Self Care – Great Guitar Solos: Beyoncé and Pete Wolford Play 1+1 (NSFW)

(There’s no nudity, but you probably don’t want to watch this music video at work.)

Now we’re definitely going off the beaten path, here, but with good reason.

I’ve always been aware of Beyoncé, but it wasn’t until I started listening to a podcast called The Read back in early 2016 (or was it late 2015?… I can’t remember) that I went from thinking “she’s talented, but not for me” to “holy shit she’s incredible, I love her music, and I could listen to it daily”. You see, Crissle and Kid Fury are probably more obsessed with Beyoncé’s music than I am with Led Zeppelin’s (which, as y’all know, is saying a lot). And that was infectious, for me, at least.

The first Beyoncé album I bought (through Tidal) was Lemonade (on the recommendation of both TWiBPrime and The Read), both the audio and the visual albums. It was so good I decided that I had to go back and listen to the rest of her solo output. So I did… and I’m definitely now a dedicated fan.

And so we get here…

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Self Care – Great Guitar Solos: Camel Plays Ice

This one yet again comes from the commenters… this time rubenremus (although, to be fair, I had this one planned for the original series back on my old blog… 😀 ).

Camel is one of those bands that’s criminally underrated, with Andy Latimer being a criminally underrated guitarist.

This instrumental is very Pink Floyd-esque, with Latimer playing very Gilmour-esque guitar solos.

This is just audio, so there’s nothing to watch.

The first guitar solo (well, more of a riff, but still very solo-ish) starts at 0:07 and ends at 1:35. The second guitar solo starts at 1:52 and ends at 2:54. The third guitar solos starts at 3:57 and ends at 7:36. The fourth guitar solo starts at 8:14 and ends at 10:05 with the end of the song…

Enjoy!

Self Care – Great Guitar Solos: King Crimson Plays The Night Watch

Another one suggested by a commenter, this time Johnny Vector.

Robert Fripp is such an incredible guitarist. His playing is very unconventional; he does some weird and very cool things with his guitar, even, somehow, when he’s just playing a straight solo. This one, King Crimson’s The Night Watch, is a nice example…

The solo starts at 2:49 and ends at 3:39.

There’s just audio here, no video…

Enjoy!

Self Care – Great Guitar Solos: Stevie Ray Vaughan and Johnny Copeland Play Tin Pan Alley Live

This next one comes to us from Marcus Ranum. I love Stevie Ray Vaughan, and miss him very much. He was an amazing guitarist. Johnny Copeland was another amazing guitarist in his own right, who I also miss very much. So Stevie and Johnny playing together?

Nothing but pure guitar magic.

This is a 13 minute and 20 second video, so make sure you’ve got that time blocked off…

The first solo, played by Stevie, starts at 0:14 and ends at 1:36. The second solo, a short one played by Johnny, starts at 3:29 and ends at 3:39. The third full solo, taken by Johnny, starts at 5:33 and ends at 6:48. Stevie immediately takes the fourth solo, which starts at 6:51 and ends at 8:05. Johnny comes in with the fifth solo at 9:31, ending it at 10:52.

It’s just… so amazing. Both guitarists are mesmerizing, and both have an amazing command of the Blues. Enjoy!

Self Care – Great Guitar Solos: Jimi Hendrix Plays Third Stone from the Sun

(Obviously, this has gone up an hour early, as this series is being incorporated into my Self Care series. The others will go up at the normal 12 pm time, but still as part of my Self Care series for the foreseeable future.)

Story time!

I’m a huge fan of psychedelic and experimental rock. I’m also, incidentally, fascinated by LSD, and while I haven’t tried it yet, I hope to one day. Since I am fascinated by LSD, I’m constantly on the look-out for music clearly inspired by it. And finding such music is, of course, very easy. So many genres, songs, and even full albums to choose from (I mean… we’ve all heard Sgt. Pepper’s and Magical Mystery Tour… right?).

One day, it occurred to me that writing a musical soundtrack to an LSD trip would be awesome. Of course it’s been done before, but this one would serve a specific purpose: envelope a trip with positive, major-key music to keep it happy, while expounding upon the wonders of the universe, allowing the person or people taking the trip to fly through the Cosmos, spurred on by guitar, keyboards, drums, bass, atmosphere, and many different scientists to visit the very birth of our universe and, eventually, the birth of us… and the cosmic tourists would come back home, enlightened, happy and content. So obviously it would have to last as long as a trip does, which means I won’t finish this until I go on a trip myself… it’ll be as long as mine lasts.

In looking for a spark of creativity short of LSD itself, I kept coming back to this Jimi Hendrix song. Something about it fascinates me. I’m sometimes surprised by how many people I know, including Hendrix fans, who find this overly-long, meandering, and boring, but I guess that’s the kind of thing I love. And it inspired the first part for my LSD suite, tentatively titled The Heven Suite.

So here it is… the amazing Third Stone from the Sun…

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Great Guitar Solos – Pink Floyd Plays Shine You Crazy Diamond

I hope you have 25 minutes and 33 seconds to spare, because that’s how long this one is. And it has multiple guitar solos, and they are all amazing. But of course they are; it’s David Gilmour.

This one is audio only, so you don’t have to watch anything.

The first guitar solo starts at 2:09 and ends at 3:34. The second guitar solo starts at 5:11 and ends at 6:27. The third guitar solo starts at 7:34 and ends at 8:38. There some amazing little licks during the verses. Then some amazing saxophone solos. The fourth (slide) guitar solo starts at 15:43 and ends at 17:53. After the verses, there’s a really cool synthesizer solo that ends the song.

So turn off the lights, get yourself into some comfortable clothing and/or pajamas, light up a joint, pour a glass of your favorite alcohol to drink neat or on the rocks, take out your favorite picture of Syd Barrett, press play…

… and enjoy!

(It’s funny, but I could fill this series up with nothing but David Gilmour and Jimmy Page… so next week, how’s about some Jimi Hendrix?)

 

Great Guitar Solos – Lenny Kravitz Plays “Are You Gonna Go My Way?” (feat. John Paul Jones on Bass!)

Sadly, I do not know the name of the lead guitarist on this way (if anyone can tell me the names of his lead guitarist and his drummer, I’d really appreciate it), but I actually really like this solo. It’s short and sweet, but it just… it works for the song. It’s a perfect fit.

This is live at just about the only awards show I ever enjoyed, the 1993 MTV Music Video Awards (and yes… I may have been a fresh 6 years old at the time [turning 6 only four months earlier], but I did actually watch bits of it live… I have subsequently seen the entire thing in later years). And you know I love the fact that John Paul Jones, of Led Zeppelin fame, joined them on the bass. This whole thing is awesome…

The solo starts at 2:41 and ends at 3:12. Enjoy!

Quick warning about my next post: it’s gonna be Pink Floyd’s “Shine on You Crazy Diamond”… it’s a very long one.

Great Guitar Solos – Cream Play Crossroads Live

Often, when you love an artist, you eventually end up discovering that they really aren’t a great person. This has held true with Eric Clapton. It kinda sucks that this amazing guitarist who, like many other amazing guitarists, made his money playing the music of black people (the Blues), was also pretty damn racist (and considering the fact that he’s never actually apologized for those remarks, and actually reiterated his support for Enoch Powell over 30 years later, probably still is). Sadly, I can’t hold up one of his greatest guitar solos without at least mentioning his racism.

With that in mind, his guitar solos on their cover of Robert Johnson’s Crossroads is pretty damn incredible. Proof that “Slowhand” was more a misnomer than a nickname; he had speed.

(This video, BTW, was made by taking the track from Cream’s album “Wheels of Fire” and matching it with video from another show of them playing this same song.)

The first guitar solo starts at 1:28 and ends at 2:11. The second guitar solo starts at 2:32 and ends at 3:36.

Enjoy!

Great Guitar Solos – David Gilmour Plays This Heaven Live in Gdańsk

I really like this one. This Heaven is such a great song to begin with, and it’s such a really good guitar solo. Here’s Gilmour and his band (including Richard Wright [RIP]) playing this song at the Gdańsk Shipyards on August 26, 2006.

There are, technically, three solos in this song, but the first two are more just short bridges. The third and main solo starts at 2:31:

Enjoy!