The Politics of a Guitar List

 This song is is now over forty years old. The arrangement is faithful to the original version. Guitar genius still.


Maybe you caught my last post on Rolling Stone Magazine's top 100 rock guitarists. I can only say the list is the list for the year 2011. And is/was created solely for the people who voted on the large talent pool of guitar wielding professionals who made rock music the interesting diverse string-driven sound-scape it became over all these decades. The combined votes and editing missed on Roy Buchanan. Well, a lot people missed Roy Buchanan over the years.

I also mentioned the Rolling Stone top 100 rock guitarist list started in the brain of David Fricke back in 2003, and Rolling Stone has his list archived, which you can check out by hitting the link in my previous post. Fricke's, and the current guitar top 100 differ quite a bit. Fricke includes a host of San Francisco Bay area guitar talent on his top 100, but only Carlos Santana and Jerry Garcia make the 100 cut this time around. And apart from Jeff Beck and John Mclaughlin no progressive jazz-rock player gets mentioned. Brian May and Robert Fripp are the only dudes I find who get included with real progressive post 1960s pedigrees. 

I find the end result disappointing, but not altogether unexpected. Ever notice an underlying disdain from New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Nashville, Bakersfield, Kansas City, New Orleans, Detroit, Philadelphia, Austin, Boston, Miami and Anyotherplace, USA -except Seattle- for all things San Francisco over the years?

Maybe it's the culmination of thirty years shitting daily on the words liberal and progressive by hosts of conservative radio to people who ever scanned a dial on AM radio and could not escape a few seconds of lockstep right-wing spew. Too many Bill O'Reilly barf downs on San Francisco over the years. Add up all those seconds over a multitude of years for car bound commuters everywhere and you might associate the words liberal and progressive with every worst excess and depravity that has hit the world from hippie environmental terrorism and drug addiction to gay lifestyle and its supposed threats against the sanctity of marriage and the viral spread of disease.

The saddest part of this ever enduring daily aural brainwash bath has been to equate all progressive venues from socio-economic-political to cultural idioms as worthless to the listeners, who are routinely exalted for their ability to call and mimic, like myna birds, the ever repeated hypnotic messages extolling the eradication of all social liberalism.

And so by decades of cultural beat-down comes a new Rolling Stone Magazine guitarist list where we have very few players who stretched the guitar boundaries in a progressive and liberal feel flow manner, whether from San Francisco, London, Berlin or Liberalbasement, USA.

I cannot figure out why Andy Powell (with first Ted Turner & then Laurie Wisefield) of Wishbone Ash, who defined the twin lead guitar sound that so many bands adopted throughout the 1970s, 1980s and into the 1990s, gets excluded. How does Steve Howe of Yes not get included? Jorma Kaukonen of Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna cannot wriggle by Lou Reed, or Steve Jones or Willie Nelson? John Cippolina is not one of the top 100 guitarists, but Leslie West is? Robin Trower with Procol Harum and his own bands over 40 years could not garner votes, but Kurt Cobain's in this list?

Understand, I'm not in any way suggesting Kurt Cobain was not an important guy in the annals of rock. Many could/would say he was the last rock star. The Nirvanna recorded statements were vital shit. Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols was an important figure in the band and the Punk movement. I believe his guitar skills, and guitar impact were way less than both Brian Setzer or Rick Nielson, and I would not put them into a top 100. When I think of Lindsey Buckingham I think of Jeff Lynne. Great writer, instrumentalist and producer, not a guitar god, and though I really dug a lot of Buckingham tunes his place on this list seems weird.

But all of this just affirms that the tight tunes contain far more value today than the extended and spacious instrumental tracks that give a person time and opportunity to expand his/her horizons. The message of conservatism- limits and reductions is always at odds with the liberal message of boundless and limitless. Think of it another way. How does anyone define a liberal portion? How does anyone define a conservative portion? One is generous, one is smallish. One is vast, one is confined.

I like headroom when I listen to music, and I take my time. When I listen I'm not in a hurry to get anywhere, but into my head. I don't sense most people listen that way much anymore. It seems the act of the download is more important than what is on the download.

And so this clip ends this post, a post really more about why certain artists are or not included. Here is the brilliant Bill Nelson, of Be Bop Deluxe, and so much more. Dude is on my list of most influential and in my top 20, but then again I'm a liberal.



Thanks for the taking the time, and stopping by. Until next time.