BAD HORSIE WAS LET LOOSE BY THE KING OF INSTRUMENTAL `WANKER` ROCK




Instrumental hard rock was always a bit wanker-ish if you get what I mean, a sub-genre of the real deal which catered mostly for egotistical self indulgent show ponies who traded a band with some actual singing for exclusive limelight. 

Amazingly, probably the most ego driven and `I love me` of all heavy rock guitarists, Deep Purple`s Ritchie Blackmore, I dont think ever made an instrumental album.

Probably because he was always too busy trying to hold that band together and stop the band from imploding due to intense personal rivalries, by the mid 90`s even he as band leader was gone, his place taken by one of the masters of instrumental rock, the legendary Steve Morse. 

Morse cut some wacky but highly innovative instrumental rock, with a big dose of dixie, with a band carrying his name - The Steve Morse Band, throughout the 70`s and even into the 80`s. 

One of the most recognisable instrumental guitarists on the planet over the past two decades has been the unmistakable Steve Vai from the US. 

To be perfectly honest, apart from Vai`s classic part-vocal album FIRE GARDEN which he released around 1996, I have never had a lot of time for all his other fully instrumental albums. 

To me it`s a case of heard one heard them all. Instrumentally he has diversified his style largely album to album, which I give him credit for, so instrumentally he isn`t as repetitious as AC/DC, but without vocals not even a guitarist as daring as Vai could hold the average person`s attention for 20 years
without boring them to tears. 

Fellow instrumentalist Joe Satriani is in the same category, brilliant and daring but too much of a good thing. Satriani done the right thing forsure by becoming the guitarist for classic retro supergroup CHICKENFOOT, led
out front by veteran hard rocker Sammy Hagar.

For the first time in a quarter of a century Joe Satriani has finally got a band identity to go with his inspired heavy rock guitar playing.

Besides the album FIRE GARDEN, there`s an
instrumental of Steve Vai`s that rates as
one hell of a good hard rock song. 

Taken off the ALIEN LOVE SECRETS album, it
is called BAD HORSIE, a super heavy example of grunge rock given a real Metallica workout. 

Take a song off Neil Young`s LIVE RUST and add the riff of Metallica`s THE THING THAT
SHOULD NOT BE and you will be close to what this song sounds like.

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