Saw Steve Vai for the first time last night at The Intersection in Grand Rapids Michigan. It was a fantastic show and I was really impressed. It was advertized as Steve Vai with special guest, so I assumed there would be an opening act. I got to the club about 8:10PM and Vai was already on stage, so I assume he must have come on at 8. He played until close to 11PM with no Intermission, so it was a long show, but very entertaining. I was kind of afraid that it was going to be a guitar wank fest that might grow old after a while, but Vai infused a lot of variety into his act and it never got boring. Of course his band was all top of the line musicians as well and they each got to show off in solo spots. I am not an expert on Vai’s catalogue so could not really give you a set list, but he did quite a few things that I recognized (“The Audience Is Listening”, “Ultra Zone” “For The Love Of God”) and several tunes from his most recent album. At least some of what he does I would consider progressive rock, but he is really all over the place musically. He has great stage presence and comes across as a genuinely nice guy and funny as well. At one point he accidentally addressed the town as being Cedar Rapids instead of Grand Rapids, and his band good naturedly gave him shit about it the rest of the night. At another point, after Vai did a vocal acoustic number, the drummer came out and made a bunch of cracks about Vai “putting the audience to sleep with that boring ballad shit”. It was pretty funny. The Intersection is a really nice club with a big stage and great sightlines. My guess would be that it holds somewhere between 800 to 1000 people and it seemed pretty full, although they never sell to the point of being wall to wall people like some clubs do. Anyway, it was a great night and I would definitely go see him again.
Steve Sly
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