I can’t find a like thread over the past 18 months or so but I’ve got a vested interest anyway. There are 3 current standouts in my collection, like so:
Time - Pink Floyd
Won’t Get Fooled Again - The Who
Do It Again - Steely Dan
If people would like to indicate their 3 favourite intros that would be good. If any of them are in similar vein to one of the above, or based on my 3 selections you think I might like them, please let me know because I might have missed them somewhere along the line.
There aren’t many bad Pink Floyd intos. But it’s rarer to find someone who can end a song, and they can do this as well (contrast with the semi-Floydian-sounding-at-times-for-a-goth-band Fields of the Nephilim, who end seemingly nearly all their songs with the music suddenly stopping and their signature gutteral sound yelling the last word alone, which is cool sounding the first thousand times you hear a heavy metal band do that.)
I like lots of intros with small-mechanical-device sound effects, including Time, but also:
Time’s Up - Living Colour (probably THE hardest hitting song I’ve EVER heard for its first half, although it dissipates near the end.)
The End. My Chemical Romance (the beep at the beginning is almost certainly meant to sound like a stereotypical pulse beat from a hospital heart monitoring system
Wow, I Can Get Sexual Too - Say Anything
The Ring in Return - Coheed and Cambria
(I tried to get the intro for the last two songs as a ringtone, which would be sort of a waste because they start off with a ring themselves, but I thought it would be cool to have the EXACT ringtone, but alas, no luck as they either arent available or dont have the intro as the ringtone.)
Whipping Post - The Allman Brothers Band
I Walk on Gilded Splinters - originally by Dr. John
And, well, this is trite, but When the Levee Breaks as done by Led Zeppelin.
Wait, a better idea for #3: Freddie’s Dead, by Curtis Mayfield.
I know it’s not hip to like Toto, but I’ve been grooving on their greatest hits for the past 18 hours or so and the intro to “Rosanna” really rocks. I never really appreciated what a great job the rhythm section does on that song.
BTW, is it just me or is like every other Toto song named after a girl?
The live version of Werewolf of London (Warren Zevon)…because when you hear it for the first time, you can’t tell what he’s about to lead in to. Just some nice jazzy piano noodling, which then morphs into those familiar chords.
Independently Happy by Blue October was the very first song that came to mind and I had to think for a moment before I was able recall two others worth mentioning, those being *Schism *by Tool and No Shelter by Rage Against the Machine.
As far as I am concerned, this thread must be “List your top four intros”, with this one implicit in every post. No other interpretation makes any sense.
The first two are rather short relative to others already posted but I think they stand up well. They’re well constructed and distinctive. The last choice, though somewhat more obscure, is worth one’s time to find and hear. The entire song is worth a solid listen IMO.
The original Layla deserves a mention. Unmistakeable and unforgettable guitar work.
And Al Stewart’s Year of the Cat (the album version, not the single version) is an introduction that (IMHO) could almost be called an overture. Fairly long, and building through the band’s instruments, the intro does a good job of introducing the basic melody of the song, preparing the listener for the variations that will occur behind the vocals.
