The best bit...
Picking up on Mark Ellen's comment from the latest Podcast where he mentions extracting Garcia's guitar solo from a Grateful Dead song when he's got a couple of minutes to wait for his train, I was wondering if any other Wordians selectively edit songs down to the “good bit” when the circumstance allows?
Speaking personally, I’m a bugger for it. So listing a few of my crimes in no particular order:
Rush – “The Camera Eye” 9m17s guitar solo from God
Outkast – “Hey Ya!” 1m26s “nothing lasts forever”
The Stone Roses – “Begging You” 2m34s moan for me, guitar…
Underworld – “Cowgirl” 4m30s “I’m hurtin’ no one…”
Lots of guitar solos there (I could mention Highway Star from Made In Japan, for example), but I’ve lost count of the number of times that a particular part, be it drum fill or whatever, has caught my attention and been recycled endlessly without me listening to the whole song. So, the question is, does anyone else share this affliction (with apologies to Mr Ellen)?
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Bits
Although we've visited this before... http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/greatest-bit-ever
...it's a topic "with legs", as they say!
I'm still plumping for Merry Clayton screaming rape and murder on the Stones' "Gimme Shelter". Mind you, the rest of the song is so glorious (and the opening is another classic "bit") that I could never edit it.
Good bits...
....a lyric, a drum fill, an anticipatory silence and, absolutely, a guitar solo. Sometimes the good bit is so good that you can forgive the mediocrity of the whole. With respect to the Dead and Marc's enthusiasm, Jerry's bits were very often the sole reason for sifting through a live record. One of my favorite guitar solos that has probably rarely troubled a Word reader's iPod or deck these thirty-some years, is on one of those two post-Morrison Doors albums, Other Voices. The guitar solo on Tightrope Ride is this immaculate conception by Robbie Krieger which IMHO is better than most of his recorded output on the 'official' records, making a bit on a very forgettable record completely essential for me.
IMHO
In My Hoary Opinion ?!
Good bits rule
Merry Clayton! But of course! Like when Aretha cuts loose on Say a Little Prayer (paging Ms Carey - that's how it's done...).
Although on mature reflection (which maybe I should have done before the initial post), I suppose it could be argued that extracting the good bit is what the likes of Mark Vidler do for a living. Briliantly, I might add.
Anyway, what about that bit at the end of T Rex's 20th Century Boy where Bolan starts singing along with the riff?
Or...
...the start of 20th Century Boy, which sounds like Bolan kickstarting the world's biggest motorbike?
Best fade out on a song.....
Go on, do something good today, find "Pale Moon, Crescent Sun"/Cowboy Junkies, track 2, "Ring on the Sill". If you can tell me that the instrumental endpiece is not one of the most sublime pairing of organ and piano, as subtly put together as anything you have ever heard, then you deserve to be one of James Blasts 75%.
The second I hear Aztec Camera
start to play "Somewhere In My Heart", I'm wishing the first two verses away so I can get to hear Roddy tear into the little guitar solo that lights up the song.
King Horse...
EC & The Attractions, Get Happy!... There's a little three-beat break across the instruments at the end of the bridge which I think I have listened to and tried to recreate more than any other piece of music. I can't even explain it. It's just SO tight. *gets coat as is clearly mad person*
You're not alone
Get Happy! is by far the best arranged Attractions album, I reckon: tight and inventive but basically still a four-piece. Later on it'd all get so We've Got 24 Tracks and By God We're Going to Use Every Last One of 'Em that that the result was the aural equivalent of a "house special" pizza with everything from anchovies and pineapple to barbecue sauce and beetroot slapped all over it - it might look interesting enough on the menu, but when you try to eat the thing. . . .
Charlie's drum roll and Keef's shout of "Yeah!"...
at the end of 'Brown Sugar'. Makes me so happy...
With apologies to Philip. . .
it's apparently beholden upon me to point out that, yes, we've done this before.
So I'll just repeat what I said then: Hal Blaine's pair of triplets - "BAP-bap-bap BAP-bap-bap!" - during the fade-out of the GROAT.
We've done 'em all before....
....but it is nonetheless interesting to remember the answers forgotten on earlier occasions. Maybe 75% of the time. Sorry to Mr Blasts 25%.
A couple of obvious ones.
The solo at the end of Hendrix's Axis:Bold As Love where the word awesome can justifiably be used and the second mic kicking in on Bowie's Heroes.
Quick quick slow
I love a sudden drop in tempo. There's something languidly cool and decadent about the effect it gives.
For example, the openings to "Geno" (Dexys), "Stay With Me" (Faces), and "Clark Street", the first tune on Elmer Bernstein's classy soundtrack to the Sinatra smackhead film, "The Man With the Golden Arm".