|
|
100 Most Influential Albums -Chapter Eight : The Guitar godsMar 29 '09 Write an essay on this topic.
Popular Products in Music
The Bottom Line Shreddin'!, pickin' and just plain great guitar music.
Over my life, I have developed a great love of music, and enjoy music each and every day of my life. I have thousands of albums, but out of those, which really opened my ears? I have attempted to compile a list of the 100 Most Influential Albums I have Heard. This is Chapter 8, the guitar gods. One day I discovered that I didn't just like the songs, I loved the guitar playing and started to focus on them. Guitar Heroes that started my love of guitar solos and even pure instrumental guitar albums. 1. Jeff Beck - Blow by Blow - (1975) My first real exposure to guitar gods after Jimi Hendrix (already mentioned in Chapter 3!) was Jeff Beck. I still remember a friend lending me his LP record. I was walking with it in the corridors of my high school and another student yelled Oh, you think you're cool 'cause your listening to Jeff Beck! He wasn't really popular when I was in high school, except to the kids that were really INTO music. I colored myself impressed and about five years ago, I repurchased the album in surround sound on SACD. The album's guitar pyrotechnic's still grab me today! 2. Stanley Clarke - I Wanna Play for You (1977) It was also back in high school that I learned that the bass guitar could sound just as amazing as lead guitar. Another LP record that I was lent was a guy someone descibed to me as Hendrix if he played bass guitar. I was thus introduced to the extraordinay bass of Stanley Clarke. His music was a mix of funk, R & B and rock n' roll. It was bass guitar as I had never heard it before. 3. Yngwie Malmsteen - Rising Force (1984) It was back in college that I discovered the music of Yngwie, a young Swedish guitarist. He was surely the inspiration for the character of Swisgar Swigelf lead guitarist of Dethclok on the show Metalocalypse. He was one of the first guitarists that I knew whose album featured not songs, but blistering classical music inspired guitar solos. I saw him in concert as the opening act for AC/DC on their Fly on the Wall tour in 1985. I even picked up a couple of his early LP records with the hard rock band Alcatrazz 4. Joe Satriani - Surfin with the Alien (1987) One of my friends knew I loved music and admired a great guitar player. Some new guy had come out with an amazing album of all instrumental guitar songs. Yes, Joe Satriani's second album, not only cemented his place in guitar history, but made instrumental guitar cool. I picked up albums by him here and there, and watched all the amazing G3 DVD concerts. I finally got to see Joe Satriani live last year. I went with my son, who is now also a huge Satriani fan. He spent hours learning to play the beautiful double tap solo song called Midnight on this album. It was an amazing show. 5. Steve Vai - Passion and Warfare (1990) Through Satriani, it didn't take too long to find his student extraordinaire, Steve Vai. Ironically, I had already heard of Vai, I just didn't know he had his own albums. In college, I listened to many a Zappa record featuring his guitar. In the summer of '87, I went to see David Lee Roth's Eat Em and Smile Tour. It was his first solo tour after splitting with Van Halen and he had to have a guitarist to take the place of legendary guitarist Eddie Van Halen. Steve Vai fit the bill and blew us all away at Roth's concert. His guitar playing was excellent. This is the first album I picked up by Vai, and eventually I purchased his whole discography. I saw Steve Vai's own concert performance a year ago at the Berkely Performance Center on his Sound Theories Tour. 6. Eric Johnson - Ah Via Musicom (1990) Thanks to G3, I also discovered the music of Texas guitarist Eric Johnson. I soon found the album with my favorite track, The Cliffs of Dover, an absolutely incredible piece of guitar music. The album Ah Via Musicom easily added Johnson as one of my favorite guitar players. I have since added both rockin' albums by him to my collection like Eric Johson Alien Love Child Live and almost mellow new age sounding guitar albums like Venus. He does all extremely well. 7. Buckethead - Robots and Monsters (1999) Truth be told, my first exposure to Brian Carroll a.k.a. Buckethead was from a video game I bought for my son, Guitar Hero. One of the bonus tracks was a tune called Jordan. It was this incredible complex melodic tune by an artist known simply as Buckethead. We went to the store in search of this artist and song. Turns out the song wasn't on any of his dozens of albums, but my first album by the man was Population Overload which intrigued me, and then this album Robots and Monsters that cemented Buckethead on my list of favorite new guitar players. The man can play alternative, heavy metal, folk, classical, and jazz, sometimes on the same album. Don't be fooled by the mask or the chicken bucket on his head, the man can play guitar. I now have almost a dozen albums by Buckethead and many more to go. 8. David Gilmour (1978) Although I had long been a Pink Floyd fan, it wasn't until sometime much later that I actually appreciated David Gilmour for the fantastic guitar player that he was, despite hearing his awesome note bending solos on so many Pink Floyd albums. Sometimes the other members of Pink Floyd's artistic contributions could be overshadowed by the pessimistic lyrics and concepts of bassist/song writer Roger Waters. However, some time in college I picked up David Gilmour's first album, David Gilmour and found an incredible collection of tracks of just expressive guitar music. When he released his second solo album About Face, I went and saw him at the Orpheum Theater, and was lucky enough to meet him by waiting outside the Theater after the show was over. I love Gilmour's solo material as much as Pink Floyd. 9. Santana - Viva Santana (1988) This double album was released on CD in 1990, and is a very good retrospective of the early career of Carlos Santana, another fantastic guitar player. At first I just heard these CDs as great songs, but the more I listened to Santana the more I realized how distinct and unmistakable the sound of Carlos Santana's guitar sounded. It was incredible! Even songs that had lyrics, it was the guitar that truly sang. Even today, I can always recognize the amazing guitar playing by Santana no matter who he is collaborating with. I was fortunate enough to not only see him in concert when I was in college, but also to get back stage passes and meet the man himself. He was cordial and he signed my backstage pass. 10. John Williams - Echoes of Spain/Albeniz (1989) It was actually The Doors that turned me on to classical guitar music. I bought Waiting for the Sun, and heard an amazing song, Spanish Caravan. I discovered Kreiger's amazing guitar work was actually taken from a classical Spanish guitar piece which led me to this CD by John Williams (no not THAT John Williams, he composes classical film scores, this John Willliams is a classical guitar player). The whole piece that inspired Spanish Caravan was on this album as well as several other beautiful Spanish guitar pieces. This also led me to try out albums by Andres Segovia. I eventually learned that rock guitar, classical guitar and jazz guitar (Pat Metheny is mentioned in Chapter 1 - All that Jazz) all sounded excellent when done well. Earlier Chapters: Chapter 7: From Classic Rock to Classical Chapter 6: A lifetime of Heavy Metal Chapter 5: The College Years Chapter 4: My collection Progresses Chapter 3: I discover the 60s in the 80s. Chapter 2: In the Beginning Chapter 1: All that Jazz  |
| Read all comments (5)|Write your own comment |
in Music
- Top 100|
Ads by Google
|
by George_Chabot
by PacManY2J
![Jersey Boys [Original Broadway Cast Recording] by Original Broadway Cast Reviews](http://di2.shopping.com/images/pi/95/a4/8a/2006752046-100x100-0-0.jpg?p=p5.be8af1fb04a90d81fd40&a=2&c=1&l=8071320&t=120604053108&r=2)
![Irony Is a Dead Scene [EP] by The Dillinger Escape Plan Reviews](http://di1.shopping.com/images/pi/6b/71/9f/2005398205-100x100-0-0.jpg?p=p23.d5351ba664566aa61486&a=2&c=1&l=8071320&t=120604053108&r=1)
