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Okay, so nearly ten years ago, I had the incredible opportunity to meet Slash at a guitar clinic in my hometown in Nashville . As a devoted fan and lifelong lover of Gibson guitars… and Slash, the prospect of having my Twenty-Fifteen Gibson Les Paul Standard signed by the legendary guitarist was a dream. The day started off perfectly. I arrived early, clutching my guitar like it was the Holy Grail, When it was finally time for the meet-and-greet, I approached him with my Les Paul, and in that moment, I could hardly contain my excitement. Slash took my guitar, inspected it with a nod of approval and said “oh shit is that a triple AAA+ on that thing?!” and then wrote his name across the body with the AFD Skull. It was an insane few minutes. Couldn't believe my eyes. I snapped a quick photo recently.

Best day to have ever experienced ;)

I’m not sure which is more unbelievable: the fact that the band played such a small venue as the Old Waldorf, or the fact that I only paid $3.00 to see them that night. Both facts blow my mind.

The show was so got damn loud my ears are still ringing 47 years later.

Highlight of the show was when Bon Scott hoisted Angus (in full School Boy attire) up on his shoulders and paraded around the club. The crowd went nuts!

Three dollars!

Tree-fitty with Loch Ness Monster service charge.

Ok bear with me on this idea-

I want to make a playlist but i’m stuck.

I love rock songs that are not only good of course but also have an interesting chord progression at the end completely different from the rest of the song. It fits but it’s like a new chapter. Maybe not even lyrics over them.

Now this COULD be hey jude or layla but those go on so long they really feel just like a second movement, or a split personality song rather than a little add on at the end.

For the life of me I can’t recall any right now.

Any ideas?

My first KISS show. There’s no shame in my game. I’ve seen KISS many times, including the tour they played sans makeup.

And check out the support band here: the Bay Area’s own, Earthquake. One of my favorite Bay Area bands of all time

I used to listen to this one track a lot a couple of years ago and can't find it now. It was instrumental and if I recall correctly there were guitar solos from multiple guitarists (possibly Slash among them) and there was also a rock and roll piano accompanying it. I guess it was like a medley.

How music changed in the 80s; the end of the classic rock era and the rise of alternative rock.

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t a huge fan of 80s music – especially the mainstream.  Disco didn’t die, it just transformed into pop new wave which was the complete opposite of what the new wave movement was created for in the mid 70s.  Pop was saturated by people using cheap synthesizers they barely knew how to play and even the AOR and rock groups were overly producing their albums and slapping whatever sound of the week was popular at the time (I’m looking at you gated reverb).

Yeah, the early 80s saw the surprise rise in popularity of nearly forgotten about groups (love J. Geils early 80s work), but for the most part, all the prime classic rock players were now into their 30s (if not their 40s) and we went from Led Zeppelin to the Honeydrippers (great album, but it was hardly Dazed and Confused).

Rock wasn’t dangerous anymore.

I think people really forget just how extreme and dangerous early rock was.  No, not the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show; I’m talking about the Who blowing apart their drums on national tv or just how radical the Rolling Stone’s Painted Black was when it was released (and that’s not even getting into Hendrix later burning his guitar on stage).

Even compared to the rock of the previous decade, the late 60s classic rock sounded like raw, out of tune, extreme guitars to the older generations.  Even the mods were considered “long hairs.”  We went from Clapton in the 60s in Cream to him slowly becoming adult contemporary throughout the 70s.

50 to 60 years later, we look back at 60s rock as comfort music but it was the sound of rebellion at the time.

So how do the next generations make it dangerous again?  Where do they go in the sound now that Inda Gada Davita had become music for grandmas?

And that’s what I sat down to map out.  How we went from Neil Young and Devo to Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, Rev. Horton Heat and My Bloody Valentine within just 10 years.

At the start of the 80s new wave had become just a term for synth pop music.  What was once extreme was now mainstream.  Punk had devolved to an overly simplified mockery of itself and post punk was now pushing the boundaries of what modern music could sound like; exploring space instead of just filling it.  Reggae had firmly rooted itself in England and gave birth to Ska.  The punk interest in rockabilly had spawned a fresh interest in combining the roots of rock with the modern era and electronic music was trying to figure out a way to be just that; music.

Last year I made a playlist covering the end of the classic rock era in the 80s and I was hard pressed to find 500 songs to fill the list in.  Once again I had to borrow heavily from modern rock just to keep it from being too repetitive. 

Even after trimming over 500 songs off, I still came out to 1800 songs just covering the rise of college rock in the 80s.  As always, it’s in chronological order so you can hear how the music evolved over a decade.  How 5 or 6 distinct genres that were predominate at the beginning of the decade would slowly merge into a unique sound that set the stage for the 90s.

A few notes; metal was already its own genre at this point, so it’s not included.  Punk was breaking off into becoming its own genre separate from the alternative, so I only gave a surface level representation to the bigger names.  I didn’t feel the need to add every single punk group that ever cut a .45 like I did for the 70s playlist.  Pop groups pretending to be alternative get little to no representation (depending on how influential they were to the underground sounds) and alternative groups that slowly became pop groups lose their representation after they leave the indie scene for the big leagues. 

Also, I can’t add to the list what isn’t on Spotify (I’m looking at you B-52’s 80’s albums).

The first 600 songs are a chaotic mess.  I did my best to make it listenable, but it’s probably about like being drug down a gravel road until 84 or so.  On the Brightside, by the last 600 songs, alternative finally had a more stable vision or sound, and the transitions are less jarring.

Mine are:

1. The piano in “Against The Wind” by Bob Seger
2. The acoustic guitar, especially the intro, in “Big Log” by Robert Plant
3. The fiddle in “Hurricane” by Bob Dylan
4. The lead guitar in “Brothers In Arms” by Dire Straits
5. The drums in “Lay It On The Line” by Triumph

I've stumbled on these 2 recently. I love going back and watching old rock videos, and these 2 really are filled with some great stuff.

Anything else in that same vein?