10 favorite RIFFS

[rustywire]

Found a "fav guitar riff" mix I made a few years back...figured it might make for an interesting thread topic...as I searched "favorite riffs" and didn't find what I was looking for.

Put up a list of your favorite riffs after thinking about it for a few minutes.
Any era, any genres. Top 40, local heroes, thrashy, doomy, grindy non-music, hipstery, new-age, whatever.

I'll want to add/remove after a while...so maybe make this a quarterly list?
See how long you can stay satisfied with your picks!
The winner gets a gold star or something. Maybe for good taste

LETS GET IT STARTED

These are my fav titles from that fav mix.

Beatles - I Want You (She's So Heavy)
Wire - Ex Lion Tamer
My Bloody Valentine - When You Wake (You're Still In A Dream)
Superchunk - Slack Motherfucker
Sonic Youth - Dirty Boots
Burzum - Dunkelheit
Bitch Magnet - Big Pining
Polvo - Duped
Catherine Wheel - Black Metallic
Slint - Breadcrumb Trail

Honorable mention to the opening riff on Pink Floyd - Interstellar Overdrive. But there isn't enough of that TBH...

[rustywire]

To elaborate a bit on the picks...

I Want You...is probably the single most haunting riff that echoes through my mind. Still gives me those chills of excitement every time I hear it.
Ex-Lion Tamer...a moodbooster worthy of drug classification
When You Wake...has been responsible for blowing out multiple speakers in various car stereo systems...while driving in local traffic
Slack MF...because it's the perfect anthem for shitty coworkers at shitty jobs
Dirty Boots...can make it feel like 2am on a rainy autumn night in any season
Dunkelheit...makes it feel like 2am in an arctic blizzard
Big Pining...so fitting, in articulating the song title without words
Duped...WINNING WITH FEEDBACK
Black Metallic...not exactly black or metallic, but these words somehow still come to mind, along with night listening
Breadcrumb Trail...because I say goodbye to the ground

[Ugly Nora]

This thread is way too complicated for me to properly participate, so I will just leave you with this. So great, Lou Reed stole it for Sweet Jane.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2FAJhkd4Bs[/youtube]

[GardenoftheDead]

Soon by My Bloody Valentine
Dragonaut by Sleep
Total Trash by Sonic Youth
Hall of the Dead by Isis
Serpent Soul by Craft
The Glass Prison by Dream Theater
No World For Tomorrow by Coheed & Cambria
Sappy by Nirvana
Duress by Swervdriver

[nieh]

off the top of my head,

Black Flag - Your Last Affront
Black Flag - I'm The One
Polvo - Tilebreaker
Women - Eyesore
Modest Mouse - Teeth Like God's Shoeshine
James Chance and the Contortions - I Can't Stand Myself
Subhumans - Apathy
Queens of the Stone Age - You Can't Quit Me Baby
Nick Drake - Road
X - The Unheard Music

[Mudfuzz]

Ministry - So What
Dead kennedys - holiday in cambodia
Boris - Akuma No Uta
Motorhead - The Chase is Better Than the Catch
Black Sabbath - Electric Funeral
Melvins - Let It All Be
Bauhaus - Bela Lugosi's Dead
Cheech And Chong - Earache My Eye
Hemet - Meantime
TAD - Weakling

[space6oy]

This thread is way too complicated for me to properly participate

+1. yikes. if i even bothered trying i'd go "oh wait, this one too! and this one! and this one!"
forever.

[Mudfuzz]

This thread is way too complicated for me to properly participate

+1. yikes. if i even bothered trying i'd go "oh wait, this one too! and this one! and this one!"
forever.

just go with the first 10 that pop into your mind…. then make a post #2 to 380000000

[space6oy]

ok... for the moment...
high on fire - 10,000 years
autolux - turnstile blues
autolux - sugarless
autolux - robots in the garden
autolux - 23 watt apple juice
failure - another space song
autolux - audience #2
daft punk - da funk
com truise - ether drift (still hate his stupid name but his music is amazing...)
aaaaand mastodon - iron tusk

[DarkAxel]

Oceansize - Build Us a Rocket Then
Tool - Lateralus
Karnivool - Cote
Mr.Bungle - Girls of Porn
Incubus - Sick Sad Little World
The Dillinger Escape Plan - Panasonic Youth
Porcupine Tree - Shallow
Every Time I Die - Kill The Music
Bloodbath -Eaten
Opeth - Blackwater Park

just what came to my mind right now I feel like each of these songs is a riff powerhouse

[darthbatman]

From a bass playing standpoint a lot of my favorite shit comes from the original Sonic the Hedgehog games..
Like the slap sounds in Oil Ocean Zone, Treetop Zone, Mystic Cave Zone, Aquatic Ruin Zone, etc..

I also wanna say listening to a lot of aphex twin and boards of canada, trying to emulate some of those kinds of happy+sad melodies has shaped me a lot as a player.

Gonna go ahead and say most System of a Down riffs hit the spot for me as well. Love the way those guys wrote their tunes.
Oh and most Sabbath does it for me too. The there's weird shit like early Tera Melos, and Planets definitely. Some Primus type stuff too.

[Ugly Nora]

This thread is way too complicated for me to properly participate

+1. yikes. if i even bothered trying i'd go "oh wait, this one too! and this one! and this one!"
forever.

just go with the first 10 that pop into your mind…. then make a post #2 to 380000000

Ok then.

Lungfish - Non Dual Bliss
Lungfish - Descender
Lungfish - Broadcast
Lungfish - Put Your Hand in my Hand
Lungfish - Fearfully and Wonderfully
Lungfish - Hear the Children Sing
Lungfish - Terminal Crush
Lungfish - Fresh Air Cure
Lungfish - Parthenogenesis
Lungfish - Panic and Hysteria

[rustywire]

Nice selections. Will def be revisiting my Lungfish collection...The Trap Gets Set is part of the mix I mentioned

This thread is way too complicated for me to properly participate

+1. yikes. if i even bothered trying i'd go "oh wait, this one too! and this one! and this one!"
forever.

Upon seeing Garden list Duress, and nieh pick Tilebreaker caused me to say "fuck" faster than an old lady when someone yells BINGO

[Ugly Nora]

Nice selections. Will def be revisiting my Lungfish collection...The Trap Gets Set is part of the mix I mentioned

Yeah, Lungfish is my most influential band. They changed the way I listen to music when I first heard them back in 1990. Their circular, repetitive riffs do it for me like no other. I was lucky to see them on their Rainbows from Atoms tour back in 1993 or 1994 whenever it was. Good times. I actually think I still have Asa Osborne's pick laying around somewhere if I look real hard. An orange Tortex if I recall.

[Ugly Nora]

high on fire - 10,000 years

Now, THAT'S a riff.