I can still picture him now on that 7 string guitar, centre stage, all eyes on him creating an atmosphere of everything from maudlin to space fusion all by himself. At the Donington show we were actually treated to a full 15 minutes or so of Steve Vai playing from this album. Firstly, at Wembley Arena when he was playing in David Lee Roth’s backing band and secondly with Whitesnake at Monster of Rock. I was also lucky enough to see Via play twice during that period. Vai was the one made us want to pick up a guitar, partly because his playing for us was out of this world but partly because it had 7 strings and paint splatters on it and we had never seen anything like it before. At 14, we had never heard of Frank Zappa or the like. I bought this album when it was first released in 1990 as a 14 year old and me and my pals were completely blown away with his style, the way he presented himself and the fact that he could make an album without vocals but make that album talk. The reason I want to start with the 25 th Anniversary edition of Passion & Warfare is context really.
CD2 is the 25 th Anniversary edition of the classic Passion & Warfare, remastered and including 4 bonus tracks not included on the original release but recorded at the same time. CD 1 is Modern Primitive which are sketches and works in progress written shortly after Vai’s debut album in 1984, never before released. What we have here is a double CD with a whopping 31 tracks included.
I didn’t want to do this initially because I was actually pleased to see that the CD’s had been packaged with the re-release second and not as the number 1 CD that most releases would have gone for. My plans on how to write this review changed the more I listened to this album and unlike the presentation of the release I am going to start with CD2.
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