The Smiths’ Oscillate Wildly & The Draize Train. Fourthing Tull’s Bouree.
Rough Mix- Pete Townshend & Ronnie Lane
Other instrumentals worthy of note:
Watermelon in Easter Hay - Frank Zappa
Preludin Fugue - Eric Clapton (couldn’t find a suitable link, sorry)
La Villa Strangiato - Rush
I get to post Battle Without Honor or Humanity again. Tomoyasu Hotei does get to it about 2 minutes in.
I posted this in another thread not to long ago, with a better youtube video but I can’t get this video to run. Maybe you can get do better:
Post 1982
Maybe not rock per se, but any time you get to post a link to Medeski Martin & Wood, take it:
Bubblehouse
If you’re gonna go Hotei, allow me to link to his incredible cover version of John Lennon’s Happy Xmas (War is Over). That comes from my all-time favorite Christmas album, Merry Axemas.
For non-covers, you have to include
Cliffs of Dover by Eric Johnson
Surfing with the Alien by Joe Satriani
The Call of Ktulu by Metallica (this being the awesome version from the album “S&M”)
almost anything by Rush, but I’ll second an earlier poster and go with YYZ
And last but not least, my personal pick as the Greatest Rock Instrumental of All Time… This is from a side-project band called The Liquid Tension Experiment, which is pretty much just the guys from Dream Theater plus Tony Levin on bass. This is the best link I could find for…
Acid Rain (apparently, you can only play this once in full, then it cuts down to just a 30 second clip)
I burned an instrumental-only CD a few months ago (titled “There Are No Words”); here are some of my absolute favorites from that disc (many have been mentioned upthread; all links, where available, are to YouTube videos):
[ul]
[li]Apache, by The Shadows[/li][li]Music to Watch Girls By, by The Bob Crewe Generation[/li][li]Close Behind, by Calexico[/li][li]Time Is Tight, by Booker T and the MGs[/li][li]Love at First Sight, by Sounds Nice[/li][li]Out of Limits, by The Marketts[/li][li]Walk Don’t Run, by The Ventures[/li][li]Perfidia, by Los Straightjackets[/li][li]Mile Over Mecca, by The Sadies (no video available, but I can’t recommend this song enough – it’s amazing)[/li][li]Telstar, by The Tornadoes[/li][li]Melbourne Mambo, by The Mavericks[/li][li]Only You and Your Eyes, by The Sadies[/li][li]By the Sea I Will Stay Forever, by The Mermen[/li][li]Varykino Snow, by The Mermen[/li][li]Apache, by The Incredible Bongo Band[/li][/ul]
And after sort of dissing The Ventures earlier, I have to point out that their instrumental recording of “Perfidia” was released long before Los Straitjackets (whose version is excellent) and apparently The Ventures had the first rock n’ roll hit with the song.
It’s an old Mexican song first recorded by Xavier Cugat in 1940 and was played in the movie Casablanca.
Hugh Masekela’s Grazing in the Grass
and one of my personal favorites, Young Hold Unlimited’s Soulful Strut.
I was going to nominate these two, as well as Listen by The Clash.
But the very nicest one (short, but sweet) might be *“Horizons” * off of Foxtrot. Basically it’s Steve Hackett more than it is Genesis, since it’s just solo acoustic guitar. Nice.
While it technically has a vocal part, I think “Tequila” is essentially an instrumental.
Another that might not be considered strictly rock, but I’ve always loved “Water Song” by Hot Tuna.
That’s what I came in to post. I like the version from “Guitar” / “Shut Up and Play Yer Guitar” better (I forget which album it’s on, but one of those two).
Joe
Flipside by the Breeders
Durango 95 by the Ramones.
One of my favorites:
Nine Inch Nails - Just Like You Imagined
The sound on that video is pretty compressed and doesn’t capture the details as well as I’d like, but still a great track.
It’s on Guitar and the original version’s from Joe’s Garage Act III. It’s also one I was going to post. Since it’s taken I’ll go with:
Zappa - Black Napkins
Steve Vai - For the Love of God
Eric Johnson - Song for George. I guess this one’s not really a rock song so I’ll also put Cliffs of Dover
Another vote for La Villa Strangiato as well.