Your Top 5 Guitarists

shit i can't believe I didn't grab Michael Hampton or Curtis!

Kaki King, Ani DiFranco, and Michael Hedges (R.I.P.) are all great examples of that percussive style of playing where the guitar is as much of a drum as a guitar.

Hedges also did a lot of "mood" stuff too.

daniel ash goes in my electric/acoustic hall of fame too. along with jimmy page and syd.

i like larry coryell when he shreds electric but he bores the hell out of me on acoustic. same with his pals like philip catherine. its like trying to listen to a pierre bensusan album. zzzzz...

Younger me used to love Adrian Legg's ability to fuck around with his tuning pegs while playing, but now I just hear it as an annoying gimmick (though one that requires talent).

i always try to keep an ear out for more modern bands with guitars as cool as all the post-punk guitar bands i love (siouxsie, killing joke, wire, bauhaus, section 25, etc) and i have only found the a frames so far. but i'll keep looking! (meanwhile, the a frames broke up like 15 years ago...)

(most of the stuff that tries to ape old post-punk sounds sound pretty anemic to me...they would have a long way to go to approach the coolness of even haircut 100 guitar sounds..which were really cool sounds!)

top 5 post punk gtr

pat place
d boon
john waddington
ricky wilson
glenn branca

xposts
agreed that coryell is best electric. I'd rather listen to him than McLaughlin just about any day (unless JM is with Miles)

speaking of post punk/no wave era, david first is someone who really excites me whenever i listen to him. so amazing to me. and i really wish more people knew how great the later 21st century notekillers stuff is. its all on a very high level. this is a later thing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HDKxHizdbc

aww yeah Notekillers rule! i didn't even know they had new stuff!!!!!

this is the last thing and its soooooo good. they put out stuff themselves so if you didn't know that you would probably never know that. you know?

https://www.discogs.com/Notekillers-Songs-and-Jams-vol-1/release/8910941

ILM full of canonist dullards? I mean who knew

Cool take, please enlighten us, oh shaman of the future sound

for 21st century post-punk guitar sound, the Sex Church album Growing Over from back in 2011 rates as well as the A-Frames, imo. Birthday Party'ish, but better than all the BP'ish stuff that came out on Sacred Bones at the time.

i loved this album. and especially the nu-goth guitar tone and production. (also, like, ancient though and they broke up a million years ago)

https://www.discogs.com/Clockcleaner-Babylon-Rules/master/56694

will seek out sex church.

Completely off-topic, this board has been fairly quiet today... can I assume it's because of the Beatles thread that's been sitting at #1 with 680(!) new answers?

Kill ILM.

It's forcing me to, like, actually focus on my work and stuff... >:|

mick turner
taku sugimoto
loren connors
david grubbs
nels cline

Jerry Garcia
John Fahey
Joe Walsh
Sonny Sharrock
Chuck Schuldiner

Big & Rich
Big Kenny
John Rich
Big
Rich

Ctrl+F Clapton LOL. Tough being a fallen god.

if only he'd had the decency to die in 1970 this thread could have looked very different

Jimi Hendrix
Pete Townshend
Phil Manzanera
Marc Bolan
Keith Richards

Clapton was always pretty unremarkable, though. He was only good when he was in the company of good musicians.

i want to add Syd Barrett to my list. truly one of a kind as a songwriter and as a lead/rhythm guitarist. "Interstellar Overdrive" is a voyage and i have always deeply loved the spy surf lead in "Lucifer Sam" as well.

his solo albums really highlight his unique guitar. "Long Gone" has a really nice descending waltz thing going on (with a Floydian "I stood very still by the window sill" line not far from DSOTM).

recently discovering the early PF track "Walk With Me Sydney" was a lot of fun. it's this silly rock n roll pop song about a character who is like a teenage idol but there is something wrong w him. the rhythm guitar alternate between a Merseybeat/60s pop swing and Syd's unique bizarrely twangy solos that seem to twist into existence like a stretched spring. despite being mad or otherwise mentally impaired he has incredible mastery over his instrument, bending notes with precision, slinking up and down the fretboard like a snake or possibly a strange fod.

fog

love walk with me sydney!

syd was an incredibly original guitarist whether acoustic or electric. if only there were more recordings of him taking off live.

Boring and off the top of my head:

D Boon
Robbie Basho
Sonny Sharrock
Daniel Fichelscher
Neil Young

post-punk division since someone else did it and it's interesting:

d boon
curt kirkwood
craig scanlon
andy from the ex and dog faced hermans
richard bishop

Craig Scanlon! <3

James Honeyman-Scott. One of the saddest rock casualties, died at 25 after making two (incredible) records with the Pretenders. that first LP is just fucking perfect, and his guitar work is a big part of it.

syd was an incredibly original guitarist whether acoustic or electric.

Wolfpack ftw

Still waiting on imago to come back with some guy who plays a microtonal 33 string electric lute.

Mick Taylor was damn good on his Stones run, especially on “knockin” obviously and “time waits”

and with Mayall. Blues from Laurel Canyon is all-time.

Wata
Carrie Brownstein
PJ Harvey
Cat Power*
Michael and/or John Gibbons**

* I guess more for a songwriting standpoint -- her songs aren't complex but man they sound so good.
** I don't know which one does what on Bardo records.

Not a top 5 but I'd add:

Mike Bloomfield
Terje Rypdal
Ralph Towner
Julian Bream
John Abercrombie