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Voice of America named it the best rock song ever and guitarists and guitar fans the world over will swear by it as one of the best if not the best lead solo ever. On YouTube and elsewhere there are many who have tried to emulate Jimmy Page but only a few are perfect. Here are my favorite picks.

The near perfect one from an unnamed guitarist, the instructer at playguitarsolos.com

From Ugur Dariveren and like someone commented, nice wind in his hair.

Ugur has posted some other solos too of various hits and they are very impressive.

Another video posted by markmusicman but there is a tiny mistake in the first line of the solo

And the classical imporvisation live performance from Rodrigo and Gabriela which even challenges the original.

If you know of a “stairway to heaven” solo video that either matches these performances or even betters them send me a message and I will link them here.

I first heard John Williams play this classical composition on my car-radio while travelling in Athens, GA. It was so melodious that after parking my car I continued to keep the radio on to find out who was playing. I heard these unforgettable words, Carlo Domeniconi and Koyunbaba and that the legendary classical guitarist John Williams (not to be confused with the composer John Williams of StarWars, ET, Raiders of the Lost Ark fame) was playing the tune. The classical guitarist John Williams is from Australia. I later bought the CD and to my surprise there were other great compositions on the CD. Sony produced this album it is called The Guitarist. Koyunbaba on the CD comes in four parts and is composed by the Italian composer Carlo Domeniconi who composed it during his stay in Turkey.

The video below shows Li Jie, the Chinese classical guitarist playing Koyunbaba. On YouTube I found it the best among several others who have attempted Koyunbaba. Li Jie adds more elegance to the beauty of the classical guitar in the composed and lithe manner she plays her instrument. A little expression would have made the performance even better.

The Chapman stick has been around since the late 60’s but it never got the attention that the regular 6 strings or 12 strings did. Nevertheless it has ardent devotees and serious players. Here is one performance on YouTube worth watching. Notice how the player, Rob Martino uses both his hands to play both bass and melodies simultaneously.

Before I post my first guitar album review, I thought it would be convenient to mention my other blog where I have already reviewed some big guitar albums instead of duplicating reviews here. The blog is great-anonymous-albums.com that I have been running since 2006. Many a great guitar hero have been missed by the guitar enjoying public and I have reviewed some of the most anonymous yet very pleasing and interesting albums on this site. Please find the links to these albums in my sidebar under great-anonymous-albums.com reviews

If this 4 yr old can be so fired up imagine what we grown-ups should be feeling. When I came across this delightful video I thot’ it should make my first post before I start working on the rest.  Check out the yahoo video below.

I tried hard and wasted time creating a new theme. Tired of checking and tweaking other available themes and then when I almost thought of giving up I come across Dilectio, a smashing theme. Like the theme of my other music site I run using WordPress, great-anonymous-albums.com, the Dilectio theme was love at first sight. Though it may not match the content of my site I used it because I liked it so much. Time to tweak it to my requirements.