Steve Vai
Passion and Warfare 25th Anniversary Tour
Riviera Theater
North Tonawanda, NY
October 29, 2016

16 bit version

Taped, Transferred & mastered by }{eywood
Gear: AT831s > Tascam DR-08
Location: Row J seat 13 (10th row on left center aisle)
Lineage: DR-08 (wav @ 24/96) > USB > Adobe Audition 1.5 (EQ, peak limiting, splits & fades) > Xrecode II (conversion to 16/44.1) > TLH (sector alignment, flac 8)

My brother-in-law (Brad Peace, guitarist from Suckerpunch, That 80s Hair Band, Black Widow and several other Buffalo bands over the years) worships Steve Vai like a diety, so it was nice to get to experience this show kmowing he was having the time of his life. And despite the meet & greet being part of another more expensive ticket package Brad managed to use his overwhelming charisma to get in and meet Steve. Brad even brought along his Ibanez Jem 7V Steve Vai signature model guitar which Steve played and signed (the 2nd time he signed this guitar), a few pics and a short video of which are included here.

Now as far as I'm concerned Passion and Warfare is Steve's crowning achievement. I'm a fan of Flex-able as well, but that's because it sounds like Zappa. After P&W everything sounds the same to me, so this is the show I had been waiting for to go see Steve solo. And I was not disappointed. The show had a neat gimmick (I mean besides what Vai does on the guitar) where Brian May, Joe Satriani, John Petrucci and Frank Zappa all got to play along on the video screen.

During the last song Steve pulled a Buddfy Guy and came out into the audience. He walked up the outside left aisle and played right to everyone over there. He was behind me and to the left, but because I was taping I unfortunately couldn't turn to look at him.

There was a 15 minute break between album sides of P&W where I went out for a smoke. The Riviera's aisles and foyer are pretty narrow and small, and it took most of the break just to get out. If that place ever catches fire there will be few survivors because of the bottlenecking. As I came back in I heard the intro to The Audience is Listening begin, so I sprinted down the far right aisle, across the front of the stage and up to me seat. This is apparent in the recording because it took til midway through the first verse before I got the mics out from under my jacket. I kept this in mind at the end of the show. As the last song got close to its conclusion I slowly backed up the aisle to the rear of the venue, then ran for the exit before everyone got out of their seats.

Included are several pics taken by my son Nat (saygeddylee) and my ex-wife, Rhonda (RJPeace), during the first half of the show. Rhonda is a hair metal fan and she got bored and left (no cute guy singing). Nat, like me, thinks shredder guitarists are frivolous notethrowers and he had reached overload by the set break and also left. I stayed because to me Vai is the only shredder that manages to still bring emotion to his compositions. I certainly could not have sat through a Satriani show, and anything involving Petrucci just bores me to death with mechanical sterility. Vai's early work touches me.


01 Crossroads Intro
02 Bad Horsie
03 The Crying Machine
04 Gravity Storm
05 Tender Surrender
06 banter

PASSION & WARFARE:
07 Liberty
08 Erotic Nightmares
09 The Animal
10 Answers
11 The Riddle
12 Ballerina 12/24
13 For the Love of God

14 The Audience Is Listening
15 I Would Love To
16 Blue Powder
17 Greasy Kid's Stuff
18 Alien Water Kiss
19 Sisters
20 Love Secrets

21 Stevie's Spanking
22 Racing the World

23 Fire Garden Suite IV - Taurus Bulba

Images for all shows as well as full size images for this show.

Images for this show:











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