My wife and I are big show-goers, that was a not miss.
Maybe not “iconic” but the jam band world is still going strong and there are some killer guitar solos happening by the likes of Derek Trucks, Warren Haynes, Trey Anastesio, etc…
See Tedeschi Trucks Band below - my current favorite touring band. Trucks takes a couple killer slide solos here.
Below that, one of my new (to me) favorites, Marcus King Band. Young man is pretty awesome.
Below that, Gary Clark Jr. He’s so great live, I’ve seen him many times.
And it might be sacrilegious to some Dead Heads, but Mayer’s solo on Althea in the below video with JRAD is fucking epic, IMO.
The history of guitar riff rock is heavily white male, so I personally don’t have a problem with his basic approach. However there’s no excuse for ignoring Prince entirely and yes, some P-Funk would have made a lot of sense, especially if he somehow had room to include multiple Motley Crue songs.
You can kinda tell what songs he loves from his youth, as he perks up and plays some with more enthusiasm and practice. Can’t fault him for having personal favorites and including them I guess–every one of these kind of videos (evolution of dance, etc) is always one person’s flawed take on a subject.
An impressive and admirable effort. I agree “Can’t Explain” was off and “Back in Black” was rushed, but as one take it’s basically a very high level of pro. Many other riffs that he nailed like “Message in a Bottle”, “Spirit of Radio” and “Cult of Personality” can be deceptively difficult to hit cleanly. I might have picked “Born on the Bayou” over “Fortunate Son”, but I’m not the one playing 'em.
It was also bit sad to hear “Enter Sandman” instead of “Master of Puppets”, but that’s accurate as far as popular impact is concerned. And so many entire bands with great riffs go by the wayside for lack of the same popular impact - Monster Magnet, Kyuss, Death Cab for Cutie, My Bloody Valentine…so much great music.
Also it was great to see a shoutout to the Toadies, a pretty underrated band in general for the quality of their riffs and music.
I ultimately would have loved to see one of my favorite bands like Clutch, who continue to make really unique music and are one of the greatest touring bands around. But again, popular impact is apparently the gauge for this list, which is fair. Many others don’t have my taste, and I’ll just zen and find a way to forgive them. : )
Quite neat but many styles, like for example Punk Rock, Glam Rock and Ska are widely unrepresented if this is really supposed to represent Rock History
