Call it the music world’s reply to G8 because when the world’s best rock guitarists meet, their six strings become mightier than the pen and musicians can’t help but keep a tab on every note they pluck.

G3 started in the year 1996, when Joe Satriani wanted to team up with good guitarists and jam. His jam session with his student Steve Vai was an experience he wanted to share with his fans. And to take it to a higher level, he invited Eric Johnson. The result was a never-before-heard guitar experience.

Music possesses the quality to transport the listener to different realms and G3 concerts were all about letting loose. In a way, it was an escape from the real to the surreal. It may sound fake coming from a person who hasn’t been to their concerts. But listening to G3-live CDs with friends, smoking the illegal, is not much removed from the ground reality in Denver (where they were performing). Here are some compositions that define the Great 3.

Joe Satriani’s Flying in a Blue Dream is one number that’ll take your feelings for a ride. You’ll be soaring above the skies before you plunge into the blue ocean. It’s a ride with sharks and stingrays. It’s like listening to Strauss’ Blue Danube in a celestial waltz. I am sure Queen Victoria would have loved it. In case you think Flying is slow, listen to Surfing With the Alien. It’s out of this world.

‘Our most beautiful songs are the ones that sing of our saddest thought’. That sums up Steve Vai’s For the Love. It starts with a high note strummed from right down the guitar’s neck and it refuses to climb down. Like a jilted lover pushed to the edge, the song goes into a whirl of passion and you can see him break down to tears. The swift shuffling of high-pitched notes drills into the listener’s heart and leaves you with an aching soul.

Eric Johnson’s Cliffs of Dover is one number you should hear before you die. The white cliffs off the southern coast of the UK (in pix), overlooking the sea, is where it’ll take you. If you are a history student, you might even see merchant ships on the horizon and hear people make merry on the chalk cliff. It’s a peppy song easily comparable to Vivaldi’s Spring From Four Seasons. Eric composed this piece in five minutes. It came to him like a gush of wind (like he would if he was standing on a cliff). It was ‘a spontaneous overflow of emotion’. Yes, it is poetry in a universal language called music.