Rock music has way too many incredibly memorable guitar riffs to limit a best of list to just one hundred, but the 100 riffs that guitarist Alex Chadwick of The Chicago Music Exchange came up with for the above video performance ain't half bad, and it is a nice informal overview of the history of rock n' roll. Sure it's a subjective selection that includes a lot of mega hits of the genre, and no doubt every rock fan could come up with their own unique list of a hundred best guitar riffs. But I like what Alex has done: from his playing to his choices of riffs, and from how he segues from song to song, to how he plays it on his 1958 Fender Strat all in chronological order. Below is that list of songs and artists in order with the artist names that are blue highlighted linking back to the Amoeba Online Store. where you can find their respective music (CDs, LPs, DVDs) including (in near all cases) the song played by Alex.

2 "Folsom Prison Blues" Johnny Cash
3 "Words of Love"  Buddy Holly
4 "Johnny B Goode"  Chuck Berry
5 "Rumble"  Link Wray

This latest Mash-Up of the Week is a refreshing change from the usual mash-ups being produced these days. Typically mash up producers base their tracks off of either solely contemporary pop songs, or else current pop hits mixed with an older era pop tune (such as Lady GaGa + Kei$ha with Michael Jackson). But "Whole Lotta Sabbath" works exclusively off of classic hard rock sources -- namely Zeppelin and Sabbath.

The audio/video mixer of this mash up is Wax Audio out of Australia, who has been creating mixes for the better part of the past decade. I first learned about him six years ago during the Bush administration when, like myself and the DJs of Mass Destruction crew (DJ Pone, Dawgisht, DJ ALF), he was also doing remixes of George W. Bush speeches. One of Wax Audio's greatest pieces was his remix of John Lennon's "Imagine;" retitling it "Imagine This," he chopped, word by word, Bush saying each lyric of the song and matched it over an instrumental.

I caught up with Wax Audio earlier today (later today in Australia), who told me that the "Whole Lotta Sabbath" video is indeed brand new but that the audio track has been done for a minute. "To be honest, my main motive to make the mix at the time was just to get a real classic rock/metal mash-up out there," he told the Amoeblog. "I'm a big fan of the old bands and there didn't seem to be too many mashes of them at the time. But once I started, I thought the concept was really cool. Sabbath singing about the evil of men and war and Zeppelin praising women and love. The track is entirely comprised of the original Zeppelin and Sabbath tracks ("War Pigs" and "Whole Lotta Love") but there's also plenty of other Zep samples in there too -- "Dazed & Confused" mostly, but a few other bits and pieces. The video shows footage from the Vietnam and Iraq wars and also shows Sabbath performing from both those eras, which is interesting. There's also stuff of the Hindenburg disaster, which relates to the Zeppelin name and a photo of a Celtic Cross I took in Scotland (relating to Sabbath and their penchant for crosses)."

At the end of every year the urge to take in several hours of epic cinema storytelling never fails at filling my darkest mid-winter nights with adventure. What better way is there to spend all that spare "holiday season" time than enjoying a bit of movie magic? Ever since my childhood I've been romanced by the otherworldly wiles of fantasy films, being always at my most vulnerable around Christmas with an easy schedule and a heightened desire to escape into the imagination I possessed as a little girl where I could be as Grace Jones-crazy (Conan the Destroyer), Tanya Roberts-sexy (Sheena), Nigel Terry-valiant, Nicol Willamson-wise (King Arthur and Merlin, respectively, in John Boorman's Excalibur) and Brigitte Neilsen fierce (Red Sonja.) Surely I needn't mention how easily I took to playing Dungeons and Dragons in my teens or how largely Led Zeppelin figured into my lifelong playlist -- anyone who can claim the feeling of being partially raised by fantasy and sci fi flicks takes to rock 'n' role-play like a good sword to a well-oiled sheath. However, I would like to point out how deeply one Englishman, who was recently voted the 92nd "greatest Briton," John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, has irreversibly influenced contemporary popular culture forever by writing faerie stories to entertain his children. Being a big Tolkien nerd myself, I count him in the topmost of my top ten "greatest Britons," after a handful of musicians, writers and and that Arturus Rex guy.