Joe SATRIANI


Surfing With The Alien

(1987)



1. Surfing With The Alien 4'25
(Joe Satriani)
2. Ice 9 4'00
(Joe Satriani)
3. Crushing Day 5'15
(Joe Satriani)
4. Always With Me, Always With You 3'22
(Joe Satriani)
5. Safch Boogie 3'13
(Joe Satriani)
6. Hill Of The Skull 1'49
(Joe Satriani)
7. Circles 3'29
(Joe Satriani)
8. Lords Of Karma 4'48
(Joe Satriani)
9. Midnight 1'43
(Joe Satriani)
10. Echo 5'37
(Joe Satriani)

Total Time: 37:41


  • Joe Satriani - Guitar, Bass, Keyboards, Percussion, Drum Programming Bongo
  • Bongo Bob Smith - Drum Programming, Sound Design, Percussion
  • Jeff Campitelli - Drums, Percussion
  • John Cuniberti - Percussion
  • Jeff Kreeger - Pre-Production Programming and Sound Design

    Produced by Joe Satriani and John Cuniberti
    Mastered by Bernie Grundman
    Art Direction by Jim Kozlowski

    All Songs Written and Arranged by Joe Satriani
    All Songs Published by
    STRANGE BEAUTIFUL MUSIC (ASCAP)

    Special Thanks To:
    John Cuniberti, Jeff Campitelli, Bongo Bob Smith, Jeff Kreeger, Ricky Lynd, Michael Ward, Sandy Peartman, Nancy Evans, Paul Mandl, Jim Larson, Fat Dog, Dan Alexander, Andy Milton, Brian Sterns, Al Milburn, Leo Knapp, Paul Chandler, Mark Burgstahler, Ned Hearn, Gregory "Gigi" Gonaway, Narada Michael Walden, Earwax, Chris Bellman, Joe Cabrera, Gil Griffith and EVENTIDE, Don Dawson and D'ADDARIO, Larry DiMARZIO, Steve Blucher and all at DIMARZIO, Rich Lasner, Bill Cummiskey, Bill Reim, Mike Shimada and all at IBANEZ, Noe the G, Joe Bosso, Greg DiBenedetto, Lisa Catanzaro, Gene Santoro, Matt Resnicoff, John Stix, Sonia Still, Barry Kobrin, Cliff Cultreri, Steve Sinclair, Howie Gabriel, Joe Leonard. Jim Kozlowski, Tova Hoffman, Mike Cordone, David Bett, Brady McTigue, Lynn Schwartz, Melanie Cordero, Steve Mason, Janice Issitt, Steve Vai, Kevin Burns, Jay Wilson, Elena Frigeri, Cynthia Parsons, Patrick Alvarado and everyone at Bill GRAHAM MANAGEMENT, Dave Glew, Polly Anthony, John Kalodner, Steve Barnett, David Massey. Jock Elliott, Melissa Dragich, Leslie Langlo and everyone at EPIC RECORDS

    Extra Special Thanks To:

    ZZ and Rubina Satriani

    Recorded and Mixed at ALPHA And OMEGA RECORDING and HYDE STREET STUDIOS, San Francisco, CA

    RELATIVITY RECORDS (Studio Recording)


    Without a word, Joe Satriani started a loud revolution. And without even opening his mouth, he emerged .as the most "vocal" of guitarists, a player who shapes notes with a singer's articulation and ear for emotional detail. The performances on this album ratcheted up the caliber of musicianship in popular music by several daunting notches, but it was clear from the very first phrases that Satriani's virtuosity billowed with a humanistic warmth. His music has always been distinguished by compositional events, by shifting colors and shades and smoothly conceived jumpcuts, to where sound takes on cinematic excitement. He plays like a monster, but thinks like a listener, which is why millions have followed him. It should be pointed out that in 1987, few (if any) models existed for this sort of thing, unless you take as a precedent Satriani's earlier work, which at that point amounted to little more than an hour of recorded music. Surfing With The Alien represented a streamlining of Satriani's material even as it played up its presentation, with a slightly more polished power-trio vibe than its predecessor, Not Of This Earth. While the funkier Earth had in its textures a template for what Surfing would become-essentially, verse-chorus song structures guided by astounding guitar performances-its unconventional format allowed Satriani to develop a seamless unity of vanguard technique, unsettling rhythms and exotic, sophisticated harmony. Where Jeff Beck had collaborated with keyboardists and vocalists in a style located between jazz and rock, and Steve Vai's early solo albums pushed further into experimentation than the cloth-eared masses could ever be expected to follow, Satriani was quietly fashioning a context that could establish pure mania as a selling point.
    In its scope and reach, his music would use the most traditional and ear-bending techniques available to guitarists, although in some respects, he had already assessed and detonated the instrument's history in his own personal way. The wide palette he adopted for an innovative debut album (most of which was collected on 1993's Time Machine) hinted at the colors he could create with a single instrument. Sot'd out of the trunk of his car, Joe Satrianifeatured music ? conceived just as industriously as it was markAted-just Joe and his guitars, detuned at selected moments for bass, tapped rhythmically with tiny metal wrertches for drum-like effects, all overdubbed and transformed into something larger. In that reliance on the guitarfs native variety of sound, we can trace a natural growth toward Surfing With The Alien, an album of singing melody and grinding rock pulse; of big, broad strokes and meticulous subtleties, heard in everything from the nostril-fraying proximity of the lead guitars to the curlicues placed on the front and end of notes. So, how to create an instrumental classic? Without a word, perhaps, and certainly without a budget in step with its ambitious vision; Satriani spent nights at the studio repairing Blue Oyster Cult guitar tracks in exchange for extra recording time for Surfing. As on Not Of This Earth, he played the bulk of the pitched instruments, including bass, keyboards, and select live and programmed percussion. Never one to be confined to a signature sound, Satriani explored the recording process as an instrument unto itself, Grafting surprisingly huge tones in the verse of the Kurt Vonnegut-inspired "Ice 9"; thanks to this fat, tough-sounding remastering, you can even detect the subtle pick accents in the underlying rhythm guitars. On "Echo," clean notes tumble like metal beads over a funky odd-meter groove, while in "Circles", a pristine strummed theme leaps, within a mere four beats, into a fretboard-spanning solo replete with molten lines, picked arpeggios, whammy-bar screams, and high, bluesy bends.
    Apologies here if these descriptions are impenetrable by non-musicians. Judging from the sales figures, this record's audience certainly extends well beyond the sometimes solipsistic (but no less esteemed!) special-interest group of guitarists. Civilians, however, should know why Satriani isn't simply a slick player possessing what we in the trade refer to as well-maintained "chops": While unquestionably difficult, Joe's music moves to an inner groove, which grounds his lust for adventure; put simply, he embodies that rarest of breeds, the rock musician, and his intelligent playing elevates everything around it. When I asked him to contribute to All Sides Now, an album I produced for jazz guitarist Pat Martino, I was taken with his sensitive adaptability, which, as proven repeatedly on Surfing With The Alien, allows him to leap easily between reflective passages and moments of sheer, arena-shaking power. Those contrasts are no affectation of the recording studio; "Circles" in its multi-timbral completeness, became a.'highlight of Satriani's stage show.
    By building headroom for reinterpretation into his tunes, Satriani enjoys a freedom uncommon among pop artists; earlier pieces like "Memories", and later ones like "The Mystical Potato Head, Groove Thing", have such internal momentum that when the brief passages of stunning virtuosty pop in, they ignite the proceedings even further. Such is certainly the case with "Satch Boogie", perhaps the most traditional of the uptempo pieces on this record, and certainly one of the most recognizable. Equally deft is his bareback, clean-toned performance on the two-handed-tapping showcase "Midnight," a tune which serves up such a combination of flash and melodic digestibility that it was chosen as Joe's showpiece during his unaccompanied solo spot on Mick Jagger's first solo tour, in 1988. Surfing's futuristic raunch is balanced with dozens of understated and overstated mastery: The playfully deranged way he hits the whammy bar on the sub-verse melody of the title track; the transcendent final vamp in "Lords Of Karma"; the shock-ingly acute thematic development in the "Crushing Day" solo, with its unfor-givng tone and roomy melodicism-the improv is a compositional event unto itself. Enlarging and recasting that concept even further, the affecting ballad "Always With Me, Always With You" shifts unexpectedly to a minor key for the first solo chorus, so that the return to major at the end is positively jubilant. One dubious effect of this album's success was the unrelenting deluge of instrumental rock records released in its wake-you couldn't watch a b-movie on cable or see a sports-utility vehicle advertised without some Satriani clone whammying away in the background. So much of it sounded embarrassingly second-hand. What Satriani had done so effectively was supplant the role of the lead vocalist in a pop song; the compositions were createdlfor this very purpose, and the attributes of the playing could not be easily transplanted. Even among the good players who began writing instrumental rock music in earnest, swiping certain of the outward techniques from players like Joe and his few legitimate contemporaries in the rock world, the effect was no more authentic than if they'd swiped ballet tights and expected to float across a dance floor. The point was missed.
    Confronted with innovative, exciting musicianship like this, it's easy to get jaded, or at least ruined for lesser playing. Joe was one of the very first serious performers I interviewed who I also hit up for a guitar lesson, and judging from the unseemly traits I was soon to observe in countless other famous players, it was clear why he had such a high success rate as a teacher and as an artist. When we met, Joe was a doe-eyed, driven musician cautiously sussing out the music industry, and he has remained that way, both in how he comports himself and how he approaches his work. He takes nothing for granted on the instrument except the integrity of touch and feel, which catalyzed the innovations on this record. By striking that balance, he did more than just sell it to audiences numbering in the millions-he rejuvenated the cultural spectacle of the great, passionate musician dedicated to performing-emof/ngi, no less. They should hand out plaques for that alone.

    — Matt Resnicoff