Friday Night Videos--All Shred Edition

Tonight we celebrate the great guitarists. Who is great and who is not is arguable but these are guys who full on wail.

Let's start with the man who single-handedly (the left one) changed music for eternity. He was a paratrooper who seemed to do everything--including drugs--with reckless abandon:

Jimi Hendrix doing abbreviated versions of Stone Free, Purple Haze and Hey Joe from May of 1967:



Next we have a guy who died much too young after playing on a stage with Eric Clapton and the excellent Robert Cray at Alpine Meadows in Wisconsin. Stevie Ray Vaughn was a guy I always wanted to see live and it never happened. Here's Little Wing from 1983:



See also SRV and Jeff Beck doing Goin Down.

Now we move on to the possible next president of the NRA. This guy put out an album entitled Double Live Gonzo that me and my bro put on and horrified my mother that included a rap that ended with the immortal "this is a song for all that Nashville pussy". I was ten and my bro was eight, my mom turned 80 on the spot. Here's a live Free For All. Dude is/was insane:



Next we have Clapton doing Pretending from Argentina. Looking at Clapton's career is a trek through rock history: Cream, Blind Faith, Derek and the Dominoes and on and on:



To end this post, how about a little Eddie Van Halen from 1986. This dude changed music for the better. Every one after him for the next decade stole his riffs (or tried to). Here's an insane live solo: