thanks for making me smile on this dreadful Tuesday morning <3
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Glad you enjoyed it! I animated it while studying animation on a course, learned a lot from it.
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Some funny stuff here reading these older posts. I have a related story regarding Steve Vai. Not any stalker shit but I got a positive response. Sorry if this gets long winded.
I went to Berklee in the mid 90s. I was a massive Vai fan like many guitarists back then. My second semester I moved dorm rooms to be closer to the friends I had made the first semester. My new roommate and talked a lot about guitar and although he wasn’t into Vai he knew I was.
He mentioned in passing that at his parents house in California he had in his possession a thing called “The Steve Vai Real Book”. If you don’t know what a real/fake book is; it’s basically a collection of standards in simple lead sheet format. Basic staff with notated melody and chords written above. Usually associated with jazz standards but it can be any music simply notated. On a side note I seem to recall Pat Metheny has something to do with the original Real Book inception. A LOT of those lead sheets are photo copies of hand written notation and in the same handwriting so who knows.
Anyway I asked my roommate if he’d be willing to have it mailed to us at school so I could give it a gander. It arrived a while later and I had myself a looksee. It wasn’t a “real book” per se but a collection of almost every written article and transcription done about/by Vai. Photo copied out of magazines and various books. Copies of his transcriptions for FZ were in there as well as various notations in his hand for “Flex-able” and other originals. It was pretty cool but more of a novelty.
Since I had seen most of this stuff already in magazines and just following him. I asked my roommate about it’s origins and he didn’t have any idea. Only that he got it from one of his friends back in California. Anyway he let me keep it. Now at the time I got it the Internet was in it’s infancy and I kind of forgot about it. Until the early 2000s I mentioned it in passing to someone and they suggested I try and contact Vai himself. He had a website so I wrote a very short email to his webmaster detailing the story so far.
I didn’t get a response for a while and just figured that they weren’t interested. No biggie, it was out of mind when about 3 months later I got an email from the webmaster. He asked a bunch of questions about the book. Some about it’s content which I obliged and some about it’s origins to which I didn’t have an answer. He informed me after a few emails that he had mentioned it to Steve and the man himself was extremely curious!! Well I was beside myself. This is my guitar hero curious about something I had in my possession! They asked if I’d be willing to part with it temporarily and send it off to them for further inspection. Duh, of course! They sent me an address and I shipped it out that day.
Seemed like 27 months later I found that book delivered back to my doorstep. It’s was actually about 6 months. I opened that thing like I was Ralphie getting a red rider BB gun. Steve Vai had hand written me a letter congratulating me in all my hard work. Even though I just inherited this thing. In subsequent emails I made it clear I didn’t put it together. As I thumbed through the book I noticed Steve had made notes and comments on some of the pages. To top it all off they extended to me an amazing offer. Anytime Steve was in my area for a show they would get me tickets and free VIP access in perpetuity. Which amazingly enough I never utilized. I’m sure that offer has expired by now as he probably doesn’t remember and his staff has probably changed.
Anyway, I thought I’d share that. They were extremely gracious and friendly with me. I have the old book still in my attic. I could dig it out and scan some pages of his notes and letter for shits and giggles.
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That is an awesome story. Free anything in perpetuity is getting pretty rare these days!
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Eminem had a huge hit on this very topic:
@Troy I never took them up on the offer unfortunately. It was almost 20 years ago so the perpetuity probably ended. Sad face.