Fire Garden

Wikipedia information
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Fire Garden is a 1996 album from guitarist Steve Vai. This is his fifth solo album, as Alien Love Secrets is an EP.

Fire Garden is divided into two “phases”. Phase 1, consisting of everything from “There’s a Fire in the House” to “Fire Garden Suite”, is all instrumental (with the exception of Devin Townsend’s backwards vocals on “Whookam” and some more vocals toward the end of “Fire Garden Suite”). The remainder of the album, Phase 2, features Vai on vocals on every song except “Warm Regards”, which is an instrumental.

The album was intended to be a double album, but at mastering time Vai heard about the new 80 minutes CD format (instead of 74 for standard CD), and both sides would eventually fit on one disk.

“Dyin’ Day” was co-written by Ozzy Osbourne(?) during the writing sessions for Osbourne’s Ozzmosis album, which was released in 1995. One other song from those sessions (“My Little Man”) made its way onto Ozzmosis, and is credited on that album as being co-written by Vai.


allmusic information
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Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Steve Vai offers the following words of advice about Fire Garden, his fifth solo album: “This is essentially a double CD packed onto one. In this package there are over 74 minutes of music. Phase I (for the most part) is all instrumental music, and Phase II (for the most part) is all vocal selections, with the exception of ‘Warm Regards.’ …