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User
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Last Active 05-21-22 9:45 pm
Joined 07-15-09
Review Comments 14,703
| 10 Reasons Why Spin's List Of 100 Greatest Guitarists Of All Time Sucks
http://www.spin.com/articles/spins-100-greatest-guitarists-all-
time
Have a look at the list. Don't forget to read the introductory
paragraph.
Look, I get it. SPIN is bored of the regular run of the mill Top 100
Guitarist lists because of the same damn names always being
there and they want to focus on the best and most
groundbreaking alternative and indie guitarists. I don't have a
problem with that, but I just wish they had done a little
homework.
Even though SPIN are trying to be hip and alternative, they fail for
not putting these 10 guys on the list. | | 8 |  | Pixies
Doolittle
Joey Santiago:
Nominally speaking, the Pixies were a power-pop band, but in the process
they redefined what pop-music meant. Yes, there were bubble-gummy
melodies, but with a streak of unpredictable weirdness a mile wide and
shards of guitar noise slashing through them every once in a while. To the
uninitiated, Santiago?s seemingly free form expressions of noise may seem
annoying and pointless, but take a step back and you?ll see that Santiago
in many senses redefines what a guitar solo is. | | 7 |  | Freak Kitchen
Spanking Hour
Mathias "IA" Eklundh:
IA?s work with Freak Kitchen is Progressive Metal in the truest sense of the
word. What separates him from the usual run of the mill prog-metal
virtuosos is his complete unpredictability, eschewment of convention and
DIY attitude. From minute to minute you don?t know what you?re going to
get with a song when IA is playing. Metal, Jazz, Pop, Comedy, Vibrating
dildos; it?s all in a day?s work for IA. | | 6 |  | Faith No More
Angel Dust
Jim Martin / Trey Spruance
Martin and Spruance get a shared spot for playing in the same band. The
former?s work may have been more influential with Faith No More laying the
funky template for Nu Metal while also taking detours into straight up
thrash outs, but in many ways he was the most conventional cog in the
machine, keeping Mike Patton?s weirdness grounded in Heavy Metal.
Spruance?s work is more varied and his ability to keep up with Mike Patton?s
schizophrenic musical ambition (both in Fantomas and FNM) should put him
on any greatest alternative guitarist list while jumping from Metal to Jazz to
Lounge ballads and back again. | | 5 |  | Red Hot Chili Peppers
Mother's Milk
Hillel Slovak / John Frusciante:
Slovak and Frusciante also get a shared spot because it?s extremely hard to
tell the two guitarists apart in RHCP?s earlier days, immediately before
Slovak?s death and then after Frusciante joined the band as a teenage
Slovak-worshipper. While Frusciante eventually found his own voice on the
instrument and is mostly responsible for the growth and improvement in
RHCP?s sound, the two guitarists shared a surprising ability to meld punk
and funk with passion, understated aggression, and surprising dexterity.
The organic grooves of the band might sound deceptively simple but don?t
be fooled, the guitarists? fingers are not easy to emulate. | | 4 |  | Helmet
Meantime
Page Hamilton:
Page Hamilton isn?t so much a guitarist as a stone-carving sculptor and in
his hands a guitar is not so much a musical instrument as it is a
sledgehammer. While it is a hard task indeed to sit down with a Helmet
record and listen to it from start to finish, Hamilton?s classical training and
absolute refusal to tone down or compromise on the unrelenting
aggression in his approach to the instrument is both unique and influential. | | 3 |  | Van Halen
Van Halen
Eddie Van Halen
Regardless of how you feel about hair metal/glam metal/cock rock, you can?t
deny that Eddie Van Halen was a true original. He may not have been the
first to play lightning quick arpeggios or to use two-handed tapping, but he
brought it to the forefront while still making damn catchy heavy metal. Love
him or hate him, you can?t begrudge him for rewriting the rules on how to
play the electric guitar just because hundreds, or thousands, of others
decided to copy him verbatim. Eruption remains a rite of passage for any
budding heavy metal guitarist more than 20 years on. | | 2 |  | Primus
Sailing the Seas of Cheese
Larry LaLonde:
Primus generally exists as a vehicle for Les Claypool?s weirdness, but
LaLonde matches him quirk for quirk and while the usual rhythm-lead
tropes of rock and roll are inverted, LaLonde is not a rhythm guitarist in the
conventional sense. He may be playing in the background most of the time,
and the genre the band plays may be (very) loosely defined as ?Funk?, but
this is a kind of funk that no one else in the world plays and LaLonde?s
ability to play off Claypool is a big part of the reason why. | | 1 |  | The Jimi Hendrix Experience
Are You Experienced
Jimi Hendrix:
Look, this might be overdone well past the point of cliché, but there?s a
reason that Jimi Hendrix is universally considered the greatest guitarist of
all time. You can argue all you want that he was a blues guitarist, but
nobody before him, or after him for that matter, quite played the blues like
he did, though pretty much everyone tried. His credentials are impeccable
having toured with various funk and jazz bands before making it big
himself, but in addition to his considerable chops, he also pushed the
boundaries of the electric guitar to extents that no one before him had
even dreamed. He was Avant Garde before the term existed in rock music.
His rendition of | |
macman76
05.11.12 | 3 = overrated | SitarHero
05.11.12 | Cynic's Masvidal/Gobel combination also should've probably made the list. | JamieTwort
05.11.12 | List needs more Gary Moore. | ZilbelPing
05.11.12 | Who cares about spin?
It's pretty obvious they're morons. | SitarHero
05.11.12 | @macman 76: Nothing else sounded like Eruption when it was recorded. That alone should be enough to get him on the list.
@JamieTwort: I tried to stick closesly to rock/alternative. | JamieTwort
05.11.12 | I was referring to the Spin list as much as yours. Personally I think he's pretty much an essential inclusion in any top guitarist list. But I can't say I was surprised that he wasn't on there. | mindleviticus
05.11.12 | Ppphhht Spin... those were the guys that thought Liturgy's debut album was actually genius. Genius my ass. More like half-assed pretentious hipster black metal. | londoncalling457
05.11.12 | all solid arguments but people seem to forget THAT THEY PUT FUCKING SKRILLEX ON THE LIST | SitarHero
05.11.12 | I'm ok with DJs making the list. Creative sampling of guitar riffs works as well as actual guitar riffs, but I don't even know if there are even sampled guitars in Skrillex's songs. | jlech
05.11.12 | Matt Talbot from Hum! | johnnyblaze
05.11.12 | they clearly wrote the article to garner media attention and website traffic. clearly they've succeeded. can we stop perpetuating this plz. | SitarHero
05.11.12 | In theory I'm ok with the list. It's about great guitarists 'with a difference'. That's cool. But horribly done in the end. | SgtPepper
05.11.12 | I honestly didnt care for this list myself when I saw it. But I suppose many of the "Greatest guitarists" list are often very similar- like Jimi taking the #1 spot (well deserved though).
It's cool that they tried to be different, but the rankings were a bit off and a lot of very talented musicians got ignored. | AngelofDeath
05.11.12 | "3 = overrated"
you = retarded | HSThomas
05.11.12 | Love you for 4 but Allan Holdsworth = God. | SitarHero
05.11.12 | @PaperbackWriter:
Exactly. I'm perfectly fine with doing a list of 100 greatest guitarists who don't generally get mentioned, but then you can't put Vernon Reid and John McLaughlin on the same list as Dimebag, The Edge and Kurt Cobain. The list had a decent concept, but was terribly done. | Trebor.
05.11.12 | They really didn't put Santiago? What fags
Also Issac Brock should be on there | SitarHero
05.11.12 | @HSThomas:
Good call. He is/was brilliant, but as with Gary Moore I didn't mention him because I think he isn't really a "rock" guitarist. He transcends that label. | PuddlesPuddles
05.11.12 | List is well-written and accurate. Buck-et-head. Buck-et-head | auberginedreams
05.11.12 | it's just their opinion dude. | AliW1993
05.11.12 | It's just someone elses opinion. Get over it. | SitarHero
05.11.12 | Yeah, I know. It still irks me though. |
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