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 – Emerson, Lake, and Palmer Live in Zurich, Switzerland on December 4, 1970; Aired in Belgium in 1971

Screw it… you’re getting a whole ELP show.

In 1971, Belgium TV, specifically the show Pop Music (AKA Pop Shop), aired a gig from ELP, recorded live in Zurich, Switzerland on December 4, 1970. Now, for some strange, unexplained reason, the show decided to air the gig massively out of order, starting off with the improvisation that ended the original show in Zurich.

Also, Greg Lake screws up the lyrics to Knife Edge, skipping over the first verse entirely and singing the second verse twice… which is sad, because it’s otherwise the best live version I could find of Knife Edge on video… and I want to give that to y’all in the future, as well… but I’m gonna keep looking…

Regardless, though, it’s an amazing performance from this incredible band, made up almost entirely of instrumental improvisations with some full songs and singing sprinkled here and there. Keep in mind that this is a 52 minute and 1 second watch. It’s a mesmerizing watch, though, especially when Keith does his very best to murder one of his keyboards… with knives… (skip to 16:10 to see how that starts)

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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 – Porcupine Tree Plays Linton Samuel Dawson

(Quick note: this video is made to be trippy… lots of colors and such. The flashing is minimal here, but still… just be careful if you’re sensitive to this kind of thing…)

Since my last post talked about LSD and the music inspired by it, here’s one I thought y’all would enjoy, and get a kick out of. This was recorded back when Porcupine Tree was just Steven Wilson. And yes, that’s him singing; just with some added effects to his voice.

The video is not official at all. It’s just… well… it fits with the theme of the song, if there even is one…

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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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