This was gonna be my first pick, if only because I figured not too many others were looking at as many of the rest of my picks. Alas, it's a Coral electric sitar. And this one was on a short list, but I thought it was just a bit too short and that someone might call it a riff (it does appear several times in the song). 2:34 to 3:08. The song ain't all that, but the solo says more in fewer notes than a lot of everything I've heard over decades of listening. Whoever recorded this song should have added some scratches and pops, 'cause the first two notes make it sound like it belongs on a vinyl of the Heat Of The Night soundtrack or something. Riding in the car with my dad on AL Hwy 20 between two small Alabama towns, only one station you can get (and even that's not real clear), one speaker in the dash and you'd hear something like this.
CK was a pioneer and her discography is legendary, but she needs to drop the claims for I Was Made To Love Her and Bernadette- those were James Jamerson and pretty much everyone knows it. Tal (and Esperanza Spalding) are top talents, but getting props for their looks that Carol never got. Spalding's leading her own bands as a singing bassist t this point. It remains to be seen whether Tal (who's only, like, 25 if that) gets the future studio work that CK used to get.
I just meant in terms of showing up at an early age... not sure Tal cares about the studio work the way Kaye did, seems more concerned about a context up to her talents than she is about money. A lot of kids leave home early to follow their dreams-- but not very many leave the whole damn hemisphere looking for a peer group. I've always wondered about the Jamerson controveries-- do we know for sure that Kaye claimed to play on the original? Because I'm fairly sure she played on the Beach Boys cover of "I Was Made to Love Her" and she may have been on the Eddie Kendricks tune "Bernadette," which is a different song entirely... are we sure both that she isn't just confused (she's what, 78 now) or that others are not confused about what she is claiming? Because a.) those are pretty obviously Jamerson and b.) did she ever record for/in Motown at all? How could she have come up with the notion in the first place? I'm aware that she has had some prickly interactions with various folk she's worked with, but that whole bidness seems just weird...
No, no, all props to her, she's a fantastic player. I'd kill for her chops (I'm less willing to practice for 'em, apparently). No, I think she's gonna be happy as a sideman and she'll get work as long as she wants to. But it would be cool to see her in a band of equal contributors. Like ARU- those guys can play with anyone, and do. But they're not famous enough on their own to make much money, but Herring and Oteil both front their own bands and play out when they can. That's what I'd like to see from Tal. http://www.talkbass.com/forum/f28/james-jamerson-carol-kaye-dispute-480668/ Check it out here. There's more Kaye/Jamerson threads on that site than I want to link. It's a topic of much debate and you'd probably get more out of reading this and other links than I could tell you about.
The solo is James Calvin Wilsey, a disciple of the Duane Eddy/Link Wray schools... Producer was Erik Jacobson, about whom I know only that he also produced Tim Hardin, and that he produced the Norman Greenbaum version of "Spirit In the Sky."
As mentioned already by Ismitje I think I would have drowned had I tried to participate in this draft. Most of my choices would have been mainstream (and Scottish) with selections from Big Country but I'd be screwed already as there are two guitarists on the section I would have selected (1.25 onwards). I still love how they produced that unique (to me anyway) sound of 'bagpipe rock' for want of a better term. Roddy Frame would have made it in there but i see CyC has already mentioned him and Jim and William Reid but I believe they were also selected. My main mainstream would have been this still love that although it may not offer anything special to anyone on here. It also has the added bonus of having his tit of a brother having to sit on the edge of the stage swinging his legs like a little lost kid while the adults play the proper music. Again, not sure if that would count as a proper solo for this comp. I don't know if Brian May was a figure of ridicule throughout this draft or not to be perfectly honest but I would have had this anyways Again. Unsure as to whether or not that would qualify(2.25 - 2.49) but if not I would have picked something else (Killer Queen possibly) But my biggie would have been John Martyn. Had the pleasure to see him live at a Mayfest festival in Glasgow in the early 90's. I didn't know him or his music at the time but we stayed for the full show (Mayfest was a series of concerts played at open air venues throughout the city in small areas/arenas) It's pretty much the whole song but he does sing a little too so hopefully it would have counted.
Yeah Yeah. I'm stuck in the 80's. I specifically didn't use that song on the clip. I do love a bit of Big Country though. Would I have been alright with The Skids...?
I was about a click away from including "In A Big Country" in my draft. It's really the only thing I know from them but those bagpipe/Scottish sounding sounds that the lead guitarist creates are pretty cool.
Speaking strictly for my own highly opinionated self and not for the other highly opinionated participants: Nah, I don't think the Big Country track has much that could be called a solo-- they often just riff their way through things. Not a fan of the band, either. You want "bagpipes on the guitar," go to Richard Thompson... Why on earth would the Oasis thing not be a solo? You would have had to provide the song part so that we could see that it wasn't an instrumental, but I assume that was pulled out after the vocals were all done. Wouldn't have scored high with me though-- I have no ears for that band. I assume the huge media bubble reflected actual fans, but I've literally never met one. I run into Rushheads all the time, but never an Oasis crank. The band seems to me to suffer from all the limitations of Petty and the Heartbreakers-- deriviative and superficial-- with none of the saving graces... Brian May? While I don't care for that band much either, and think Brian May overrated, I do not think he's very much overrated, only slightly. I scored the thing someone did take very high, and expected more people to take him. Your choice is by the way excellent to my ears. John Martyn from his zombie phase... Jeezus, did he buy that kit from Shawn Phillips or something? Well at least he's more creative with the effects than Amy Ray with hers. And yeah that would have qualified. You'd have still had six more selections; hopefully there'd have been something from Texas or The Triffids, two bands I shamefully neglected to think of?
All y'all are lucky i stumbled upon this on youtube late in the game. #1 - it's an almost identical set list as the one I heard at The Ritz in NYC just a few nights later back in '88. Still remains far & away the most blistering, kickass concert I've ever witnessed & probably ever will. I've seen the dinosaurs (The Stones, The Who, Springsteen, Boston, Fleetwood Mac), the next wave (U2, REM) and the obscure (Einsturzende Neubauten, Swans, Sisters of Mercy) but nothing tops them. #2 - a 3 piece band that seemingly popped up out of nowhere in the mid-80s but were many years in the making. Pounding rhythm section and a singer/guitarist in Bill Carter who seemingly toyed with his instrument, strummed with his fingertips on extra heavy strings till they bled (creating a unique sound) and had what one reviewer termed "an almost unhealthy obsession with Americana" #3 - this set has a little something for everyone. A Hank Williams cover, a cartoon novelty song, plenty of hard-charging punked up R&B like Jesus Chrysler Drives a Dodge, All Shook Down, Clearview, Sweet Water Pools, Someone To Talk To and maybe the coolest song they did that night...a slow, bluesy President Kennedy's Mile. Ladies & Germs, live from the Paradise in Boston, it's The Screaming Blue Messiahs:
Clapton said that Brian May does stuff that he has difficulty with. take that for what you wish. not the best Triffids song but one of my faves Parental lyric advisory...
Oh I'm sure; no one would ever question May's technique. And Clapton's "divinity" falls in the somewhat narrow range of the blues... The Triffids as Cars wanna-bes, huh? I'm a bit embarassed; the Triffids stuff I was thinking of was from "Calenture," which I dealt with in my time in radio. The record promoter told me they were Scots, and I never thought twice about it until this afternoon. Seems they are from the very extreme southeast of Scotland, where women glow and men chunder... Another band that is from that neck of the woods is KMO-- I also intended to look their stuff over...
Those were two of the guys I was talking about when I complained that some people did their best work on instrumentals; in fact "White Cliffs" was one of the tracks, but I was thinking of "Surfing With the Alien" for Satriani... Nobody took any Buddy Guy, huh?
the absolute best guitar playing i have ever been personally witness to was at the Long Beach Blues Festival about 30 years ago, maybe, and Buddy Guy was playing with a 50 foot long chord and went down into the audience for a bit. think it was 1984. dude freakin' tore it up, jack. oh, and i was clean and sober. 10 years.
No for The Triffids but I'd say yes to Texas. As for others I'd have had to have given it a lot more thought. What stands out head and shoulders from Texas's back catalogue for the purposes of this draft? I can think of other Scottish bands such as Franz Ferdinand and Glasvegas as two examples but the fact both are new millennium bands would possibly have counted against them in this draft. Are there only so many things you can do on a guitar which would suggest anything from the 90's onwards has already been done earlier, and better...? Just to clear up, I wasn't attempting to insinuate that the drafters were full of themselves, not at all. What I was attempting to say was the drafters obviously know their stuff on this particular subject. I'm more a casual observer of guitar solos. If it sounds good then that's about good enough for me.
This might fall under "Great Riffs" but it don't matter. The Man is an American original. And the uninterested hippies in the video crack me up:
Sorry for being an undependable participant in this draft. Sounded awesome, was fun, but I had a bit too much "real life" happen during its course. Cheers though!
Probably the late 70s, to be honest. I don't know what the neoclassicalmetal guys were doing back then, I admit, so maybe they came afterward. I respect what they do, but none of it interests me as much as what I chose. The bolded. All the guys chosen in the draft can/could play, IMO. But I'm sort of a listener whose fave solos are "Wow! What made him choose to do that?" kinds rather than "Wow! How'd he learn to do that?" It won't win me this draft, but I can live with that, knowing I didn't just pander to the vote.
I like that song. I don't think of that phrase as a solo, tho, but a riff. It's interesting that 80s pop/rock had two distinct types of guitarists making popular music. One one end you have guys like The Edge and Andy Summers (who CAN play, but was filling a more "textural" role with the Police), and on the other you've got the guys from Ratt, White Lion, Great White, Whitesnake, White Wolf, White Tiger, you get the pic. I want to revisit this even tho I know I've replied once. I think there's come a point where the use of the instrument to make music might have outstretched the average listener's interest in that instrument. People are going to get better and better at an earlier age, but IMO our perception of the guitar --and of rock-- means that it's not going to matter that much to most of us, myself included. I'm on record here as being a big fan of Pat Metheny (especially with his actual guitar tone), but the fact is I'm not really a big fan of guitar jazz in general, or of guitar accompaniment in jazz. I'd much rather hear jazz with a horn as the primary solo instrument and a piano as the primary accompaniment most of the time. Similarly, if I want to hear something that sounds like it would transfer well to a string quartet or an orchestra, it doesn't necessarily follow that I'm always going to dig hearing it from a rock band. From my POV, the sounds and inflections I most enjoy hearing from the guitar (and from the rock that I think it best fits) were created prior to the mid-80s. They can always be improved on in terms of technique --have been, already-- but I don't know that I'll personally be as responsive to anything "new" as I have been in the past. As for "earlier and better", we're all trapped in our musical and social upbringings. The new guys will be better technically than the ones who came before, but we'll usually attach some magical edge to the players we heard when were young. We also tend to ignore the different nuances in an interpretation of an old riff or phrase and are quick to point out who did it first or when we were young. I do it, done it a bunch, and so does everyone else. Even the greats have heroes they never place themselves above, because it usually wasn't superior technique than made them listen to that hero to begin with. Original music (that's what most of these famous bands are playing) doesn't really allow for a real measuring instrument (pun intended).
I really like your take AP. I would like to suggest one thing -- Pat Metheny is a guitarist whose work is very difficult to categorize. To call it jazz isn't wrong in an absolute sense, because he does what most jazz musicians do, create a melodic line and then improvise on the chord structure within the melody/bridge/chorus. Also, he plays with lots of jazz musicians in side projects other than the Pat Metheny Group. I've never liked the term "fusion" as applied to the musical genre that is positioned somewhere between jazz and pop, but I guess it fits Metheny. Where I struggle with the label of jazz guitarist is that Metheny rarely writes music that sounds like the contemporaneous music from the period during which it was composed. The following is a quote from the Wikipedia article on his group:
My only concern early on was that I didn't know if he had done any work with standards, either from the mid-50s-early 60s or from various types of "Latin" (vague, I know, but we usually get it) jazz. He has, and IMO he's now free to compose his own standards, which are rarely swingish but absolutely do display the elements of good jazz and most importantly, don't venture into that R&B realm like George Benson and Earl Klugh did and do. I admit that I've been disappointed by some of the vids of his recent live performances, where he sometimes seems to be playing to the audience he wants money from rather than the one that respects his ability on a higher level. Not fond of it myself, and I'd pass on using it to describe Metheny.