessary. This is probably down to the show being filmed in high definition, but that fact makes the low resolution of the video even more confusing. Bonus features are a rather entertaining ten-minute demonstration video for Steve’s new Jemini distortion pedal for Ibanez, and about an hour of very boring interviews with all the members of the band except Steve. With fewer fit-inducing parts than Live At The Astoria London, but a lot more homo-erotic dancing, this is comfortably up there with Vai’s previous live documents. And a nicely different set to the others as well. Recommended.

Written by Andy Lye
More: Instrumental, Live DVDs, Quick.Play Reviews, Steve Vai