I just watched Joe's commentary on the G3 Live in Tokyo DVD last night. Man, Joe really does look like he's got a lot of weight on his shoulders - he said he was writing 40 (I think) songs/pieces of songs for the NASCAR '06 Total Team Control soundtrack at the time, and felt a bit overwhelmed. I can imagine - doing G3, making a DVD of it on top of that, AND writing a ton of material for a video game. I felt really bad for him seeing him like that.

As consolation for not being able to go to the concert tonight, I'm going to watch Joe's set from that DVD. I just got it a few days ago, so I haven't been able to watch it yet.

Man I am so incredibly bummed out that I can't go to the concert. But it just won't work out logistically for me. 9 songs from the new album. Incredible. I could really do without Summer Song, Mystical Potato Head..., and a few of his other ones, and I'd REALLY love to hear The Forgotten (part 2) and Talk To Me, but, man, that sounds like an incredible show. I almost can't bear to read people's reviews of the shows, but I've been reading them anyway...

I also couldn't see Joe for the SBM tour with DT - I bought tickets and everything, but had a family emergency (and the guy who I was going to go with was able to go, and was a foot away from Joe after the show, but couldn't think of anything to say to him!). Joe thinks some songs are cursed - I almost feel like me going to see Joe anymore is cursed!

I'm still going to try again for the next tour. At least I did get to see an EOC tour back in 2000!

Satriella - "I AM SITTING HERE LISTENING TO YOUR VOICE EXPLAINING YOUR THOUGHTS INBETWEEN EACH SONG.....GR8!....WISH WE COULD HAVE THAT FOR EVERY ALBUM!!"

I'm still working on my song info Web site - 95% of the info is straight from Joe (via magazines, interviews, DVDs, etc), but I know what you mean. I bought a Vinnie Moore album a long time ago, and it was the first instrumental guitar album I had seen with good liner notes. I thought it was the coolest thing.

Anyway, I've only got 14 more magazines to go through, and then I have to get all the info in the database. Joe does seem to lik eot talk about his songs a lot - it's just in a million different sources. BTW, I'm actually going to do the site in a liner-note kind of style.

mikesb - I love the Hellecasters.

Satriella - yeah, hardcopies are a good idea. Joe signing it? That would be strange, I think, for some reason. Not sure why, but it just strikes me as a strange idea.

The process started to get laborious for me, so I started reading about Steve Morse for a bit of a change (I'm back on the Joe project now, though). Anyway, what an interesting guy. And totally different from Joe, it seems, though there are some common threads - they both seem like they have a "no compromise" type of attitude. But I don't know either one personally, so I can't really tell.

Not only did I not get to go to the Greensburg show last night, but I missed Joe on the local radio station as well (WDVE). I work like 2 miles away from the radio station - if I would have known, I could have snuck in or something :-) Just kidding - if I would have known, I would have listened...

Zinc Master - I just listened to the soundclips of Mindcrime II, and wasn't impressed at all. I'm a HUGE Queensryhce fan, though - the original Mindreime is great, Empire is very good, Promised Land is near perfect, and Tribe is quite good. I can't get into the others as well. There are a few songs off of Rage For Order that are awesome (I Dream In Infrared, Gonna Get Close To You, etc.). They are just not the same without DeGarmo, but perhaps I'll give it more of a shot, though. Naming it Mindcrime 2 is kind of bold...

Plum Loco - that's awesome that you get to meet Joe. Congrats. BTW, you probably know this, but Steve Vai was really instrumental in getting Joe signed to an established label. He introduced Joe to Relativity Records in '85. He also mentioned Joe's name in about every interview he did at the time.

5150_Alien - I noticed the same thing, with that song and a few others. I sent the same question to Austin Lewis, who did the fan interview a while back, and he asked Joe. I'll have to dig up his answer - I've got the interview transcribed, but I know he didn't really come right out and answer it. I think he said something like he tries to make the guitar sing. Something like that.

I was just reading an interview with John Cuniberti - he said that he mixes Joes lead guitar exactly like he would mix vocals, cause even the phrasing is similar, and Joe's lead lines have such a vocal quality. I thought that was pretty interesting.

But, Joe has also said that he knows right away whether a song will be an instrumental or a lyrical song, and that the lyrics and music often come to him at the same time for lyrical songs.

Ok, TomSr, this is for you: the line from "The Phone Call", "I don't want what you want. I want what I want!" came from a conversation Joe had with Rubina over what to have for dinner! Joe was talking with her and playing guitar at the same time, then he started singing his responses to her. When he sang that line, it gave him the idea for the song. He wrote the song out right there, then they went to dinner (I'm guessing to where Joe wanted to go :-)).

I think the line was meant jokingly - Joe also mentioned that before that, he was talking with Rubina about how he relates so differently to women than some of the guys he knows. Or maybe this *is* what he meant by "differently". Could be :-)

tinribs - just kidding really. I don't want a bunch of rich fans deciding what songs I hear. The idea of having a contest winner getting to pick a song is kind of interesting, though. I think the only song that Joe can't play live is the original "Power Cosmic" - could be wrong, though.

Quick question - does anybody know what magazine it is where Joe talks about "I Believe" and how a guy wrote to him and told him that the song saved him from committing suicide?

Here's some trivia questions for you guys/girls:

- Joe initially gave Steve Vai guitar lessons with another guy at the same time to share the cost. What was the other guy's name?

- What does the now-defunct "Sonic Option" magazine have to do with Joe?

- Joe once told record execs that they were out of their minds if they didn't think __________ had the potential to be an international hit song.

I'll provide the answers (if nobody gets them first) and the source in a day or so.

Answers to the trivia questions I posted yesterday:

- Joe initially gave Steve Vai guitar lessons with another guy at the same time to share the cost. What was the other guy's name?

OME - An interview with Joe in Guitar 2001 Magazine (issue #10) says the other guy is Frank Strassel, who is a friend of Steve's, and is not a professional musician today.

- What does the now-defunct "Sonic Option" magazine have to do with Joe?

They reviewed his first EP. Joe said reading that review, along with a review in Guitar Player magazine was a turning point for him.

- Joe once told record execs that they were out of their minds if they didn't think __________ had the potential to be an international hit song.

"Summer Song".

Satriella - I gave the answer to the quiz a few posts back. BTW, what was the other quiz you were talking about where you met another Joe fan?

I was just remembering when I found another Beatles fan at my old job, and we started asking each other questions to try to stump each other (he knew a lot more than me, but I got him with the question, "What was included on the front cover of the original printing of The Beatles (White Album)"

Spoiler: They just sold one on the UK eBay, that's got a photo of it.

marimariSRV - awesome pictures - very clear (almost too clear - in one of the shots you can see the veins in his forehead!), good depth of field, and all that. Hey, would you mind if I used a picutre or two of yours on my Joe song info Web site?

Before I go and pay money for the answer to this question on Google Answers (assuming someone can actually answer the question...), nobody knows exactly what the man and kid are saying at the beginning of Flying In A Blue Dream, right?

Satriella - slowly. I'm really about almost a point where I can release the site, though. I just need to find a few big chunks of time, which are very few and far between these days.

Here's my FIABD question: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=729448

also,

PhryDom - true, but Joe has also said he doesn't know exactly what they're saying either (I'm sure he'd love to know), so we'd still need a good audio cleanup tool of some sort. If I get time, and no researcher can answer my "Google Answers" question, maybe I'll just try bringing it into my recording software package, EQ the heck out of it, and see what I can make of it.

Satriella - "Do you think you will get the big one...an interview with JOE!"

I'd love to, when I've got as much info as I can get from other sources.

"no gruskada...what you said is gibberish...what does it mean?????????"

Haha! Sorry - I'll try to explain. I bought a white concert t-shirt during Joe's Engines of Creation tour. The shirt design was futuristic-looking, and had a bunch of 1's and 0's on the back of the shirt, i.e.

010010100110111101100101001000000101001101100001011101000111001001101001011000010110111001101001

The above actually says "Joe Satriani" in binary (but, like I said before, the actual shirt "code" didn't translate to anything...). Check this site out to translate your own words:

http://nickciske.com/tools/binary.php

I won't get into the details of how it actually translates (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_numeral_system if you REALLY want to get confused - parts of it certainly confused me), but basically any numbers and characters can be translated into binary.

Anyway, designers often use 1's and 0's to make something look like it's related to computers. Some designers actually take the time to encode messages in the 1's and 0's (like my "Joe Satriani" example), so it's fun to type them into a translater and see what the message is. I was hoping that whoever designed Joe's shirt did that, but apparently not.

When I typed it in, it translated to something like: ??*@???? (perhaps the designer was cursing :-))

Also, there's a barcode on the shirt - barcodes also can translate to numbers and text, but really need to be scanned to read them, since the widths of the lines determine the characters.

This is "Joe Satriani" written as a barcode.

You can generate your own barcodes here: http://www.barcodesinc.com/generator/index.php

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcode for a more in-depth explanation (actually, the "Beginnings of the Barcode" feature on that page is an interesting read).

Haven't posted in a while (thanks for the note, Satriella). Too much stuff going on. I finally got the chance to try out a JS1000 at a local guitar shop, and I have to say, I really don't like it much. It's just not my style. Or maybe I'm just convincing myself that I don't like it because I can't afford it :-)

Also, a while ago, on the local radio station (105.9 in Pittsburgh), the morning DJ. Alan Cox, was talking about some contest where you have to play a Dave Matthews song on guitar. He said something like, "you don't have to be Eddie Van Halen or Yngwie Malmsteen to do it". I was thinking it would be nice to give Joe some props - just then he played a bit of "Hordes of Locusts" and said, "or Joe Satriani". Pretty cool. Still though, Dave Matthews stuff isn't the easiest music in the world to play, either...

I promised myself not to show my face (text?) on T2J until I had SatchNotes.com launched, but I could technically launch it today if I wanted to (I'm waiting until I put a little bit more song info on there, and fix up the looks of the site a bit).

Anyway, I tried emailing Jon (webmaster, yamboy, in case you're searching for posts with your name :-)), and haven't heard a response, so I thought I'd try posting here instead. I'd like to know if it's ok to post full transcriptions of the listening parties for ITLIS and SC, and if you can send me the audio for the SBM listening party (take the songs out if you want - I own two copies of the album...).

I've been lurking here for a while, but I just didn't want to post about how SatchNotes is coming all the time, until it was really ready. I just get too excited about these things - if I were Joe I'd be on here all the time telling everyone what songs I was working on :-)

So this is the last update, until I launch in August (hopefully early in the month). So far, I've got over 300 "notes" about most of Joe's songs, and am adding more every day. I've also got an album info and general quotes section, and am working on incorporating forum threads for each song, so anyone can share their stories about the songs, or to help me out with attributed quotes or info about songs.