Joe Satriani Concert

I’m deaf this morning.
That could be an overstatement.
I went to the Joe Satriani concert last night and you have to wonder if everyone is wearing earplugs why they don’t just turn the volume down. Ah, but that would take away from the excitement I suppose. It was a fantastic concert. It was the G3 tour so there were three guitarists there. Paul Gilbert and John Petrucci. This is going to sound trite but it is pretty amazing to watch people who are so good at what they do. When you think about the idea of playing guitar for your whole life and getting to be that good. Such singular focus. I found myself looking at their shoes. Most of them wore very nice sneakers. Since Joe does a bit of jumping this made sense. Paul Gilbert was wearing leather loafers but he was a bit of a drama queen all the way around. Wearing a scarf around his neck and making these facial expressions that were ripe for caricature. They all wore earpieces of some sort, Paul Gilbert wore full muffling headphones, John Petrucci had ear inserts that were wired and it looked like Joe had smaller ear inserts that may have been wireless.
We thought we would be old for the crowd but we weren’t – perhaps not smack in the middle but there were a lot of folks our age and older. We had third row center seats and after sitting there for a concert it will be very hard to be anywhere else. It was great to be that close – well, except for the going deaf part.
Again, it was good to see someone that good at something but I have to say that I wonder how much of the show is showmanship and how much is real just playing. I’d love to see them jamming on their own without the crowd but I suppose that would cost more than $80 per.