The first time I ever heard Joe Satriani's brilliant Ibanez tone was via an Armed Forces Network television commercial, while I was stationed withthe Navy, in Japan, back in 1987. About every hour, each day, this AFN stationwould play a short "Here's what's happening in your community" type of announcement, which just so happened to use Satriani's "Always With Me, Always With You", as the background music throughout the announcement. It took me about a month to finally track down who the hell it was who was playing this awesome tune, and I immediately went out and picked up Surfing With The Alien, his great album that this song is from. This was one of those albums that only comes around about once every ten years and just totally changes all of the rules. Satriani's tone, style, and technique were simply mind-blowing for the time, much like Van Halen's was a decade earlier. He inspired me to pick up my guitar again, and I spent months learning "Always With Me, Always With You" and "Satch Boogie" — at least up until he started soloing — who am I kidding.

When the first G3 tour was released on CD and VHS tape, I snatched them up immediately. These recordings demonstrated what a fantastic live performer Satriani is as well, and they also included Joe's most famous guitar student, Steve Vai. As great as the G3 video is, it was really only a tease for Satriani's fans, since it onlyfeatures three of his song performances. Live In San Francisco hasfinally evened the score, by providing an impressive two and one-half hour,25-song, concert performance that touches every part of Satriani's brilliant career.

Live In San Francisco was recorded at The Fillmore in SanFrancisco in December 2000, and shows Satriani at the peak of his game. The stage design and light show were both outstanding visually and provided the perfect setting for Satriani's performance. It looked as if the band was playing inside of a huge cavern, mysteriously illuminated with lots of fluorescent blues, purples, greens and reds, depending on the mood of the song. Satriani wisely included a keyboardist/rhythm guitarist to fill out the sound of this performance. This was sorely lacking from his somewhat lackluster performance on the G3 Live In Denver DVD. Eric Caudieux competently handled the keyboard and guitar duties at this show, but he was kept way in the background both visually and in the mix. He was only mixed barely loud enough to know he was there, and to stay out of Joe's way. I think this was a mistake, and it would have been much more affective to have him louder in the mix, which would have sounded closer to the levels of the rhythm playing on the albums. Caudieux was given one chance to shine though, when he and Joe traded some smoking licks during "Borg Sex". He sounds like he has been locked in a room for the past few years with nothing but Satriani albums though, because he sounds exactly like him. I guess that is not a bad thing.

The concert was consistently high energy and entertaining. There were noparticular weak spots, but you could criticize Satriani, somewhat, forrarely varying his sound. To the casual listener, all of his songs can tend tosound the same. It's always that same Ibanez guitar, through a Marshal amp,along with his signature distortion, whah-whah, delay, and chorus sound. Thiscan get a little tedious after about an hour, especially for those fans who arenot guitarists themselves, or are not rabid fans of instrumental rock guitar ingeneral. But then again, why would you be at a Joe Satriani concert. This explains part of the appeal and success of the G3 tours, because each guitarist only gets about one hour to blow their load, and then the nextguitarist comes on with a fresh sound and style, which keeps the audience ontheir toes, and begging for more. I would love to see Joe strap on a Les Paul,or an acoustic guitar, for a song or two just to shake things up a little. Satriani skillfully incorporates many different styles into his playing, including speed-metal, rock, prog, and blues, with equal mastery, to create a signature sound that makes him instantly recognizable. "Big Bad Moon" was the only song that featured Joe singing during this show, and this was probably a good thing. Joe's harsh, monotonous vocals may fit this, sort of, novelty song rather well, but it is not something you would want to hear repeatedly.

As usual, Satriani's guitar playing was astonishing — blazingly fast,impeccably precise, and gracefully fluid. He easily leads the pack of instrumental rock guitarists, in terms of songwriting, and guitar technique. The production of this DVD was as impressive as Satriani's guitar playing. The video was exceptionally clear and sharp looking, with no noticeable flaws. The light show was extremely bright and colorful, and this was captured with vivid color detail and accuracy. Only occasionally where the cameras completely overwhelmedby the intensity of the light show, creating some noticeable color washout. The camera work was some of the best I have ever seen for this type of show. Obviously they focused mostly on close-ups of Satriani playing, including extreme close-ups of his hands flying across the fretboard, but they supplemented this nicely with sweeping craned camera shots of the entire stage. Each band member was also given his due during their pertinent parts of the songs. The audio options include an excellent Dolby Digital 5.1 mix, as well as en extremely loud PCM stereo track. The PCM stereo track was mixed at a much higher volume level than the Dolby track and sounded excellent, especially when using my receiver's "all channel stereo" option, which utilizes all six speakers. The DD 5.1 track was equally impressive, and spread the sound almost evenly between the front and rear speakers. The center channel was only used when Satriani talked between songs, and on the one song that he sang. Most importantly, the guitar mix was right up front and right in your face. Stu Hamm's excellent bass playing should have been a little higher in the mix, but the subwoofer was driven adequately. The instrument separation and clarity was excellent. An anamorphic widescreen presentation would have really put this outstanding presentation over the top.