Recurring Themes
Satriani's work frequently makes references to various science fiction stories and ideas. "Surfing with the Alien," "Back to Shalla-Bal," and "The Power Cosmic 2000" refer to the comic book character Silver Surfer, while "Ice 9" refers to the secret government ice weapon in Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle. "Borg Sex" is a reference to Star Trek, which features a homogeneous cybernetic race known as the Borg. His albums and songs often have other-worldly titles, such as Not of this Earth, Crystal Planet, Is There Love in Space?, and Engines of Creation.
On the album Super Colossal, the song titled "Crowd Chant" was originally called "Party on the Enterprise." "Party on the Enterprise" featured sampled sounds from the Starship Enterprise from the Star Trek TV show. But as Satriani explained in a podcast, legal issues regarding the samples could not be resolved and he was unable to get permission to use them. Satriani then removed the sounds from the song and called it "Crowd Chant." The song is used as goal celebration music for a number of National Hockey League teams and MLS teams including the Minnesota Wild and New England Revolution. The song is also used in the EA Sports hockey video game NHL 10.
"Redshift Riders," another song on the Super Colossal album, is "based on the idea that in the future, when people can travel throughout space, they will theoretically take advantage of the cosmological redshift effect so they can be swung around large planetary objects and get across universe a lot faster than normal," Satriani said in a podcast about the song. On the album Professor Satchafunkilus and the Musterion of Rock the song "I Just Wanna Rock," is about a giant robot on the run who happens to stumble upon a rock concert.
Read more about this topic: Joe Satriani
Famous quotes related to recurring themes:
“America is the world’s living myth. There’s no sense of wrong when you kill an American or blame America for some local disaster. This is our function, to be character types, to embody recurring themes that people can use to comfort themselves, justify themselves and so on. We’re here to accommodate. Whatever people need, we provide. A myth is a useful thing.”
—Don Delillo (b. 1926)