guitar zero

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

The NME are polling the greatest guitar riffs of all time. As per usual, their readership is completely wrong.

What's your favourite guitar riff of all time, poptimists? Mine is, indie-ly enough, the one in the last 1:52 of 'Hearts Alive' by Mastodon but I am also partial to a bit of the one from the so you think you can love me and leave me and diiiiie bit of 'Bohemian Rhapsody', the chugging under the verses of 'You Freak Me Out' by Grills Aloud, the main one from 'The Tower' by Isis (whose new album has leaked, ambient post-metal fans) and 'Pull The Cup' by Shellac. Which is really extremely indie but there you go.

Related question, probably more relevant to our interests: do you think of songs as having "riffs," "hooks," etc. (there are, after all, a lot of pop songs that use guitars, particularly in a reductive, riffy/samply form) or do these things not stand out to you/do you deconstruct songs (if you do at all) by other methods?

(and no, we don't talk about guitar riffs very often but as part of NO CHEERLEADERS, NO FIREWORKS week we might as well)

(ALSO it is famous London club night POPTIMISM tomorrow in the Horse Bar, Westminster; there will be pop music, moderately priced beer, good company, drinking, dancing, bubbling, FUN and it's free to get into, unlike club Popjustice and it finishes at midnight, so you can get the tube home and everything)