Great Guitar Solos – Jimi Hendrix Plays The Star Spangled Banner Live at Woodstock 1969

I decided to go with a classic, and also, perhaps, a cliche. I absolutely adore this. Hendrix often gets flack for “sloppiness” or “lack of technical ability”, but I’d argue that that’s not true at all. What’s true is that Hendrix was far more interested in emotion, and was very unconventional in his playing. But he did know what he was doing.

Anyways… this is obviously an instrumental, so the guitar solo is the whole thing. And immediately following the footage is a clip of an interview he did where he talked about playing it, so stay tuned for that, as well.

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(YouTube Video) Doctor Who – Just See Me

This… this is seriously incredible. I’ve watched it probably 10 times, now, and every single time, I cry. It’s so moving and so well put together. And that ending… the shot of Jodie Whittaker as the 13th Doctor while Capaldi’s Doctor says “just see me”…

I can’t really put into words why I love Doctor Who. This show is 54 years old, and it’s a mess of missing continuity, confusing timey-wimey stories, vague, often contradictory cannon, and more. I understand why many people who’ve never seen Doctor Who really aren’t interested in getting into it… that’s a very daunting task.

Believe me, I know.

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Astronomy Picture of the Week – More Textures in the C Ring

I also realize I missed last week’s APotW. Apologies…

Continuing on with the Grand Finale…

This image was taken on May 29, 2017, with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera. The image was acquired on the sunlit side of the rings from a distance of about 39,800 miles (64,100 kilometers) away from the area pictured. The image scale is 1,460 feet (445 meters) per pixel. The phase angle, or sun-ring-spacecraft angle, is 137 degrees.

(See the bottom of the post for the links to download the associated .tif images…)

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Great Guitar Solos – Pink Floyd Plays Echoes

Sorry for missing this on Monday. I’ve been working a lot, and my brother is in town, so I’ve been distracted. Astronomy Picture of the Week should be up in around half an hour.

Echoes… what is there to say about Echoes? For me, it’s one of the greatest songs of all time. Yeah, sure, it’s 23 minutes and 36 seconds long… but that’s 23 minutes and 36 seconds you will be glad to have spent just… listening.

As for the guitar solos… well… there are no words. Moving, powerful, emotional…

The first solo, an understated intro piece, starts at 1:10 and ends at 2:57. Then there’s a riff that repeats itself, though it is very solo-like, that starts at 3:45 and ends at 4:12. The riff repeats again at 4:56 and ends at 5:24. Immediately, the second proper solo starts. At 5:53, a second, more distorted guitar comes, and we have two guitars soloing at the same time, which ends at 7:01. Thus begins a very funky section, in which the third solo, a really cool distorted solo, starts at 7:24 and starts to fade out into a section of ambient, atmospheric, rather creepy noise at around 10:50, and disappears fully at around 11:25.

I know the ambient section is weird, but try to stick it out. If you don’t want to, it ends around 15 minutes in. The fourth solo starts at 18:14 and ends at 19:11. The repeating lead riff, though much more simplified, starts at 19:56 and ends at 20:15. The fifth and final solo starts at 12:26 and ends with the fade out.

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Does Famous Feminist Anita Sarkeesian HATE The New Doctor?!?

As is usually the case with titles that pose such questions, the answer is… no.

But some people seem to think so.

For those who don’t know, the Feminist Frequency Twitter account posted a short thread in response to the announcement of Jodie Whittaker as the next Doctor. A lot of people seem to be taking it as Anita being really angry at the announcement.

Of course, it seems as if people only picked out one or two tweets from the thread. But if you see the whole thing, you realize that, of course, not only is it much ado about nothing, but Anita had some really important points worth discussing. I’m not just going to post the entire 7-tweet thread here, so please go check it out in full. I will post three of the tweets, however, because it is worth discussing…

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Great Guitar Solos – Screaming Females Play Bell Live at Audiotree

I’d like to introduce y’all to one of my current favorite guitarists. Her name is Marissa Paternoster, and she’s the lead vocalist and lead guitarist for the three-piece band Screaming Females.

This song is called “Bell”, and the video is from Audiotree. I did want to show you the official music video, but it doesn’t actually show the guitar solo, so I picked this instead.

Her playing throughout is phenomenal, but the guitar solo starts at 1:08 and ends at 2:00. Also, her voice is mesmerizing.

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Astronomy Picture of the Week – Dawn’s Early Light

As usual until September, this is from Cassini’s Grand Finale…

The light of a new day on Saturn illuminates the planet’s wavy cloud patterns and the smooth arcs of the vast rings.

The light has traveled around 80 minutes since it left the sun’s surface by the time it reaches Saturn. The illumination it provides is feeble; Earth gets 100 times the intensity since it’s roughly ten times closer to the sun. Yet compared to the deep blackness of space, everything at Saturn still shines bright in the sunlight, be it direct or reflected.

This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 10 degrees above the ring plane. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Feb. 25, 2017 using a spectral filter which preferentially admits wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 939 nanometers.

The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 762,000 miles (1.23 million kilometers) from Saturn. Image scale is 45 miles (73 kilometers) per pixel.

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Great Guitar Solos – St. Vincent Plays Surgeon Live at La Cigale

Going left again, this time with St. Vincent, stage name of Annie Clark (and also the name of her band).

I love love love Annie Clark. Her guitar playing is extremely unconventional, which speaks to me as someone who adores unconventional playing. She has a very unique finger-picking style, and her use of strange effects on her guitars always makes me happy.

This song is called “Surgeon”, and it’s being performed live at La Cigale, Paris, France, on February 18, 2014. The video is an audience video (so, a “bootleg”) of the full song.

Before you catch the solo, listen to that pretty amazing riffing she does while singing… that isn’t easy. In fact, it’s hard. The solo itself, an unconventional, effects-laden masterpiece (in  my humble opinion), starts at 3:13 with that awesome riff, and ends at 4:37 with the end of the song.

Before moving on, please note that, during the solo especially, the lights flash quite a lot, so if you’re sensitive to that kind of thing, please either avoid this all together, or start the video and just listen without watching.

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Astronomy Picture of the Week – Small Wonders (Cassini’s Grand Finale)

(This is 30 minutes late because I was a couple days late with GGS.)

Still on the Grand Finale, and as I said when this started, I’ll be staying here until it’s over, because yes, I’m mourning the end of Cassini’s mission. It’s an image of three of Saturn’s smaller ring moons.

I hope you enjoy this one. As always, click on the image for the .tif download…

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