I'm with Walt on the Traffic cut but here's one not posed yet, and yes, I believe it qualifies as "instrumental" even though there are sections using the human voice as an instrument:
You could fill this list with Santana songs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyDXugSVR48 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oK9wql4yRfI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTC_A5d1wuA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZ2ya7G7wlI
That's a good album[Blues For Salvador]. I remember I bought that after seeing the movie Salvador. I played it my car with a Herbie Hancock album on cassette tape the whole summer of '88. There's excellent musicians on it. I'm not the biggest Santana fan, but that album is excellent.
this guy can make a guitar do whatever he wants it to, wait for the 2 minute mark. and its live. ridiculous
I consider instrumentals to be vocal free, but I'll make an exception for a song like Tequilla or something with spoken word like To Live is To Die by Metallica.
Asterisk Division: There's about two minutes of vocals at the beginning but that still leaves about fifteen minutes of benchmark rock instrumental.
Boston - Foreplay Stanley Clarke - School Days (the whole album) Weather Report - Heavy Weather (the whole album) And yeah, the latter two are jazzy but they are also great instrumentals. Was listening to Foreplay/Long Time the other day in the car and thinking how great the music of the 70's really was.