Genghis
Power User
I'm probably not the first to post about this, but I had the pleasure of seeing Steve Vai's Passion and Warfare 25th Anniversary tour in Portland, Oregon Sunday night. Awesome show, maybe one of the best I've seen for this type of show. The sound was amazing and his replication of all of the tones and effects on the album was awesome. (Thanks Fractal for those effects!) Tony McAlpine was the opener, and they both did exceeded expectations with their performances.
Of course, there were a lot of guitar players there, and the guy in front of me seemed to think Steve's tone was a little off due to his use of the Axe-FX instead of tube amps. I politely pointed out to him that Steve was using the tube amps on either side of his Axe-FX and using the Axe-FX for his effects. I resisted the temptation to argue with him that the sound was spot on and probably would have been spot on even using the Axe-FX for the preamp as well. Haters gotta hate, you know. I imagine he liked the tone better when he knew it was generated by tube amps, but who knows. LOL (The guy and his friends were pretty cool other than the Axe-FX hate, so it was fun chatting with other guitar players about the show.)
One other thing that was cool is that for his encore, he brought Tony out to jam (or course), but even cooler is he had a young kid from the Portland area come up and trade off licks as well. The kid was really good and I'm sure it was the jam of a lifetime for him. Not to mention the crowd really loved that! Steve is so humble and personable on stage it made for quite an experience. I won't go into details, but I really thought some of the stuff he did with the videos was some of the coolest I've seen at a concert as well.
Of course, there were a lot of guitar players there, and the guy in front of me seemed to think Steve's tone was a little off due to his use of the Axe-FX instead of tube amps. I politely pointed out to him that Steve was using the tube amps on either side of his Axe-FX and using the Axe-FX for his effects. I resisted the temptation to argue with him that the sound was spot on and probably would have been spot on even using the Axe-FX for the preamp as well. Haters gotta hate, you know. I imagine he liked the tone better when he knew it was generated by tube amps, but who knows. LOL (The guy and his friends were pretty cool other than the Axe-FX hate, so it was fun chatting with other guitar players about the show.)
One other thing that was cool is that for his encore, he brought Tony out to jam (or course), but even cooler is he had a young kid from the Portland area come up and trade off licks as well. The kid was really good and I'm sure it was the jam of a lifetime for him. Not to mention the crowd really loved that! Steve is so humble and personable on stage it made for quite an experience. I won't go into details, but I really thought some of the stuff he did with the videos was some of the coolest I've seen at a concert as well.
Not sure who will be opening for the rest of the tour. It is a great show overall, and I'm sure you'll love it. With the opening act starting at 8PM Steve didn't wrap up until after 11:30, and they didn't take any longer than needed to change out between the sets. I was worn out just watching, let alone playing with all the energy and passion the band put in. The good living has done Steve well over the years.
