It had been a very long since I had been to a concert. I really wanted to see this one: I had missed the first G3 tour in Paris, so I would not miss this one.
I bought my tickets 5 minutes after the presale started, and only had tickets at the 21st row. Maybe I should have waited the next day for the real sale, but I wanted to make sure I would get tickets. Actually, I don't think that the show was sold out, although it was pretty close.
The conclusion of this is that I don't know how TicketBastards sell ticket, except their service charges are higher than ever: two $40 tickets for $98.60, you can't beat that.
The event was taking place at the FleetBoston Pavilion, which is a kind of tent next to the ocean; it's a pretty cool place, and not too large, so wherever you were you could see pretty well.
The 21st row was actually not bad, especially because we were sitting right in the center.
The concert started really on time: at 7.25pm, we heard a recording of Jimmy Hendrix play Star Spangled Banner, and at 7.30pm, John Petrucci was hitting the stage.
Played 6 songs from 7.30pm until 8.15pm.
Line up: John Petrucci, Mike Portnoy, Dave LaRue.
I didn't know Johm Petrucci at all, so I won't comment much. He played some pretty cool stuff, although I found that his songs were changing melodies a bit too much to my taste. Also, the acoustics wasn't great. I don't know if it is because of the settings or because of the venue, but I had troubles hearing what was going on when there was a lot of saturation.
Played 8 songs from 8.35pm until 9.35pm.
Line up: Steve Vai, Mike Keneally, Billy Sheehan, Dave Weiner, Virgil Donati.
Vai arrived with his band on the explosions of There's A Fire In The House, to then start playing Shyboy and everybody stood up. Again, the sound quality wasn't great and I couldn't really hear Billy Sheehan singing.
When starting playing Whispering A Prayer, he stopped 3 times and changed guitars twice, obviously annoyed because something was going wrong. He ended up throwing Flo (if I am not mistaken) to the ground, leaving the stage after saying that he would be back when his guitar would work fine. He also told Berklee students that they will be faced with things like that, and that it was a good thing that he liked Boston so much.
The rest of his performance was as good as Vai can be, when really made me regret the poor acoustics. The version of Jibboom that he played was really amazing.
Mike Keneally is incredible, playing the guitar along with Steve, running to the keyboards, smiling, etc. Dave Weiner was unaudible to me (except on For The Love Of God), which is a shame, because he seems to be a good guitarist.
Played 9 songs from 8.55pm until 10.50pm.
Line up: Joe Satriani, Stu Hamm, Jeff Campitelli.
Interestingly enough, I found that the sound was better when
Satriani arrived on stage. He did a good performance, presenting Stu
Hamm with They "stu" him because they love him
with a reference
to his
latest album.
Played 4 songs from 10.50pm until 11.15pm.
Line up: Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, John Petrucci, Billy Sheehan, Stu Hamm, Jeff Campitelli.
Right after Satriani's set, they continued with the G3 jam.
I really had a hard time hearing what they were doing on La Grange and on parts of Voodoo Chile unfortunately.
Little Wing was really cool. Steve Vai sang on it, whereas Joe Satriani sang Going Down and Billy Sheehan sang the first two.
Stu Hamm and Billy Sheehan were fighting with their bass guitars while the G3 were doing their magic.
In the end, it was a really good, 3h45 concert. Again, I really wish the sound quality had been better. I read another review of somebody saying that the sound quality was really good; either we were in a bad spot.