Retro crush has a list of the 50 coolest song parts, meaning the 50 songs that contain cool segments. There are images of all the album covers as well as MP3s of all the segments, but they’re very low quality. At least they give you an idea of how they sound.

I’ve always liked the bass guitar solo in Paul Simon’s You Can Call Me Al, ranked #36, but I learned something new about it. Apparently it wasn’t just a solo, but half of a solo, with the other half being a bit of studio trickery.

If you listen closely, the lick is actually a musical palindrome – it was played forward in its entirety, then the tape was flipped over and played backwards, the backwards lick was recorded onto another tape, and then that second recording was edited into place . . . This kind of editing is easy to accomplish in the studio today what with fancy pants computers and stuff, but in 1986, this was a glorious and complex maneuver to pull off.

Knowing that makes me like it even more.

(via presurfer)