LISTS MAKE ME ANGRY: Spin's Top 100 Guitarists of All Time

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LISTS MAKE ME ANGRY: Spin's Top 100 Guitarists of All Time

POSTED: Thursday, May 3, 2012, 3:00 PM

Filed Under: Music

This is not Jam Master Jay.

As soon as we saw that Skrillex came in at #100, we knew this list was designed to infuriate. Yeah, the dude can drop the bass and evade a bee, but a great guitarist? Explain yourself, Spinsters:

Look, as far as we know, our asymmetrically coiffed party pal has never held a guitar in his life. But no contemporary musician has a more primal understanding of adrenaline-pumping, pulse-raising, chest-caving bulldozer riffs than dubstep mosh ambassador Skrillex.

Sigh. See how it works? I'm momentarily infuriated. Which means the list did its job. Which is infuriating too. Other adrenaline-pumping, pulse-raising problems with the list?

#10 is Jam Master Jay. Okay, Wikipedia says he played guitar at some point. But that was Eddie Martinez on "Rock Box." I dunno, maybe the Run D.M.C. DJ was a good guitarist and nobody's posted a video or photo yet. Cmon, Internet.
Where's The Righteous Brothers? I know they didn't play guitar, but those riffs!
Slash didn't make the list. C'm on.
Also: No Randy Rhoads, or Opeth or Mother 13 or Dan Auerbach or Superchunk or Ruthie Morris or Sister Rosetta Tharpe or Jay Reatard. I'm too angfurgrivated to think of more people.
Okay, a lot of those might be a stretch but snubbing Captain Kirk Douglas of The Roots is lame.
No Jake E. Lee.
The intro says that they purposely avoided Eric Clapton, Robert Johnson, Jimi Hendrix and other "obvious" choices to concentrate on a bunch of people you also already know about if you like music. Cool with me. But still they called it "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time." Not "The 100 OTHER Greatest Guitarists of All Time" or "The 100 Good Guitarists We're Forced To Accept Now That The Old Major Label Hierarchy Has Collapsed And We Have To Listen To The Music That Came With The Press Release." When you give it a title like they gave it, you gotta be straight up about things. To quote Sports Night, "Our goal isn't to be cunning, is it?"

Fine, read it.

Posted by Patrick Rapa @ 3:00 PM Permalink | Post a comment

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Featuring everything from event roundups to concert reviews and sex talk, City Paper's Critical Mass is a space for off-the-wall coverage of Philly's A&E scene.

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