oh yay my favorite topic; countess vaicula
my admiration for him as a studio player came and went with the blue powder soundpage he did for guitar player in the mid 80s. it had some actual raw tone and playing moments that i though were great if you filtered out the non stop whammy pitch nonsense and quadruple overdubs. in my mind it's as close to my interest in hearing the guy play an entire album with a les paul and bassman as he ever achieved, with boy from seattle off alien love secrets as a distant second. maybe a delay and overdrive pedal would be ok, but drop the zany dry humping cartoon whammy wang bar sound fx shtick already.
i always took it as if he was influenced by his satch guitar lessons days playing outside the box vibrato bar chaos, but never matured fully enough to know when too much goody or weird was too much. satch has some of that in his early playing and recording too but he never seemed gawdy to me and was infinitely more interesting and mature as a player.
so i'll admit blue powder was pretty cool for that time era, however if i had to "watch" him track that in the studio-particularly the "tender" parts, i would have thrown up in my mouth.
his live tone and performance with roth on eatum and smile tour was impressive as well. the musical interplay with sheehan was fun to watch and listen to. more so than the studio album which again for me was so campy and silly compared to a typical VH album. it was the start of feeling like vai contaminated anyone he played with by making the misix silly and gimmick laden.
vai did the same thing with whitesnake. compare the sykes album with slip of the dung and it's a serious WTF gypsy disco b movie soundtrack. same with alcatrazz. for the record i consider graham bonnett's vocal performances on a par with eavesdropping in on a heated phone conversation between charles neslon riley and gilbert gilbert godfried, so any alcatrazz song is fabulously uprooted the instant that ear rapist cracks his pie hole, but as for the guitar playing and tone, alcatrazz w/yngwie was a life changing record i played until the grooves wore smooth. an amply hairy pair of mastodon testicles heaving to and fro in slow motion across the pre ice age volcanic tundra, compared to vai's discarded fly pubes on cold chicken nuggets happy meal. he disturbed my peace for sure. i think i listened to that album once or twice front to back and never listened again. utter disappointment.
