Joe Satriani's groundbreaking Surfing With the Alien turns 20 this year, and the album is being re-released in an expanded format to mark the occasion.

What's groundbreaking about Surfing With the Alien? Think of it in Christopher Columbus terms. Columbus didn't discover America, if by discover you mean actually arriving here first. He did, however, get here and the arrival started a chain of events that has had a significant historical impact.

Satriani didn't discover a genre nor did he change the course of human history. He did expand the language of rock music's most important instrument – the electric guitar – and took it places it hadn't been. Surfing is also noteworthy because of its surprising commercial success. It reached the Billboard Top 30 and sold more than 2 million copies. That's modest success for pop stars but those are staggering numbers for a guitar-based instrumental record. That success allowed him to stay at a major label throughout his career and opened the door for a slew of peers and imitators.

The expanded edition features a CD containing the re-mastered album, a bonus DVD, and expanded liner notes from Satriani himself. The occasion is special and so is the album, so one would expect the same from this Legacy Edition. Does it meet those expectations?

The Album
This edition is its third sonic incarnation of Surfing. The album was originally mastered by Bernie Grundman and released in 1987 by Relativity Records. In the late '90s, George Marino re-mastered the album. The Legacy Edition was again re-mastered, this time by John Cuniberti. Cuniberti co-produced the album when it was originally recorded. Bringing him in to oversee the re-mastering process is an inspired and appropriate choice, one more example of the love and care that went in to producing the ultimate version of this classic album.

So, what does all that mean?

After an album is recorded and mixed, it is sent off to be mastered where a bevy of sonic adjustments can be made. This post-production process creates a single source from which all copies of an album will be produced and represents the last best opportunity to make the music sound great.

Both the Marino and Cuniberti masters are superior to the original Grundman version and fans of this record really should have one of them. The leap in quality from the original pressing to these subsequent releases is a quantum improvement. Careful listeners will find Cuniberti's master is an upgrade over Marino's but only by a step rather than a leap.

When all the studio sorcery and after-the-fact tinkering has been done, 10 songs and 38 minutes of the most amazing guitar-based instrumental music remain. For all that has been written about his extraordinary gifts as a player, his concept of melody has gone underappreciated. What separates Satriani from virtually every other guitarist is that he is a capable composer, that his songs are more than a collection of licks and solos.

He would progress as a player, composer and compose great pieces of music over the next 20 years, but he has yet to craft a collection of songs that feel this interconnected.

The DVD
This is the real treat for diehard fans who have already purchased one or two copies of the album. The bonus DVD is comprised of three parts: a spoof interview with Spinal Tap's Nigel Tufnel, music videos for "Always With Me, Always With You," and a previously unreleased live set from the Montreux Jazz Festival. The Tufnel interview is amusing, but most viewers won't watch it more than once. The videos are not vital visual experiences but belong on a package like this that strives to be the ultimate expression of what the album was about.