Mag14 - those photos are amazing, especially the first few! Are you a professional photographer? Thanks for posting them.

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roffler - what RSS feed reader were you using? Did you get an error, or did it just not load? I was messing with it some more, too, so that might have been it (hopefully). Thanks, btw.

Random Joe fact: Joe helped get guitarist Ron Thal (Bumblefoot) his gig with Guns N' Roses.

roffler - I just fixed a minor problem that may have been messing things up for you - some RSS readers are more forgiving than others, so you may be using a "strict" one... The code 100% validates now (thanks to http://feedvalidator.org/). Thanks again for helping me test.

Joe Satriani's "Official" Turkish Site

Strange that Joe has an "official" Turkish site, but not an official French or Japanese site, where he's probably got lots more fans... :-)

I'm all for it - they've got Turkish TV interviews with Joe there! (with Joe speaking in English) like this one (he seems a bit tired...)

Satriella - my uncle used to own a bowling alley, and when he closed it up, he gave me all of his 45 singles from his jukebox. All of those songs became the soundtrack to my youth (pre-teen, anyway).

The ones I remember the most are "Runaway" by Del Shannon, "The Banana Boat Song" (I think it was Harry Belafonte's version), and some amazing instrumental sax stuff with the label rubbed off (the only text I could read on it, ironically, said "GONE"). It was the coolest thing I had heard at the time (pre Joe and The Forgotten (part 2)) - the record even looked cool - black with silver lettering. I can still sing every note of it, and I probably haven't heard it in over 20 years.

EDIT - ugh, just did some research - "GONE" was the record label. Makes it a bit tougher to figure out...

Joe, you've been South Park-ized! :-)

Joe with glasses

Joe without glasses

Took me just a few minutes, thanks to the South Park Character Maker and a little Photoshopping of my own.

and, if you missed it, you've also been Simpsonized:

Joe Simpson

(thanks to Simpsonize Me and some Photoshopping)

To anyone who wants to answer this - what's the biggest thing that got you to the "next level" of guitar playing? i.e. Learning all the notes on the fretboard, learning more modes, being exposed to a certain type of music, etc.

Amir K - I did regular GW-BASIC when I was a kid, and can usually hack my way through a language I'm not familiar with. I might be able to help. I think a QBasic forum or newsgroup may be a better place to ask than the Joe Satriani site, though :-)

Keniko - Wow - that's perfect! Really nice job.

McKenna - yeah, I'm learning all the notes on the fretboard now.

Any tips on how to more easily memorize it? I've heard making up a story that starts with each letter is pretty effective (i.e. Everyday Aliens Don't Get Big Enough for the open strings :-)), but then what do you do with the sharps and flats?

KtZA - what email? Did you send it to my Gmail account?

Keniko - that's awesome that he even matched the paint perfectly. And now Joe is even going to come to your house - what a gift!

Amir K - I found the disk with my old programs. I wrote "c1985" on it :-), so I was actually 10 years old. And I actually gave up programming for a while after I learned LOGO (a neat little graphics language at the time). HTML got me started again in '96, then I went to JavaScript, ColdFusion, Lingo (Director), and .NET (Windows Forms and ASP.NET using C#). But BASIC was the "gateway drug" for me to the harder stuff :-)

lourdeOhocusts - yeah, I'd love to hear The Forgotten, part 2 live as well. Joe answered a question of mine (through Austin Lewis) about why he doesn't play that song live:

"...we played it and the whole set tanked right there. It was such a downer ... and it just sounded clunky without that rigid tempo. So I said this is another song that's cursed [along with Crushing Day] - I should never do that again." - Kikkerfest.com fan interview Webcast with Austin Lewis

They did play it live a few times (opening for Steve Miller in Reno), and something always went wrong with it (tempo being ramped up by the rest of the band, etc.). Supposedly there's a low-quality boot of one of the performances somewhere, but I've yet to hear it.

But, Joe now plays Crushing Day live, so there is hope...

BTW, if you didn't already know, the background on that song is fascinating:

"'The Forgotten' is a song about the multitude of people who die of intense tragedy, more specifically of famine. Whole generations are completely lost... The story specifically related to when I was on the Jagger tour. Late at night I was playing, and this program came on TV about people starving to death. 'The Forgotten (part two)' was my reaction to the whole thing." - Guitar Magazine, March 1990.

Nice Joe endorsement from Micheal Fath:

Amir K - you've got mail.

Anybody get their signed copy of SWTA from FYE yet?

Maybe Joe is out learning to surf - anybody hear his quote (something like) "I've been on a surf board, but not in the water" :-) So, more accurately, the album should have been "Standing on a surfboard with the Alien" - not as catchy, though.

Matt King - I've checked out your site - good stuff.

What's up with "Screaming Head" - credited to Joe Satriani on "Guitar Greats, vol 1". The lead is DT-type keyboards. There is an absolutely wicked solo at 3:40, but it doesn't seem like the whole song should be credited to Joe - unless he's REALLY taken a change in direction...

EDIT - nevermind - from Magna Carta's Web site:

" 5. Joe Satriani - “Screaming Head” from Jordan Rudess’ “Rhythm Of Time” MA-9068"

Random non-Satriani fact:

The Web was going to be called TIM (short for "The Information Mine"), but creator Tim Berners-Lee rejected it as being too egocentric.

I heard about it while playing Trivial Pursuit (90's edition), but here it is from the horse's mouth: