My buddy and I arrive in Pittsburgh around 5:00pm, just as it's getting dark. We find $3 parking about 2 blocks away from the venue, AJ Palumbo Center. We ask the girl working in the parking box if there are any good bars around because we want to down a few before the show starts. She points us in a direction and says that the bars are down that way. So we start walking. Perhaps 6-8 blocks away we find that we have walked straight into a ghetto. Now being two white boys from a rural area, we began to question whether we should continue in our fruitless search to find a bar, or just go back to where the concert is going to be, and wait there. We decided to stop on a corner and I called information on my cell phone to get the number for a cab. About that time, a black lady comes towards us, and asks if we are lost. We must've looked sorely out of place. We tell her that we're trying to find a bar. She says she knows where one is, and we follow her through the ghetto. She informs us that last week someone was murdered on the very corner where we were standing trying to get a cab. We arrive at some run-down pizza joint that sells beer. So by this point we have about an hour before the doors open up for the show. We are straight killing beers at this place. They were selling budweiser bottles for a buck a piece. During the hour, we each had about 6-a-piece. By now it's 6:30pm, and it's time for the doors to open. We get in a line that has developed outside of the arena. I always forget about the various types of people you'll see at a rock concert. I get out of line and go to the "will-call" box to get my backstage passes that I won through satriani.com. Finally we get inside the venue and immediately find ourselves in line to buy extremely overpriced merchandise. My buddy and I each drop $32 on a G3 t-shirt. We go to find our seats which were on the floor, row 13. We noticed the rows only went to 12 though. So we found some guy who was working the show, and he said that we had been relocated. At first I was worried that we were gonna get screwed out of our awesome seats, but then the guy gave us new tickets, front-and-center, 6th row. TITS! While we were waiting for the show to start, we decided to make another bad investment. They were selling plastic cups of beer for $5, so we each got one, and meandered back to our seats. About 10 minutes later the show was starting, I was pretty wasted, and definately ready to rock.
By the time Vai left, some dude came in and told us we all had to leave because there were still people in line waiting to meet these guys. A bunch of rocker dudes who were there to meet Yngwie felt cheated because he was a no-show. Sucks to be them I guess. I met who I was there to meet.
Well, that was it I guess. We went back to where I parked and did our best to get out of Pittsburgh (an extremely confusing city because of all the one-way-streets). I am convinced I saw the best guitarist in the world that night, although I don't know which of them it was :) At any rate, I had an awesome night that I just had to share with you guys. If anyone else went to a G3 '03 show as well, please submit your own review on this thread.
-Lee
Blues is easy to play, but hard to feel.
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