Top 20 Guitar Solos - #13: Texas Flood - Stevie Ray Vaughan

I'm a little jaded to familar blues riffs these days, but SRV manages to put enough intensity and skill into this that it's a joy to listen to, even if it is the same 12 bar blues... holy s<cuckoo!>t, this is fantastic, virtuousity WITH soul:

Best odds making I've seen all week on the big game

From "Deadspin" commentator, "Suss":

Ace Ventura rescues Peyton Manning and Snowflake the Dolphin from a female police lieutenant who used to be Mike Vanderjagt (14:1)

Top 20 Guitar Solos - #14: Layla - Eric Clapton and Duane Allman

Unfortunately, I could not find any clips with Allman playing the great slide part, but this is a pretty good performance with Phil Collins on drums. Nice work.

Top 20 Guitar Solos - #15: Floods - "Dimebag" Darrel

Wow! "Dimebag" Darrel can bend harmonics! Another example of Guitar World's adolescent view of what makes a good guitar solo. It's weird - the good stuff is in here, but they sprinkle this techincal/souless stuff in, IMHO! YMMV!

Top 20 Guitar Solos - #16: Heartbreaker - Jimmy Page

This is more like it:



'Nuff said.

Top 20 Guitar Solos - #17 - Eric Johnson - Cliffs Of Dover

Even though the tone and technique on this is excellent, this being a step ahead of any of the prior solos in ranking (or even the majority on the entire list) is kind of a crime. I think this exemplifies the "Guitar World" mentality at its worst. There is some virtuosity here, certainly; but it just doesn't seem like rock and roll to me...

Top 20 Guitar Solos - #18: Little Wing - Jimi Hendrix

This video pisses me off with it's pot-induced leanings, but it's the best live version I could find. This is from Hendrix's 1968 Royal Albert Hall concert.



Here's a link to a nice Wikipedia article on Jimi.

Since that video is so poor, I can't help but to also post Stevie Ray Vaughan doing an amazing performance of Little Wing. I also like Tommy Shannon's bass lines on this one. SRV throws in a nice Third Stone from the Sun piece at the end, too, though the video cuts it off abruptly. Enjoy.

Top 20 Guitar Solos - #19: Highway Star - Ritchie Blackmore

I don't agree with the exact ranking of this one, but it's fun to watch early Deep Purple. Perhaps I'll post my own top 20 after I get these up.

This clip is filmed in Denmark from the 1972 tour to promote their album Machine Head. From the wikipedia article on Blackmore:

The band included Rod Evans (vocals), Nick Simper (bass), Jon Lord (keyboards), and Ian Paice (drums). The band quickly scored a hit US single with its remake of the Joe South song "Hush". Nonetheless, after only three albums Evans and Simper were replaced by Ian Gillan (vocals) and Roger Glover (bass), both recruited from Episode Six.

Deep Purple's most famous album was Machine Head. The album was recorded by a mobile recording unit, the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio in Montreux, Switzerland. The band originally intended to record the album at a casino in Montreux, but the night before recording was to begin the casino hosted a Frank Zappa concert (with members of Deep Purple in attendance) at which an audience member fired a flare gun into the facility's bamboo roof. A tremendous fire ensued and the casino burned down. The entire tragedy is documented in the lyrics of what was to become Deep Purple's historic anthem "Smoke On The Water". The song opens with a simple Blackmore riff that many consider to be one of the most recognizable hard rock riffs ever recorded.

Don't miss Gillan kicking out an unruly audience member on this one...

Blogging for the new year

Wow - no posts since March 2006. I'm a blogger!

Still, for what it's worth, want to share this bit of fun with y'all.

Guitar World has complied a list of the "100 Greatest Guitar Solos".

Additionally, Boing Boing provided a link to some of the videos. I think an easy, blogger's project would be to repost these for the next 20 days, one video each day, counting down from 20.

So, without further adieu...

20. Bohemian Rhapsody - Brian May