Not Of This Earth, the debut of Joe Satriani. I, like pretty much everyone else on the planet, was introduced to Joe with Surfing With The Alien. So it was after that masterpiece that I started to do reseach on him and came across NOTE. Upon my first time playing through the album, it was in stark contrast to what I had soaked up on Alien. NOTE is a very eclectic record full of experimentation. And even though it was nothing like his follow up, it was worlds apart from every other dime-a-dozen shredder that had a record deal out at the time. What set Joe and this record in particular apart from his contemporaries is that he was doing something completely original. While everyone else was doing their best neoclassical spin on Yngwie Malmsteen, Joe was pushing himself and the instrument further, especially in the way he recorded and played whatever he had on hand to suit his needs.

I picked this album apart like you couldn't believe. This was right around the time that I started playing guitar myself and wanted to learn as much as possible. Not to demean the songs, but they were very straight forward when it came to rhythm for bass and drums, that I literally went song by song and recreated all the parts using my drum machine, bass and 4 track recorder so that I would have my "backing band" to start learning the guitar parts.

That's why Not Of This Earth is special to me, in spite of it not being a perfect record, which it is not. But it holds up pretty well after all these years.

Fave Songs: Not Of This Earth, Rubina and Hordes of Locusts

Sidebar: The original Space/Planet cover is now fetching on some sites upwards of $200 for the Vinyl in mint condition. If you guys come across it, I suggest you pick it up if you can get it for cheap. It's out of print and probably one of the LP's I will never sell. At least for the time being anyways.

I got a soft spot for this one in particular for one reason and one reason only. I'm on it!!! No lie!! Dreaming #11 is an EP of 4 songs. 3 live tracks were recorded at the historic California Theater in Downtown San Diego during the Surfing With The Alien Tour. The 4th song was a brand new song called The Crush of Love.

Ok, enough with the praising. I give Dreaming #11 the rating it gets for the simple fact that it's incomplete. Not only that, the entire concert exist. How do I know? The night of the show, KGB 101.5 broadcast the entire show live, which I had the good sense to have a friend of mine tape direct off the radio while I went to the show. And let me tell you...the sh*t that's on that audio tape is f*cking insane. The best, and I mean absolute best parts never made it onto the album. I really don't understand why they didn't just release the entire show as is instead of making it an EP.  I understand that the record company wanted to throw something out into the market to capitalize on Joe's now legendary status as Guitar God. But if they can make an EP, why not a full LP?

As for the new song, The Crush Of Love, it wasn't even "new" at the time. It had appeared in the pages of Guitar World Magazine earlier that year as a free flexi-disc, which I still have to this day.

The Extremist. The core of the group here is Joe, Matt Bissonette (David Lee Roth) on Bass and Gregg Bissonette (David Lee Roth) on Drums.

This use to be one of my all time favorite Satch albums. But over the years it has lost some of it's appeal. It may have to do with the fact that they overplayed the best song on the album. That song of course being Summer Song. I mean, f*ck, it was everywhere, attached to everything. As for the rest of the album, there are still some fantastic songs that I find myself listening to over and over. But as a whole I think it just hasn't aged as well as Surfing With The Alien. Whereas that one is timeless, this one does sound a bit dated in some spots. And where Flying In A Blue Dream took his playing farther than it had been, this one lacks those instant classics he is known for.

Fave Songs: Friends, War, Cryin', Rubina's Blue Sky Happiness, Summer Song and Motorcycle Driver.