Introducing: The All-Time Greatest Guitar Solo "April" Madness Tournament!

I mentioned on Facebook about a week ago that I would be starting a pretty indepth "survey" again. We'd done this a few years back, when we elected Freddie Mercury the all-time greatest frontman for a rock band.

I've had this idea for a while, and I just knew it would be a lot of work (and it was a LOT of work). Trying to nail down the all-time greatest guitar solo is a daunting task.

So, there were a few guidelines. The song had to hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 *OR* the Mainstream Rock 100 charts (that still left more than 1300 songs). I narrowed that down to 256, and rated them (which is how the seeding is established). Originally, I'd thought I could have room for some darkhorses, but eventually, mostly just the cream of the crop remained. I did remove any songs that essentially constituted nothing more than screaming (goodbye most of the Mainstream Rock from the past decade) and also any where the videos were simply disturbing (thankfully, there weren't many of those left, once the screaming songs were discarded).

The survey is set up into FOUR groups of 64 (which will be combined into one, after the first two rounds). I'll put up ONE group of 64 each day for the next four days, and all of them will close NEXT Wednesday. You can save and continue at a later time.

Clicking on the song title will bring you to the video of the song; or you can click on the next link and see JUST the solo (which, after all, is what we're talking about). I urge you to listen to the songs (or at least the solos) - you may be reminded of some long lost memories; or you may even find that songs had pretty sick solos that you wouldn't have expected. I was also surprised at which bands aren't even really represented (either because they didn't end up with a lot of #1 songs (Kiss) or because they weren't really guitar-driven bands (Nirvana, Linkin Park)

Here's a little trivia before we get started (future posts will simply have the link to that day's survey). Here is a list of the bands that had more than one song on the list (no surprise at the top):

11: Van Halen
8: Tom Petty (and Heartbreakers)
6: Beatles, Black Crowes, ZZ Top
5: Rolling Stones
4: Bon Jovi, Collective Soul, Eric Clapton, Metallica, Pink Floyd, Shinedown, U2
3: Aerosmith, Bryan Adams, Def Leppard, Huey Lewis and the News, John Mellencamp, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Richard Marx, Rush
2: Audioslave, Bob Seger, Bruce Springsteen, Cars, Chicago, Creed, Dire Straits, Don Henley, Eagles, Grand Funk, Green Day, Hall & Oates, Heart, Ozzy Osbourne, Pearl Jam, REM, REO Speedwagon, Santana, Soundgarden, Steve Miller Band, Stone Temple Pilots, Theory of a Deadman, Three Dog Night, Tommy James and Shondells, Velvet Revolver, Yes

And, with that, here's the link to the first group of 64.

Here are the brackets for this first group:

P.S. - Regular blog posts, of a more professional nature, will return, once this contest/tournament is completed!