3.03.2011

Guitar Solos Pt. 1 of ?

Well Simon has invited Carl, and anyone, to post some of their favorite guitar solos. I'll make a few contributions, though I think most of mine will be pretty typical. Thread so far (let me know if you posted about this and I missed it):
4 - it's worth noting, and is noted in the comments, that, according to Our Band Could Be Your Life, the caller is a pathological liar who called the show often

As for me...

The earliest music I can remember is mid-80s soft rock. Though my father mostly did it, occasionally my mother would drive me to work and she would play DC's soft rock station, 97.1 WASH-FM. Considering she listened to some damn good music in the 1960s, I don't get why this is what I was subjected to. I assume she was just tired. She usually worked until eight or nine at night and her commute took her around 45 minutes each way.

WASH-FMs playlist was fairly diverse given the constraints it imposed upon itself. It was an interesting mix of post-new-wave pop (Wham, Belinda Carlisle), survivors of earlier decades and movements (Phil Collins, Starship), and even some "yacht rock" (Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins). What most of the music seemed to have in common is that it featured artists who were more famous for something else they had already done, with other people, but who were now coasting on the fame they had gained from those earlier endeavors. The dreaded solo careers so prevalent in that period.

Most of this music is pretty tepid, and I am fairly distrustful of the attempts to re-appraise it. There is a difference between listening to music that is nostalgic and listening to music because one is nostalgic. And though I don't look down on the latter, I don't know what one's owns memories have to do with any objective claim one might make about a piece of music.

That being said, the music I heard then did leave it's mark on me. Certain records have certain effects, affects, and they are inescapable. I leave it to you where to place the following song in the cannon of one of the most successful bands of all time. I just like the guitar solo, a weird impression of Glass/Adams/Reich-style shifting arpeggios that brings this emotional record to its peak and conclusion. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you, the best artist WASH-FM played when I was being driven to school in the mid-1980s, Fleetwood Mac, and "Gypsy".

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