When David Lee Roth left Van Halen to start a solo career, he had a pretty tall order in finding a guitar player/collaborator who could hold candle to his previous axeman.
He chose an up-and-coming guitar virtuoso named Steve Vai, whose chops were so advanced he had scored the guitarist spot in Frank Zappa's band as a teenager. Vai also had one of those quintessentially '80s guitars with the pink knobs, which, I'd imagine, pretty much sealed the deal.
Roth's debut solo record, "Eat 'Em and Smile," became one of the most critically-acclaimed and popular hard rock records of 1986, in spite of the fact that Roth was involved.
After leaving the DLR band, Vai focused his career on being the best guitar player in the world. He contributed music to the soundtracks of movies such as "Crossroads" and "Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey," as well as collaborating with other freakishly talented L.A. studio musicians to create instrumental rock records that only have the ability to hold the interest of freakishly talented studio musicians.
Though his music and solo career have a somewhat limited appeal, Vai is responsible for unleashing something that helped to shape a later style of music; with the Ibanez guitar company, he created a signature line of seven-string axes (apparently six-string models were a cinch at that point). Nineties bands such as Korn and Limp Bizkit brought Vai's creation, which had existed in relative obscurity for nearly a decade, to the forefront of the nu-metal musical movement, utilizing the instrument's lower seventh string to create bottom-heavy, ultra-distorted grooves.
Vai has spent recent years releasing more inaccessible solo records (on some of which he sings), creating his own record label (Favored Nations, which mainly signs freakishly talented studio musicians) and creating his own line of amplifiers.
Steve Vai plays Saturday at Bogart's in Cincinnati.
With over an entire decade of '80s backlash behind us, there isn't much left to criticize about the era's much-maligned pop-metal genre.
L.A.'s Warrant are counting on this.
The popular late-'80s group (not to be confused with the much heavier and sinister Warrant from the early '80s that hailed from Germany) struck hair band gold with its hits "Cherry Pie" and "Heaven," only to be unceremoniously booted from the charts by something called alternative rock in 1992.
Nevertheless, the nostalgia circuit has been kind to Warrant, as it has for colleagues Poison and Ratt. These bands began reunion tours sometime in the late nineties and never really stopped.
Wednesday's show at Indy's new, cozy venue the Music Mill has, at the very least, curiosity value; after 20 years, can these guys muster the same onstage energy in their heyday? Do they remember the chords to their tunes?
The answer, at least to the latter question is most likely yes. But before writing off the show as meaningless rehash, think about this: In two decades, Three Doors Down will be playing the same sort of venues, and you'll be reminiscing about the days when their songs ruled the charts.
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