Advertise here with Carbon Ads

This site is made possible by member support. 💞

Big thanks to Arcustech for hosting the site and offering amazing tech support.

When you buy through links on kottke.org, I may earn an affiliate commission. Thanks for supporting the site!

kottke.org. home of fine hypertext products since 1998.

Beloved by 86.47% of the web.

🍔  💀  📸  😭  🕳️  🤠  🎬  🥔

posted by Jason Kottke  ·  gift link

The History of the Electric Guitar Solo

YouTube channel Polyphonic (whose videos I’ve featured before) has taken on an ambitious project: tracing the history of the electric guitar solo from its origins in blues and country music in the American South all the way up to the present day. The series is called Axe To Grind and the first three episodes are available on YouTube (the first two are embedded above). People are sharing their favorite early electric guitar players in the comments of the first video.

The series is also available on the subscription-only Nebula — episodes appear there first and the music excerpts are longer because Nebula doesn’t trample all over creators’ fair use rights like YT does. (via open culture)