The notoriously talented trio The Aristocrats consisting of Marco Minnemann (Joe Satriani, Steven Wilson), guitar virtuoso Guthrie Govan (Steven Wilson) and bass guitar wizard Bryan Beller (Dethklok, Joe Satriani) have left their mark in the progressive rock industry, their fusion project would take a stop in Helsinki at The Circus on September 24th.
While having listened to their music, I was not sure what to expect out of a show. I decided it might be an interesting experience to attend one. I couldn’t have been more right.
With instrumental music, it’s always a bit tricky. Will you stay focused? What is going to happen? Especially with the kind of complex music these three musicians play. But The Aristocrats don’t just play music, they make a real performance out of it. By combining music with humor and interacting with the audience, they turned a complex concept into something that is worth experiencing. To put it in their own words, if you take yourselves too serious, it’s not worth the while.
Each band member announced some songs with a personal story and usually funny attached to why they wrote it. The evening went combined with some technical issues, such as Guthrie Govan vs. Pedal number 3, Marco Minnemann vs. the hi-hat and Bryan Beller versus an annoying fly. Each of them worked through all these challenges throughout the evening, resulting in one innocent casualty (the fly, may he rest in peace). But all nonsense aside. It was a really fun evening to watch and the band sure had a blast as well.
My favorite part of the evening was the last song “Smuggler’s Corridor” where the audience had to sing a little bit. Because dividing the audience into male and female was a bit outdated, because of the #MeToo movement, the trio divided the audience in terms of instruments, guitar, bass or drums. With myself being part of the guitar part of the crowd, I was proud to say that our part sounded like a pretty standard sing along, then came the drummers in the crowd, a pretty good follow-up but it went wrong with the bass players. We defined ourselves as a weird audience, after which Bryan Beller decided to let us do silly things, which we all went on board with, because it’s fun. A black metal styled sing along, two almost solos and a thrash metal styled singalong later, the end was there and I could only think by myself of how much fun I had.
Setlist
- Blues Fuckers
- Furtive Jack
- Culture Clash(problems with foot switch #3… more )
- Through the Flower
- Ohhhh Noooo
- See You Next Tuesday
- Get It Like That
- Bad Asteroid
- The Kentucky Meat Shower
- Flatlands
- Desert TornadoEncore
- Smuggler’s Corridor
