I recently picked up the Joe Satriani "Live In San Francisco" DVD and was blown away by his performance. I already have "Surfing With The Alien" but would appreciate comments/recommendations on his other albums.

Along a similar thread, I enjoyed Steve Vai's appearance with Nelly Furtado on the Grammys and would like to know which of his albums I should look for (besides "Passion And Warfare"). And I've noticed that Sony re-released several of his (and Satriani's) older albums back around 1998, but did they remaster them or just reissue the same versions?

AFAIK, the reissues were remastered as well.

Here are my favorite recommendations for Satriani / Vai music (ranked):
Steve Vai:
1. Passion and Warfare (which you already listed)
2. Fire Garden
3. Alien Love Secrets

Joe Satriani:
1. Surfing with the Alien (which you already listed)
2. Flying in a Blue Dream
3. The Extremist
4. Crystal Planet

Both of them:
G3: Live (features Satriani, Vai, and Eric Johnson)

My favorite Steve Vai album still remains Flexable, but it's not an album for everyone. He was still playing guitar for Frank Zappa when he made the album and you can definitely hear the influence Zappa had on him. Still there is some very interesting song writing and some great guitar playing.

The first 3 Satriani discs that edclem listed are essential Satch, I wasn't that big a fan of Crystal Planet.

Being a huge fan of both artists, my recommendations are : Get 'em all!

Seriously,

In the Vai catalog, I find myself listening to Fire Garden, Alien Love Secrets, and Ultra Zone quite a bit. (Don't forget to check out the Alien Love Secrets DVD. Amazing.)

As far as Satch goes, my faves are The Extremist, Cyrstal Planet, Joe Satriani (self-titled), and Time Machine (includes one disc of studio material and another of live material). Don't forget to pick up Joe's Live in SF DVD, also. Features a stellar 5.1 mix.

Steve Vai formed a band simply called "Vai". I loved alomst all of the songs on it. If you are lookin for just guitar music, don't get it. But if you want to hear Vai in a band that is not David Lee Roth's or Whitesnake, this is an awesome album to get.




Snoogins

My favorite album by either of them is still "Flex-able" by Vai.

Thanks for all the suggestions. Most of their albums seem to show up in the used CD stores around here fairly often, so I'll pick up what I can that way.

My Picks:

Satriani: Flying in a Blue Dream

Vai: Fire Garden