Zappa guitar fest
September 26th, 2007Guitar geeks rejoice - the young Steve Vai back when he played with Zappa. Zappa is known as some type of musical comedian and unfortunately most people don’t realize how great he is on guitar. Listen to him here and be impressed.
The legend is that when Steve was only 17, he was at Berklee and started sending Frank transcriptions of his guitar solos (these were eventually released as the transcriptions to Shut Up and Play Yer Guitar). Steve was hired as a transcriber and was soon playing as a side man in Frank’s band (hailed as the “Little Italian Virtuoso”). Steve Vai shines with Zappa – of special note is the Dangerous Kitchen on the Man From Utopia – the guitar lines mimicking the vocals are incredible.
I had a friend, a keyboardist, who tried to get hired by Zappa the same way Steve Vai did. He did some kind of work uploading Zappa music onto computer (this was back in the late 80s, when floppy discs were still “floppy” – no one knew what computers were back then – I thought his plan was very mysterious). He did manage to get some work with Zappa tribute groups but it was too late in the game and by then Zappa wasn’t touring anymore – bummer.