Underrated Guitarists Thread

[bueno bob]

I just want to take a moment and tell Gar to go fuck himself. And his mother.

OK, go ahead.

[Kristy]

I just want to take a moment and tell Gar to go fuck himself. And his mother.

Post of the year!

[kwame k]

Wow, no one's mentioned Pete Townshend yet. One of the best rhythm players of that era, IMHO.

George Harrison.

[Kristy]

Townshend?

To me his playing is highly schizophrenic: electric: he is obnoxious, abrasive, caustically loud relying on power chords and endless riff-bashing. Acoustically, he is in a league by himself with more of a flamenco, finger-picking style that could even rival Chet Atkins. He also utilizes more intricate dominate and diminished chords and this is why to me, he acoustic songs had more of an edge to them even if they can be as erratic if he chose to play them electrically.

If you ever listen to his "Scooped" records which is a lot of outtakes and demos many of the classic Who rockers were written acoustically.

Here is one of all-time fav tunes written by him. I like both lyrically and acoustically and although it is slightly different from the original, there is no way he could pull this song off with the same meaning if he played it electric.

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[kwame k]

Townshend?

To me his playing is highly schizophrenic: electric: he is obnoxious, abrasive, caustically loud relying on power chords and endless riff-bashing.

Henceforth, his influence on the Punk movement and the Hard Rock movement. An influential guitarist but one who never receives the accolades that other guitarists receive......isn't that underrated?

[Kristy]

Henceforth, his influence on the Punk movement and the Hard Rock movement. An influential guitarist but one who never receives the accolades that other guitarists receive......isn't that underrated?

The Who, through Townshend's electric playing style undoubtedly had an effect on hard rock but his influence on punk is arguable. I never looked upon The Who as being anything "punk" for they were rooted more into the whole UK "art and mod scene" which was largely based in American R&B and Motown. Even Townshend himself stated many a time his greatest influence to start playing music wasn't a guitar player but Mose Allison, a blues piano player who when Townshend first heard him couldn't believe he was white.



Townshend left more of a legacy on early (post-punk) 80's acts such as The Jam/Paul Weller, Amen Corner, The Vapours, Echo & The Bunnymen even Oasis but especially Weller who I always thought was (and still is) nothing more than a Townshend wannabe clone. Just see how long you can stomach this. The guitar riff, even the "la-la-la-la" parts sound an awful like The Who's "So Sad About Us." Then again, Weller was always a joke without much originality in my opinion.

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Even though The Who had a unique and distinctive (British) sound derived from a lot of American acts they they could make abrasive but they somehow maintained their own set of standards that punk never did. And by that I mean The Who never tried to be offensive or brutal to their audience like the Pistols, UK Subs, or The Damned in their heyday. To me, The Who went through three stages during their span: mod, a brief stint into psychedelia and then hard rock and none of that was of much interest to the UK punk scene of the day.

[kwame k]

Early on the Sex Pistols played Who songs and Faces songs. So much gets obfuscated by the fact that Punk rockers themselves never gave a straight answer or wanted to portray the myth that they weren't influenced by mainstream bands. They were.

As far as The Who, I'd really have to go back and research who said what about whom and to give you a visual.......I'm sitting here trying to type while having the phone pinched between my shoulder and ear.

I fucking hate being on hold!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[FORD]

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[Kristy]

Early on the Sex Pistols played Who songs and Faces songs. So much gets obfuscated by the fact that Punk rockers themselves never gave a straight answer or wanted to portray the myth that they weren't influenced by mainstream bands. They were.

Yeah, I can agree with that in terms of the Pistols were more into the mod stylings of The Who rather than the psychedelic and hard rock era. Mod was huge in England so big in fact there was no way of getting around it. Um, I'm not backpedaling here although it feels like I am.

Punk was really an aversion to more of the prog-rock genre such as Tull, Crimson, Floyd, early Genesis, Wishbone Ash which they saw as "boring", "pretentious" and "uninspiring" which I can agree with. Gimmie The Damned doing Machine Gun Etiquette over any Floyd album anyday.

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Hey look, it's Captain Sensible! At least it looks like Captain Sensible.

[kwame k]

No Kristy, you're back peddling......

I win, you lose


In it's infancy it's seems like every fucking band and their brother was called Punk. The Police, Blondie, The Clash, The Pretenders, and a myriad of other bands. While most of the bands I listed did start out Punk and moved towards the mainstream, I guess it's what you quantify as Punk, as the determining factor in who they were influenced by.

I totally agree about Punk rebelling against Prog-Rock bands/mainstream bands and how bloated and pretentious the mainstream had become. I mean look at the Rock albums coming out at that time. Everyone was trying to record their Sgt Pepper's album in the 70's. Studios were pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars into recording fucking epic albums. Jeff "Skunk" Baxter said in an interview that they'd take three days at a thousand dollars an hour to pick a comfortable chair.....while more than likely exaggerating it does bring home the point.

Punk was the antithesis of the mainstream but to say they weren't influenced by what had happened before was the Punks version of being cool. You'd never admit that you learned a Beatles or whoever song when you first picked up a guitar and I bet many of those guys did listen to Pop Radio.