The first time I ever heard Joe Satriani's brilliant Ibanez tone wasvia 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.