Yes, it's true, the Smashing Pumpkins are in the studio! Sweet! I wonder if D'arcy and James Iha are back in the fold. Regardless, I can't wait to hear the new stuff! :-D

I guess it's a good thing I decided to bring a radio to work to listen to the game. Man, did the Flyers get toasted!! Thankfully, it was a slow evening at everyone's favorite beef emporium; I got to hear each of the Sabres' goals in an 8-2 blowout. The series moves to Philly for games on Wednesday and Friday. It would be nice to see the Sabres win both to complete the sweep, but I kinda hope that we get a split down there and bring it back home for Game 5. Yes, that's just a little selfish since I'll be at Game 5 if it's necessary. I'd love to see them win the series at home. Heck, I'm not that picky, I'll just take a win in the series however it may come: a sweep, seven games, all that matters is that we get to the next round.

It's so nice to have Sabres playoff hockey again...it's been way too long. :)

I was at the Sabres' double-OT win over the Flyers in Game 1 of the playoffs on Saturday. What a game. Unfortunately, I'll be lucky to even listen to tonight's game. If it goes to five, which it probably will, I'll be at that game. :) I'll leave you with a Game 1 highlight...

What would April be without a Sabres-Flyers playoff series? It was looking like a first-round matchup with the Rangers, but it was not to be. Oh well, I'd rather see the Sabres stomp on the Flyers anyway. :) I'm pretty confident after the strong close to the regular season. I was at the 6-0 drubbing of Toronto; that was an awesome game. I'll also be at the first playoff game. I'm stoked!

Bass extraordinaire Stu Hamm put together a tour, inspired by Joe Satriani and Steve Vai's G3 series of tours, with fellow bass wizards Jeff Berlin and Billy Sheehan. They stopped at Club Infinity in Williamsville on Saturday night. I had to scramble a bit because I didn't know of the show before Friday night, but everything went well. I got there pretty early and bought my ticket at the door. The room is set up with tables around the sides and back. Thankfully, the people at the front of the line were the sitting type; I was the only the second person on the floor. I had a great spot for the show, just off center against the rail.

I don't normally read much of the Gusto section in the Friday newspaper. I guess it's a good thing that I picked it up today while waiting for quitting time. I spotted a blurb on a concert tomorrow at Club Infinity that I had no idea about: the Bx3 tour, essentially a bass-centric version of Satriani and Vai's G3 series, featuring Jeff Berlin, Billy Sheehan and Stu Hamm. I'm not familiar with Berlin, but I'm going to try to get out there to see Sheehan and Hamm, who are two of my three favorite bass players (along with John Myung). Here's hoping the thing doesn't sell out...but I doubt if it will.

Joe Satriani's recordings of late have boldly explored new musical ground: 2000's Engines of Creation saw extensive use of synthesizers and other elements of electronic music, Strange Beautiful Music (2002) featured a seven-string guitar and much less use of high-gain tones, and Is There Love in Space? (2004) featured even more sonic experimentation and Joe's first vocal tracks in over ten years. While not a total about-face, Super Colossal is a departure from the trend, blending elements of Joe's recent work with tones and melodies that would be at home on Joe Satriani or Crystal Planet.

The album opens up strongly with the huge-sounding title cut. Satriani commented that he thought of playing "from the vantage point of being very small and seeing a fifty-foot person walking down the street playing a guitar." He nailed it perfectly. The album continues with a slew of excellent, yet diverse, cuts such as "Redshift Riders," "Ten Words," "A Cool New Way" and "Theme for a Strange World" that feature some of the most refreshing work Satriani has done in years while breaking little to no new ground. Still, his recent knack for doing things differently is still alive and kicking: the closing cut, "Crowd Chant," features an impromptu chorus singing along in response to Joe's playing.

I'll put it bluntly: I love this album. I rank it among Satriani's best, with Crystal Planet and Engines of Creation. (I'm sure that most JS fans won't share that list; unlike many, I'm not a huge fan of his early work.) I do not hesitate to call this my favorite album of 2006 (so far).

Rating: 5/5

...nuking and restoring a trashed Windoze machine. Warning: geek content. I got to do that with my sister's comp today. Oh yeah, my definition of fun. I wanted to nuke it back when I was still using it, before I got my Mac, but never got around to it. Well, I was finally forced into it after she picked up a virus. I've spent parts of the last 7 hours getting everything back up and running. The experience reminded me of just how much of a pain M$ is. Example: it took me all of 30 seconds to get wireless networking running on my iBook. It took closer to 30 minutes on the peecee tonight. I had to disable SSID hiding on the router and re-enable it once I got the peecee up on the network, whereas on the Mac, I could just manually enter the SSID. Much easier. Making matters more difficult were repeated crashes, most of which saw the machine spontaneously reboot, but one was a full-on attack of BSOD. Yep, the Windoze install was not even two hours old and it already bluescreened on me. Go figure. Well, at least it's done now and I'm back in my OS X comfort zone. :)

• Added photos from the Satriani show.
• Added a cover of Dream Theater's "War Inside My Head" to the music page.
• Updated my review of the new Rammstein album. (I will be doing reviews of a bunch of new or recent stuff in the coming days/weeks: Queensrÿche, Joe Satriani, System of a Down and Lacuna Coil.)

That is all.

So I saw Joe Satriani with Eric Johnson at UB Center for the Arts tonight. I got tickets a whole month after they went on sale, yet still got 11th row center. That's a little bit better than the seats I had for the Vai show last year, and I bought those tickets within a couple days of onsale. I was seriously pumped to see Satch...I've been a fan of his for 4-5 years and this was my first time seeing him. EJ...I've never been a big fan of his. I admire and respect his crazy skills but, from the little that I've heard of his stuff, he just doesn't do anything for me. Still, I went into this with an open mind.

I've been working on a cover of Dream Theater's "War Inside My Head" lately and it's moving pretty quickly. (Maybe that's because I'm doing it partially by request?) I'd say it's about 2/3 done. I recorded guitars yesterday, vocals this morning before work(!) and did overdubs on both this evening. All that's left to do before mixdown is to finish the drum track (just need to add some of the fills and such) and put down a bass part, which will be easier because I have my keyboard now. I'm hoping to have this song done by the weekend.

That's not all I've been doing...! After I finished touching up the guitar parts for WIMH, I laid down a bunch of riffs for Jeff to use in his techno stuff, and then I took a stab at this month's CJ monthly jam. I call this month's take "Stuck Mojo" because I was really having a tough time with this one. The takes where I thought my feel and phrasing were best were turning out sloppy, and the clean takes were bland. Finally, I just went all-out and ended up with a take that isn't anywhere near perfect technically, but feels great to me. Nerd note: I pulled out my old Boss octave pedal for this one...I bought that thing probably two years ago and this was the most I've ever used it. I've been meaning to sell it, actually...maybe I'll keep it around now. I was digging it.

Aside from that, I've done my first site update in a month tonight. I guess I'll have to do another one when I'm through with WIMH. Oh, the shame!

I took a look at the dt.net forums just now to see if the Radio City setlist is up...it certainly is. Needless to say, I'm absolutely thrilled!

I haven't followed Rammstein too closely lately. I suppose part of this is because of their notoriously long wait between albums. I was taken by surprise when I saw an ad on Sunday for the domestic release of Rosenrot, since it has only been 16 months since Reise, Reise was released in the US. The new album has been available internationally since December. I bought the Best Buy-exclusive 'special edition' which comes with a DVD of live footage.

After a few days, I'm still not certain of how I feel about a lot of the music on this disc. I suppose it's growing on me. It continues the trend that began with 2001's Mutter and continued on Reise toward more melodic and less industrial songwriting. The album opens strongly with the hard-hitting singles "Benzin," "Mann gegen Mann," and the title track, followed by another two melodic heavy cuts. Any of these would be equally at home on the previous two albums. It's in the second half of the disc, however, where Rammstein shows their continued evolution. "Stirb nicht von mir (Don't Die Before I Do)" is a softer ballad with a female vocalist singing lines in English intertwined with Till Lindemann's vocals. "Zerstören" is a slightly different take on R+'s usual heavy style. One song, "Te quiero puta!" is, obviously, in Spanish and comes complete with a trumpet section. The album's closer, "Ein Lied," continues the trend of closing with a ballad. One note: the band has kept their usual lyrical flair for the edgy and graphic, as evidenced by songs such as "Mann gegen Mann."

The DVD was obviously an afterthought, as there are no menus or other options. There are three live performances recorded at various points in 2005: "Reise, Reise," "Mein Teil" and "Sonne." The standout is easily "Mein Teil," with all its cannibalistic glory acted out on stage with Till decked out as a bloody, knife-and-flame-thrower-wielding butcher. The other two songs are decent performances but aren't anything special. I've seen more interesting performances of "Sonne."

Rating: 3.5/5. This is another good effort which I would rank above the band's first two albums, but it doesn't quite rise to the level of Mutter and Reise.

Update, 4/11: This album really grew on me. There are some really standout tracks. I'm upping my rating to a solid 4. There are a couple clunkers and missteps, but it's an excellent disc, right up with the last two.