The Top 100 Rock Guitar Solos of All Time--89-80

89.) "That Smell" (Lynyrd Skynyrd)



Following the Beatles' existential debates on the state of the human soul, here we have Lynyrd Skynyrd's deep discussion on the perils of drug abuse (okay, this is being a bit mean to them--but who cares? Their solo is ranked higher!). While Skynyrd lacked the songwriting gift of the Beatles, they made up for it by having three goddamn lead guitarists! (Actually, you can hear McCartney, Lennon, and Harrison dueling lead guitar in "The End" on Abbey Road, but it's pretty pathetic stuff in comparison to "Free Bird.") This is just filled to the brim with lead guitar, and the song itself is a good time despite its gloomy subject matter. This is one of the songs I'd most like to see in Rock Band (along with "Sultans of Swing").

88.) "War Pigs" (Black Sabbath)



Tony Iommi was not the soloist that Ozzy's later guitarists were (Randy Rhoads, Jake E. Lee, and Zakk Wylde, among others). However, he was the best there is at one crucial, nowadays completely underutilized element of guitar and rock music: riffs. Topping even the great riffmeister Jimmy Page, Tony Iommi is the greatest riff-writer in rock history. He is the most influential guitarist in metal history, pioneering the heavy, dark sound of metal through his use of drop-tuning. He turned to this technique of lowering the pitch of the guitar by loosening the strings because he lost part of his finger in an industrial accident and this made it easier for him to play. This accident helped create the absolute heaviness that is synonymous with metal (hence heavy metal). He made the guitar such an integral part of metal music. In a song like this, there is guitar everywhere. There has to be about 5 or 6 different memorable riffs on this song. And despite his limitations as a soloist, he delivers two tasty and melodic solos on here. While he didn't have the chops of Ozzy's later guitarists, he knew how to create a memorable hook with his guitar, whether that was a soul-crunching riff or a bluesy guitar solo.

87.) "Moonage Daydream" (David Bowie)



Mick Ronson, Bowie's guitarist during his prime '70s years, is a very underrated guitarist of the period. Like Brian May of Queen, he knew how to make his guitar serve the song. He had such a great, crunchy tone on his riffs. It really adds the rock edge to what otherwise could be pure camp with some Bowie songs. Ronson here concludes the song with guitars flying to the very heavens. This is just such a good song. The solo is simple, but Ronson had such finesse when it came to tone and feel that it really grabs you. This solo and the guitar refrain of "Starman" really encapsulate the adolescent need from escape from authority and prejudice and bigotry that mark Ziggy Stardust and made it such a moving album for its audience of misfits and freaks.

86.) "Mean Street" (Van Halen)



Containing the standard crazy and incredibly brief EVH solo, this song is really on the list for its jaw-dropping, how-did-he-do-that? tapping intro. Proving that no matter how many imitators he had in the early '80s finger-tapping at the first opportunity, Eddie was still the best at the technique he revolutionized (though it should be pointed out that he did not invent it, as he is so often credited as doing). Just as in "Spanish Fly," Eddie toys with harmonics a shit-ton in the intro, combining them with multi-string tapping to create his wildest sounding guitar effects.

85.) "You Really Got Me" (The Kinks)



A lot of songs on this list boast great riffs as well as solos, and goddamn it, this is no exception. An all-time classic rock song. I considered putting the Van Halen version on here instead, but upon inspection, this stands up as the more memorable solo. Even all these years later, Dave Davies's tone is still as raw and sexually vulgar as it must have been back in '64. He slashed his guitar amp speakers to get that sound, foreshadowing the kind of guitar violence that Jimi Hendrix and Pete Townshend would make popular in the coming years. Incredibly brief and succinct, this is garage rock at its finest, spewing forth adolescent lust and carelessness.

84.) "Something" (The Beatles)



Nothing could be as far from adolescent lust and carelessness as George Harrison's masterpiece "Something." His solo on here is just so incredibly gorgeous and fitting to the song. One of the most melodic solos ever.

83.) "Light My Fire" (The Doors)


Legend has it that Jim Morrison one day asked his band members to go home and write a song about some intangible, abstract subject, and guitarist Robbie Krieger came back with the rough outline of "Light My Fire." What really makes this song for me are the keyboard and guitar solos, and it baffles me whenever the radio plays the edited version without these parts. The transcendental power of the song is stripped without the ecstasy of the hypnotic solos--the lyrics are rendered meaningless. Some solos are endlessly memorable or lyrical or technically proficient. I love this solo because it fits in with the psychedelic, hypnotic vibe of the song. You don't really remember what happened in the solo; you just remember how it made you feel afterward. One of the great psychedelic guitar solos in my opinion, because even more than Hendrix it takes you to another place with its vague Eastern vibe and the relentless keyboard drone in the background and the gradual fade-out back into the climactic vocals of Jim, building us all up into a sort of ecstatic trance in a communal musical/cultural event that arguably has not been approached since the death of the 1960's.

82.) "In Bloom" (Nirvana)



Kurt gets a whole lot of flak from guitar fans because his meteoric rise to fame in the early 1990's destroyed the guitar virtuoso trend of the 1980's. Musically, his revolution was quite necessary as far as I'm concerned. Real power and emotion had been lacking in popular music for a long time. I'm not sure whether there is much of a place for guitar solos in music anymore. They do not seem to fit the musical mood of our times, or of our culture. In any case, Kurt was an interesting guitarist who, though lacking in technical proficiency, could write a mean riff when called upon ("Smells Like Teen Spirit" anyone?), and delivers one of the most pissed-off solos I've ever heard in this song about Kurt's disdain for much of his audience. I wish there were more good guitar solos in modern music, but I'd rather there just be good songs than solos. Guitar solos work better in melodic instead of atmospheric songs, which seem to dominate the airwaves in terms of rock music. The guitar is now used as a backdrop instead of driving the song as a force itself.

81.) "I Believe" (Joe Satriani)



Joe's vocals were never very well-received on the few times he sang, but I always give him the benefit of the doubt because I like him so much. He seems like such a nice, almost naive guy. But what his vocals do not express, he certainly is able to on his guitar. The first solo in this is so beautifully moody and perfectly depicts the feeling of melancholy at all of the despair around us that Joe is singing about, ending in those gorgeous ringing harmonics. The second, backwards solo is what makes the song a classic for me. I've seen lots of backwards guitar in my years, but this is the most artfully used. The chaos of this nihilistic world is echoed in these heavily processed notes. The use of more backwards guitar at the end of the song with ringing high notes shows the resolution of Joe's temporary spiritual crisis. A beautiful song.

80.) "Desert Island" (Cacophony)



Is this a pretty song? Hell no. I don't think I've ever listened to my Cacophony CD the whole way through. It's some pretty dense shred music, lacking much in the way of melody or emotion. However, this song always stuck out for me on it. That guitar break at 3:00 absolutely comes out of nowhere and floors me every time with its unexpected beauty. The contrast of the nastiness of the song around it almost makes it better. What a great combination of ringing arpeggios with some heavy delay and volume swells on the lead guitar. It transforms into some hardcore shredding soon enough, and young guitar virtuosos Marty Friedman (who would play in Megadeth during its peak years) and Jason Becker (unfortunately he was diagnosed with an illness at a very young age soon after this, which prevented him from playing the guitar, although he continued to compose music even into the terminal stages of his illness--I believe he was a teenager on this album) certainly knew their way around the instrument. Call it wankery. Call it whatever you want. That break is still kick-ass.

--Edward

The Old George Farm on Milltown Road

            There was a harvest moon, high and heavy in the evening sky; citrine-stained, perennially dimpled, and ripe with the secrets of centuries now spiraling off into infinity (so full, that moon.) It was a bellwether of the forthcoming season—an autumn that would auspiciously bear those predestined bounties that the Almanac had so knowingly foretold the previous calendar year. The hay had been cut in the morning and in its place lingered warm, wet air; sweetened and condensed by the setting of the sun. Fireflies would soon rise from the ground, playing timekeepers for the even’ star.

       A suntanned, chapped hand pressed against the small of her back, urging her to forge forward and onward through the labyrinth of trees and overgrown shrubs. She couldn’t look up ahead--- instead, her gaze focused only downwards to the ground, counting the footsteps that were taking her farther away from the remnants of light that clung for their lives into the retracting dusk.

       “Just a little further,” he growled, in a low, gravelly voice that sounded like stones being shaken in a tin can.

       Her hair, damp with an amalgamation of humidity and panicked perspiration, had fallen into her face, making it ever more difficult to see where she was going, or know where she had come from. One more purposeful push with his hot, broad hand and she was now on her knees, letting out what could very well have been a gasp if she were actually breathing. The sound of running water invited her to look up from her station, if only for a moment. A stream was partially visible through the dark, the coldness of its aura more acutely detected than it’s actual existence.

       “Now, I want you to wash your hands for me, doll baby” the voice demanded, sounding more and more rehearsed as time went on, within and without her.

       Bewildered, but too unnerved to question a thing, she reached down and out in front of her, hoping to catch the stream between her fingertips on her first try. The water was unseasonably cold and it, if only momentarily, shocked her into the present moment. She twisted her body around to face him, and let her eyes see for the first time what she knew was unraveling all along. He stood about three yards from her, just in front of an ostentatiously tall oak tree. His boots had been kicked off and his shirt draped over a lonely branch. The sound of his belt buckle as it hit a root and rang out metallically echoed through the woods before being silenced by the thudding mud in which it landed. Her eyes met his for the first time since they embarked on this (his and her) passage into the night. They looked into her, then through her; in their wildly azure blue depths she swam, and realized those very eyes belonged to her, by blood. The shape of his brow, the curve of his cheek, the pout of his lips; they were all too familiar, though alien to her tonight. His tanned skin was leathered and wrinkled with age, his graying hair told the story of his laborious love for the land in which he tilled and depended upon.

       “Don’t you look at me that way, or… I swear to God,” he pleaded, knowing full well it was his own sad self he was begging to.

       She shot up from the ground in an instant, mud under her long nails, grass stuck to her distressingly itching calves. The wind caught on quickly to her plan, and picked up its currents just enough to propel her forward, away from the clearing and back into the woods. Her heart, like the wings of a hummingbird moments before that great final moment, beat faster, quicker, surer than a million years of life and love and hope and virtue and strength and wisdom all combined could have ever taught her. The flight response permeated every morsel, every millimeter of her. To look behind her would mean death (though not in the literal sense, she knew, which was even more unbearable). The stars were her compass as she moved north, and her legs became impervious to the pain of her fleeting fury.  She moved faster, more deliberately, as she dodged branches and stumps (had she made this voyage before? She knew it was counterintuitive to let her mind entertain this line of questioning in this very instant.) Two more moments, they could have been minutes, and she began to smell that comforting sugary saccharinity of fresh-cut hay and hear the voices of her mother and grandmother. Salvation and sanctuary were dangling just in front of her, taunting her like a carrot on a string. The very second she opened her lips, happy and wide, to call out to these voices through the dark, that same coarse, virile, determined hand that smelled of pine needles and her childhood closed over her gaping mouth (where it would stay, and silence her heretofore). 

         As she was being carried by the disrobed man, back through the depths of the trees and on the very same course she had just used to escape, she let her eyes stay open and wander for just a while longer, before the inevitable, ineffable sin would become her burden to bear; she gazed only upward this time, her eyes pierced by the forsaken face of the man in that harvest moon. (So full, that moon.)

Movie Math: The Adjustment Bureau

Returning to an old method of breaking down movies from way back to when I calculated Brooklyn's Finest, I recently viewed The Adjustment Bureau, and I feel the time has come to try Josh's method once again.

0.30*The Matrix + 0.25*Truman Show + 0.15*City of Angels + 0.10*Wings of Desire + 0.05*Mad Men + 0.05*Wanted + 0.05*Bourne Identity + 0.05*Inception = The Adjustment Bureau

For a concept-based movie, The Adjustment Bureau still manages to take elements from many previous movies involving two worlds, reality and reality. Here is the breakdown on a more detailed level for what elements are brought out of each ingredient in the formula:

The Matrix: protagonist stumbles upon the falsehood of his world and the darker, stranger forces that actually control his perceived reality. These forces (the agents not the robotic squids) tend to manifest themselves in business attire and have rather mostly emotionless identities.

Truman Show: protagonist stumbles upon the falsehood of his world and the darker, stranger forces that actually control his perceived reality. These forces have some sort of greater agenda that infringes on his personal motivation, desires, and free will. Fortunately for him, they are not completely all-knowing and able to be all places at once. Some of them are also more susceptible to emotion than others.

City of Angels: a group of angel-like figures watch over the goings-on of the world around them with the citizens unaware of their presence. Things get interesting when one of these watchers gets more involved emotionally than his elders would want.

Wings of Desire: in the predecessor to City of Angels there are the watchers and the watched. The film highlights a weathered species that acts sometimes too often on impulse over reason, leading the angels watching over them to get involved in one way or another.

Mad Men: these cats dress like they own (or at least shape) the world, and they do, so to speak. Also, note the all-men approach to owning the world.

Wanted: a silly object (in Wanted's case, a loom, in The Adjustment Bureau, a self-writing graph-paper notebook) determines the outcome of the world, and a higher group does whatever it takes to make sure that those involved follow their intended path.

Bourne Identity: Matt Damon runs with a completely unaware but beautiful girl in arm from higher powers in suits (always in suits) that try to control his life and identity.

Inception: Love story meets science fiction meets guys in suits (always!) being really good at doing seemingly supernatural things and toying with their environments.

Morons Unite! #4

Dear Mr. Wahlberg,

I am waiting patiently for your response. In fact, it's been about 10 years; ever since your masterpiece, Planet of the Apes, was released. When is the bomb-ass sequel coming out? And can I play your lover in it?

Yours forever,
Jerry

The Top 100 Rock Guitar Solos of All Time--100-90

100.) "Lotus Feet" (Steve Vai)



Putting a live video of Steve Vai on here--what a great way to begin my list.  Besides being a virtuoso technician on the guitar, Steve puts on one hell of a show for his audience.  He is a theatrical showman in the vein of Buddy Guy and Jimi Hendrix.

This is one of Vai's more recent songs.  He has followed in the footsteps of his mentor, Frank Zappa, and pursued more classical and orchestral music in recent years.  Here Vai couples his electric guitar onslaught with the sophisticated complement of an orchestra.  This enables him to reach ecstatic heights in what I believe is his greatest climax ever on one of his "seventh songs," topping even the sexual orgasm of "Tender Surrender."  Though the melody of the song is not as majestic ("For the Love of God") or pretty ("Windows to the Soul") as some of his other ballads, this one just about tops everyone else in terms of soulfulness and haunting power.


99.) "Head-Cuttin' Duel" (Steve Vai/Ry Cooder)



I had to include this one on the list, just because it's one of the greatest YouTube clips there is. I have never seen the movie it's from (Crossroads), so I need to get on that. Plus, it has two of my favorite people ever in it: Steve Vai (as the Devil's guitarist in this clip) and Ralph Macchio of Karate Kid fame, playing on the side of good. I'm assuming, based on the title, that the movie draws from the blues legend of guitarists selling their souls at the twilight crossroads between the earth and the underworld to the Devil to attain guitar prowess. The most influential blues guitarist of all time, Robert Johnson, was said to have done this because of his otherworldly chops. He actually has a song called "Crossroads," which Eric Clapton and Cream would famously cover.

Anyways, this is just a fun clip and solo. The slide guitar parts in this are played by Ry Cooder, while Steve Vai plays any of the rock parts and Macchio's classical solo at the end. Any sort of duel, whether it be yo-yo or pistol or guitar, is awesome.

98.) "Walk This Way" (Aerosmith)



Aerosmith absolutely struck pay-dirt with this song. Opening with one of the fattest riffs of all time composed by a white man, the song is popping throughout with great lead and rhythm guitar. The solos in this are vastly underrated. This song harks back to Chuck Berry for me, because of its exuberance in adolescent horniness and its representation of this exploding sexuality in rock music (and especially the phallic symbol of the electric guitar).

97.) "Layla" (Derek and the Dominos)



A stone-cold classic, this song rides high on the desperate singing of Eric Clapton, longing for George Harrison's then-wife Pattie Boyd, and one of rock's greatest riffs, but the song is really driven to the heavens by two things: Duane Allman's shrieking, pleading slide guitar and the beautiful piano coda used for full effect in GoodFellas (see Mike's post on great film soundtrack moments here).

96.) "Orion" (Metallica)



Metallica's finest instrumental contains some bad-ass riffing, a classic bass solo from the late, great Cliff Burton, and some fine soloing from Kirk Hammett. It's pretty tough to choose between Metallica songs from the '80s golden age, because Kirk puts great solos in so many of them. The big ones up top were easy to pick, but he had a lot of other great solos too. His slower solos are very under-appreciated, and are shown to great effect in this song and several I've placed higher up.

95.) "Sympathy for the Devil" (The Rolling Stones)



As great a guitar solo as this has, the song itself is far, far better than Richards's soloing. One of the very greatest of all rock songs with perfect lyrics depicting the darkness inherent in humanity and its tendency to deny and subvert it. Keith Richards didn't solo a lot from my understanding, leaving such things to first Brian Jones, then Mick Taylor, then Ron Wood. Richards brings a sloppy, Jimmy Page-esque vibe to his solo on here, and despite the grandeur of the rest of the song, from the lyrics to the piano, somehow it works. I suppose it fits in with the Caribbean party vibe of the pulsating piano and the "hoo hoo" background vocals. Just a truly superb song.

94.) "Junkie" (Steve Vai)



Steve Vai's work on his first album Flexable (1984) is very different from his later stuff. His next solo album, Passion and Warfare, wouldn't come out till 1990, after he spent some time in David Lee Roth's solo band and Whitesnake. His guitar playing on this album has such a raw, overdriven tone that can seem harsh, but I love it. His playing is also still very heavily influenced by his time with Frank Zappa, and is very abstract and odd, lacking the melody of his later career. He did so many strange things with the whammy bar to bring together seemingly disparate musical notes, but there's a sense of adventure and freedom here that is lacking in any of his other records. Though Flexable lacks the beautiful brilliance of his later records and guitar solos, there's still some great stuff on here. Steve Vai took a long time to grow on me, because most of his music (other than something like "For the Love of God") seems so weird at first, but with time you get used to him and his signature flourishes, and you grow to appreciate them and his vast musical talents.

93.) "Purple Haze" (The Jimi Hendrix Experience)



A greater riff than solo, Jimi Hendrix's classic still has scintillating lead guitar in it. Easily the most influential rock guitarist of all time (Eddie Van Halen I would say comes in at #2), Hendrix has never been one of my favorites, for whatever reason. He's got some great solos, no doubt, but perhaps something about his songwriting never hooked me as much as Jimmy Page's or whoever else. I think his rhythm guitar work is vastly underrated, however, and I would make the case that it's even greater than his lead work. There is a lot of crazy stuff going on in his rhythm playing that is incredibly unique to him. He did serve as an inspiration for generations of rock guitarists, however, and that should not be discounted, and his attitude and legend did a lot to define what rock and roll music is.

92.) "Spanish Fly" (Van Halen)



This is basically "Eruption #2"--this time on acoustic guitar! Following the success of his instrumental on the first Van Halen album (it actually might be the single most influential guitar solo of all time), Eddie released this diamond in the rough on Van Halen II. While its finger-tapping part is quite reminiscent of "Eruption," his patented guitar attack sounds very different on an acoustic. His use of harmonics, whether natural ones (as in here) or shrieking artificial ones dive-bombed by his ever-present whammy bar, is something that is not talked about very often with him (along with his impeccable rhythm playing), but it is one of his many facets that defined him as a player. And what the hell is with the groan at the beginning of this?

91.) "Dazed and Confused" (Led Zeppelin)



Jimmy Page has always been one of my favorite guitarists. What he lacks in formal technique he makes up for in pure attitude. He was perhaps the top player to make his guitar become an extension of his libido, embodying the sexual swagger and sometimes overt misogyny inherent in rock music. While Jimi Hendrix is often depicted as using his guitar as an extension of his penis, I think Jimmy Page is really the highest artist in this field. Hendrix uses his guitar as an extension of his abstract, psychedelic thought process that seemed to have no roots in anything so simple and straightforward as wanting to fuck. It was about love and connection and the beauty (and occasional darkness) of the universe to him. For Jimmy Page, it was about big riffs and fucking bitches. Sure, Zeppelin occasionally veered into mysticism, but nothing so overpowered like the hard, bluesy rock of their first two albums. This song is no fucking exception. Everything about this band in its early stages was sex, from Bonham's wild drumming to Plant's not-exactly-subtle lyrics drawn from the bluesmen of the past (see "Whole Lotta Love"). The only thing subtle really was John Paul Jones's bass work, which was the anchor of the band. The bassist seems to always get this role, don't they? There is already some mysticism on this track, with the violin-bow-on-guitar-strings work of Jimmy Page, but the moment they bring it back to rock mode at 3:30 you forget about anything else other than wanting to bang your head and have sex. That's what this band was all about. That is why, as Chuck Klosterman wrote, every single male goes through a Led Zeppelin stage at some point in their life. Anyone who doesn't is lacking something known as virility.

90.) "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" (The Beatles)



I've already raved about this song enough on my Abbey Roads post, but the point of this entry is to highlight George's absolutely sexy solo in this song. He had never played anything so jazzy before, and I'm not sure where he pulled this baby out of, but it only adds to the clash between sex and death in this song. This song is very Freudian in its focus on these two elements, and I would have to agree that these are the two strongest influences pulling human life inevitably towards the abyss. As great as George's solo is, it is the doom of the infernal guitar arpeggios that win in this song, only to be cut off abruptly at the end like a candle winking out in the night or a human life vanishing forever. But then, after "I Want You," George's innocent, beautiful "Here Comes the Sun" follows on Abbey Road, most likely showing George's hopefulness in the immortality of the soul in comparison to Lennon's bleak nihilism of "I Want You."

--Edward

The Top 100 Rock Guitar Solos of All Time--Introduction

Yes, it is time for another list, and this time a good, solid top 100 ranked list, the way we like them. Just going through all of these makes me long to start playing guitar again. If only there was more time in the day. For a brief period in high school I took guitar lessons from the same teacher as Greg, but I never stuck with it. One day I would like to again, but all in time.

For this list I am counting only the studio versions of the songs released (unless it is a song which has only been released in live form, which does happen a few times on here). So please no bitching about how this live version is totally kick-ass. In fact, if you want to bitch too much (I expect a healthy amount of bitching), please make your own list. And once you do, you are allowed to bitch as much as you want.

This list is totally subjective. Not only because of the inherent (inter?)subjectivity of making lists in general, but because it's incredibly hard to be objective in rating something like a guitar solo, which is only a snippet out of a song, which is in itself usually only a piece of a greater artistic whole, like an album. There are guitar solos that have stood the test of time and become classics in their own right, and most of these you will find on here. I will admit up front my bias towards Joe Satriani and Steve Vai, who are my favorite guitarists. I have no regrets about including their solos on here, and in all honesty I could've made a list entirely of their stuff and not felt bad.

Guitar solos can serve multiple purposes. They can add to the flavor and tone of a song and add an accent point on a particular emotional moment in the narrative's progress. Or they can be just pure masturbation. I don't try to differentiate between one style being better than another. They both can be great. Please keep in mind that the latter does appear on this list, and oftentimes in the midst of a bad song. This was especially prevalent in the '80s, when everyone wanted to be Eddie Van Halen and busted out finger-tapping, shredding solos at the first possible opportunity. Many of these guys were great guitar players, in their own right. But even if the song is bad, please give the guitar solo a chance. And, no, I'm not going to just put a bunch of classic rock, FM-friendly songs on this list. That isn't all that guitar is. However, I'm aware that my expertise of guitar music is pretty elementary, and that's why I put "rock" in the title there to show that I don't know a huge amount about jazz guitar or certainly classical guitar.

Anyways, please enjoy.

PS--Here is one honorable mention that serves as a good warm-up for the list proper:

"The Blood and Tears" (Steve Vai)



Though it didn't quite crack the top 100, this is a frigging great solo--let's all be honest and sit around and have a fireside chat here. It has three distinct sections to it, one of them focusing heavily on a trippy-sounding effect (which builds on the Indian theme of the song), and feels like an updated version of the "All Along the Watchtower" solo by Hendrix. Sectional solos have a compositional elegance that I would compare to classical music in their sense of harmony and balance (you owe me $43.50 for this lesson). Great song!

--Edward

Don't watch this one at work... I'd like to shake your Daddy's hand.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCOIeYSwbXs&feature=related

The Body

My dad and sis found a body one time. I mean, I was there, but I didn’t look

cause I didn’t want to. I must have been nine or ten at the time- too young to

be brave enough to peer through the filthy windows of the faded dodge pickup

to see an old man, lying peacefully in the cab, his white beard and relaxed

demeanor mimicking Santa Claus, but stiff as a board and bloated. He must

have been there for days- decided he was too tired to keep on the road, weary

of the Pennsylvania turnpike and its endless drones of truckers hopped up on

black coffee and speed, baring down on the unexpecting. Decided he’d pull off

the highway, onto the same back road, into the same small clearing between

the pines and oaks near a brisk little stream where we used to relieve ourselves

during the long trips to see grandma. Decided he’d take a nap, for an hour maybe,

regain the strength he used to have when he had his first son, or when he

worked steel in Pittsburg in the 1950s, or when he was a young marine in Korea.

Decided he didn’t need to hurry cause he knew his wife didn’t care if he was

an hour late, only that he got there. Decided he’d close his eyes and dream of

something nice. And died.

It was a cold day in autumn, the Alleghenies were bright with the yellows,

oranges, and reds of dying leaves- the sky beautiful, empty, and clear.

1952-2011

Last Man Standing

People always used to say this like it was a good thing, but in my case I don't think so. I was the last man standing in Loudoun. I never left for a really long extended period of time. The longest being a year. Summer's and breaks from school were great, as Matt had eluded to in earlier posts, because everybody was back, at least the people I cared to spend time with. But for 8-9 months a year they weren't so I had to try some new things, I mean I wasn't going to just go home and get on the computer every day after work. I pushed out of my comfort zone and began hanging out with people I usually wouldn't unless it was at a party.

I don't really remember which came first because in all honesty I was doing a little too much drinking and was suffering from some severe insomnia so sleeping pills were a steady part of my diet. But I do recall two completely separate groups of people I began fraternizing with. One being Cam and his rag tag bunch of pot smokers. I remember going over to somebody's house and having six drinks or so while watching my new found companions blowing lines and taking huge bong rips. Of course I was drinking to make myself feel more comfortable in the situation, always wishing I was somewhere else, and always making myself wish I didn't live here anymore. Of course at the time I didn't have the means to get out.

The other was Dooley and Sam. Just those two pretty much and whatever female high school student would be frequenting Dooley's house on that particular night. It was rough times, however not nearly as rough as the other one. I actually enjoyed hanging out with them, so much that we all went to a Van Halen concert in North Carolina. Which was awesome by the way. However, I think their overall lack of drive didn't really suit my life goals so I wasn't fulfilled there either. So I began spending more time away from home, mostly going out to Fairfax/DC with Ryan.

Of course then everybody graduated and made their way back here. We were all in the same spot, all of us wishing we were doing something else, somewhere else. However, after a couple months things got better because well, we were just having fun. Now at this time I probably had the most meaningful job and was on the cusp of being able to move but didn't quite feel the urge to do so because I was happy. Ironic right?

But once again, things started to change and many of those people began to leave again as they were much more unsatisfied with living in Loudoun, probably as I was before. But if they thought it was bad now then they wouldn't be able to handle what I had dealt with. Luckily they didn't make it that far. But that doesn't change the fact that I'm still here, the last man standing.