This week’s mix tape goes out to all the folks out there to whom words like phyrigian, humbucker, and “Ingvay” actually mean something. That’s right, this week we’re paying dues to the virtuoso brand of rock that one can generally only adopt by being a 14 year-old boy and reading Guitar World.
Highlighting just a few of the musical freaks that regularly inhabit those pages, we kick off with the tune from the great mall scene in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, which contains one of my favorite guitar solos of all time (around the 2:30 minute mark), courtesy of Nuno Bettencourt. Next it’s Eddie Van Halen with his fretboard tapping clinic on Eruption and Steve Vai’s biggest mainstream hit (ha) to date, The Audience is Listening. After that, comes Joe Satriani with a short tune I’d never heard of before, but selected simply because it’s called In Memory of Cliff Burton, an homage to the late-great Metallica bassist. And finally, we wrap up with two of the weirdest, most commercially unpopular acts ever to blow minds, Dream Theater and Yngwie Malmsteen, with The Glass Prison and Far Beyond the Sun.
