![]() ![]() ![]() True, it’s not dissimilar to The Beatles' feedback dissolve at the front of (the slightly earlier) “I Feel Fine” but whereas The Beatles' buzz and howl feels like pop art, when Dave Davies and The Kinks do it, it feels like pure lust.Ĩ. Each time The Kinks recorded a new riff-driven song, they added something fresh: The two-note stutter of “You Really Got Me” became the four-chord slur of “All Day and All of the Night,” followed by the more complicated multipart Golem-stomp of “Til the End of the Day.” On “I Need You,” The Kinks reverted back to a two-chord tic (almost like an anxious, inverted “You Really Got Me”), but they added something bold and new: a single, whacked chord before the song kicked in, dissolving into uneasy, gnawing feedback. Throughout 19, The Kinks invented and perfected the modern guitar riff, taking the sludge-roar of Bo Diddley’s barre chord technique and applying it to the repetitive riff mode that was common in contemporary jazz. Let’s just say that it sounds a little like Arto Lindsay being thrown down a flight of stairs (I mean that in a good way), and when looped or repeated - as The Residents did in 1977 on their startling “Beyond the Valley of a Day in the Life” - it’s profoundly hypnotic and unsettling. Unlike most of the examples we shall encounter here, it’s more or less a pure studio creation that requires multiple guitars to play properly, and any detailed discussion of this chord involves repeated use of the word “diatonic.” But I do not go to such places. It’s a profoundly effective attention getter, with a harmonic resonance and purity that absolutely wraps around the listener. If I want to describe the Great Chord concept to someone, this is the track I’ll point to. I was tempted to make an exception or two: “ Didjerilayover” by Stuart Dempster is, essentially, one magnificent, resounding, world-ending/world-birthing chord, but it’s performed with, well, didgeridoos and I have very warm and fuzzy feelings about Tony Conrad’s 27-minute violin drone on “ The Side of Man and Womankind.” But I had to draw the line somewhere, so guitars only it is.ġ0. ![]() This is why, say, the chord that comes four seconds into The Ramones’ version of “Let’s Dance” (from their debut album) doesn’t qualify it is a perfect chord in so very many ways, honestly one of the best chords of all time, but it is dependent on the song it's attached to.įinally, to make this list, the chord must be played on a guitar. Perhaps you listen to the song just for that chord, and then move on. Likewise, the chord must be a destination in and of itself. For instance, the chord on the first downbeat of “Won’t Get Fooled Again” is a chord qua chord, and suits our definition exceptionally well but the similar and possibly superior chord that launches “I Can See for Miles” is clearly a part of the chord structure of the song, so it is not eligible. There are plenty of utterly brilliant chords that are part of riffs, but that’s not what we are talking about here. So I decided to put together list of the 10 greatest guitar chords ever recorded. I am talking about moments when a guitarist just hits a big fat fucking chord. And I am not talking about the actual chords themselves, absent any context (you know, like, “Whoa, A-Minor, baby”). Why have I never seen a list of the greatest guitar chords of all time? We are speaking of the great “whoooang,” the sweet rib-meat and godhammer of our rock & roll fantasies. Now is not the time to chatter about sinewy riffs made up of single notes, astral arpeggios or gentle folky strums. ![]()
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