Jimi Plays Monterey / Shake! Otis at Monterey

Another one of my Criterion Collections’ 50% off purchases was “Jimi Plays Monterey / Shake! Otis at Monterey” which documents each artists’ performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. This is directed by D.A. Pennebaker - for the most part, straight concert footage is used, a credit to Pennebaker’s taste. One point where this strays during the music is during Otis’s “Try a Little Tenderness” where Pennebaker cuts in shots of various women in the audience and outside of the venue with children, lovers, etc. It’s short, very sweet, and manages to get beyond all the negative hippie mystique of the era and show the truly beautiful aspects of the 60’s - all in a short 2-3 (?) minute sequence. Very well done.

Both of these are historic performances and important documents of the history of rock and rhythm and blues music. There are many highlights, not the least of which is seeing a very young Donald "Duck" Dunn spasm all over his bass in glorious fashion.

I’m glad they’re in my collection.

Top 20 Guitar Solos - #2: Eruption - Eddie Van Halen

This is way too long for my tastes, but Eruption is a classic solo and this clip is fun for it shows Eddie in his heyday, showing off (or being a showman, if you prefer)

Top 20 Guitar Solos - #3: Freebird - Collins / Rossington

You've heard it too many times, I've heard it too many times. It's still a great song and solo, though. Even though there's too many crowd shots in this video, they're fun to watch.

Top 20 Guitar Solos - #4: Comfortably Numb - David Gilmour

A beautiful, tasteful solo - melodic and mournful:

Top 20 Guitar Solos - #5: All Along the Watchtower - Jimi Hendrix

The video and audio is a little crappy, but the solos on this are, indeed, amazing. From the Atlanta Pop Festival, summer of 1970, apparently - the original poster didn't put it in the title, but the comments on the YouTube post seem to nail down the show - can't be sure.



FWIW, I dedicate every song to the girl with the purple underwear.

Top 20 Guitar Solos - #6: November Rain - Slash

I pretty much hate Axl Rose, I like Slash, and the coda solo at the end is quite good, but this isn't the solo I would have picked for him. Not #6. No way. IMHOYMMV!

Top 20 Guitar Solos - #7: One - Kirk Hammet

6 degrees of Bob Daisley. As B$X aptly pointed out in the comments for #9, Crazy Train, Bob Daisley's bass tracks were removed when they remastered the classic Ozzy Osbourne albums. Who rerecorded these? Rob Trujillo - Judas bassist reprising his role here in Metallica, after they jettisoned Jason Newsted.

Just kidding (about the Judas reference, not the facts, ma'am). He's a great bass player.

Even though I like Metallica, I think this is a lesser example of the Guitar World "fast, flash, but soulless" problem. I don't like the song much, either.

So shoot me.

Top 20 Guitar Solos - #8: Hotel California - Don Felder / Joe Walsh

This is a very melodic, tasteful solo or perhaps it should be a duet? As an aside, I've never understood why someone would kill themselves with a double-neck guitar. Do you really need to play a 12 string guitar and a 6 string in the same song? Especially when there's TWO other guitar players?

Aside from that nitpicking, this is always fun to hear. Great song, too.

Top 20 Guitar Solos - #9: Crazy Train - Randy Rhoads

Forgive the XMen 3 advert at the beginning, but the pickings were slim for this solo:



I love this song, and the solo is fairly tasteful. Now if only the bass player would get a clue. And the cameraman.

Top 20 Guitar Solos - #11: Voodoo Chile - Jimi Hendrix

I stand up next to a mountain
chop it down with the edge of my hand...

I mentioned the original source of these videos in the first post for this year, with the #20 pick, City Rag.

Kudos to the concept, which I'm shamelessly copying here, but they get a D for execution. They obviously picked the first video they could find. In their link for today's post, it cuts out halfway through the solo! Other links provided half-assed videos as well, so I've made an attempt to do it right and cull the best videos I can find for each solo.

My 2 readers might appreciate this.

So... Jimi at Woodstock. Full strength at 8:52.




Um, you're not sick of me gushing about SRV are you? His version is, well, great, too.

Top 20 Guitar Solos - #12: Johnny B. Goode - Chuck Berry

All of Chuck Berry's songs are basically the same, but when then they're this good, who cares? Love the dancers and Chuck's facial expressions:

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:

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...