Review retrospective: Greatest Guitar Songs

I am trying to order these chronologically, but that is rarely simple. Start and end dates are often far apart, and often my only clues to when something was happening are in the blog.

However, I know exactly when I got the idea to go over Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Guitar Songs: April 5th, 2012. That was the day Jim Marshall, inventor of the Marshall stack died, and they were playing songs from that list on the radio to honor him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Marshall_(businessman)

https://marshall.com/live-for-music/history/the-story-behind-the-infamous-marshall-stack 

The reason it intrigued me was that was during the time period when I was memorizing My Chemical Romance, and they did have great guitar. The New Wave music I loved in the '80s was a lot more into synthesizer, and the punk rock that I started to love later did have guitars, but often less skillfully used, compensated for by the energy and attitude. 

I was starting to realize what guitars could do.

The list was very disappointing.

https://www.stereogum.com/10114/rolling_stones_100_greatest_guitar_songs_of_all_ti/lists/ 

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2012/04/rolling-stones-100-greatest-guitar.html 

Delving into the comments on that was not so disappointing. 

It took a long time. Based on blog posts, I had finished the original list and decided to go through the comments in April 2012, so that was not that long. I was listening to about ten songs a day, if I recall.

I then posted an update in October, and did not finish until the following August. That had gone from 100 songs to 179 notes of songs, albums, musicians and bands, sometimes not well specified.

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2012/10/update-on-my-musical-odyssey.html 

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2013/08/greatest-guitar-songs-trouble-with.html

Let me also point out that I wrote nine full blog posts about the project in August; "The trouble with internet comments" was just the first.

I also created a Spotify playlist, "Guitar Sampler", which tries to build a history, but then crams in my favorite bands at the end, completely legitimately. 

I was introduced to Magazine, Gang of Four, Richard Hell, Wolfmother, and Dinosaur Jr. I gained a greater appreciation of Lindsey Buckingham, David Bowie, and Django Reinhardt. I found some gaps, which I will spend some time on next week.

For this round of songs I wanted to focus on some songs and artists that were previously unknown to me.

Obviously I did already know Run-DMC and David Bowie, but I had not known these songs, and I was glad to find them. They gave me new insights.

I am sure I had heard of Satriani, but I don't think I had heard any of his work, and a song based on comic books? Sweet!

The rest were completely new to me, and pretty good to know.

Daily songs for 1/29/21 through 2/5/21:

“Through the Fire and Flames” by Dragonforce
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jgrCKhxE1s

“Been There All the Time” by Dinosaur Jr.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk9Npbl9Qrw

“Surfing with the Alien” by Satriani
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5t2kDqvoYY

“Rock Box” by Run-DMC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GND7sPNwWko

“Shot By Both Sides” by Magazine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qu3R-H5on1s

“Chick Magnet” by MXPX
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPcDyl6tCV8

“Jean Genie” by David Bowie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMYg_Ra4cr8