RS Top 100 Guitarists
 

Weird choice for key tracks, especially if we're talking about highlighting Thurston's guitar ability in particular. I would have chosen differently.

I remember when they did this last time, and had Thurston/Lee together on
the list. Which made more sense, to me.

Exactly. At least J Mascis is on the list.

Yeah. Thurston's really the "rhythm" guitarist anyway. Not that SY really confirms to the rock band stereotype at all, but I've always thought of Lee as the "lead".

Really, there's no lead or rhythm. Just somewhere between two and four guitars making sweet love to one another, in song form.

One thing I learned watching them live is while Thurston is the more
extroverted and thus likely to hump his guitar whilst climbing an amp stack,
Lee is playing the more interesting parts of songs. Almost without
exception.

Exactly. Thurston has so many better moments!

with Kurt ten slots above J Mascis these dudes prove yet again who worthless the writers of Rolling Stone have been, consistently, across decades of music. I browsed the hundred best albums of the 2000s, Eminem has three slots? I am sorry, but do these people even listen to music or just gallup polls of crappy editors and shitty writers?

more RS dribble piss, only 2 women on the whole list, neither in the rock genre and whole the fuck outside the guitar circle cares what Jeff Beck does?, will never get it

"Expressway" is honestly one of my favorite examples of why music is good to begin with. It's up there with "My Favorite Things" by Coltrane for me. It's just. So. Fucking. Ineffable.

These lists are a joke, all of them. I mean, Jimmy Page on number 3? Seriously, what the fuck?

this.

these lists are always stupid.

Lists like these will always spark debate, which is part of the fun! Thankfully, it appears that this list considers much more than just "chops," or the ability to physically do things with a guitar that others cannot. Otherwise, Thurston wouldn't make the top 1000, let alone top 100. As I see it, Thurston's great contribution as a guitarist is how vastly he increased the "vocabulary" of rock guitar playing. Technically, any decent guitar player can re-tune a guitar and play like SY, but who else would have been creative enough to develop such a unique style in the first place? That's where his true genius lies.

And that's why I agree that he and Lee probably should be paired together on this list. They both learned together under Glenn Branca and most likely, they both influenced each other in how they re-shaped the guitar's role in rock music.

Far better guitarists didn't get on that list. Which isn't surprising as it's all down to what the author of that list has heard throughout his life. Unfortunately for fans of music who has a good ear for it, it's mostly well known, mainstream shit.

Was it one author or a poll of several journalists? Either way, I think your point is somewhat valid, but I wouldn't call Tom Verlaine or John Fahey "mainstream."

are the guys from dragonforce in it?

Well, just because something is well known mainstream shit doesn't mean it can't be badass. Sonic Youth are pretty damned mainstream this day in age.

That said, I fucking hate Eric Clapton and think his playing sucks sans a couple Cream + Mayall songs.

In my mind Sonic Youth will always be on the periphery of the mainstream. Most of the bands I like are or were on the periphery. Sonic Youth are rock pioneers who didn't tick all of the boxes expected of them by the secular-minded boardroom of self-interested suits which mostly controls the music industry. I'm sure some of the choices come from the heart of the author a la Thurston Moore and Tom Verlaine, but the vast majority chosen are industry standards well known by the public as it was spoon-fed to them. Luckily some of us were broadminded enough to discover an alternative industry made up of individuals with a supernatural seminality unrestrained by mainstream protocols. An alternative industry the mainstream industry has scandalously been trying to suppress for decades.