Mazec wrote:The greatest electric guitar player is a skinny man from Missoula. Hendrix is but a footnote in the annals of pop culture.

I also think it's a guy from Missoula, don't think he's that skinny. I don't think we're referring to the same person.

but yeah, my favorite guitar player is a tall skinny guy from Missoula.

Mazec wrote:The greatest electric guitar player is a skinny man from Missoula. Hendrix is but a footnote in the annals of pop culture.

Shawn Swagerty?

No, Hendrix is better than than Shawn Swagerty.

I don't think anyone touches Hendrix. I don't know if I would think that if I hadn't seen detailed live footage of him. No one else I've seen has pwned the guitar like that.

newberry wrote:I don't know about greatest, but a case can be made that Hendrix was the most influential rock guitarist.

Mazec wrote:The greatest electric guitar player is a skinny man from Missoula.

Dana Carvey?

Andy Cohen?

Joey Kline's a fine player and a great guy (and for sure can whip up a hell of an appetizer), but I don't know if anyone else calls him "skinny."

Maurice wrote:

newberry wrote:I don't know about greatest, but a case can be made that Hendrix was the most influential rock guitarist.

Mazec wrote:The greatest electric guitar player is a skinny man from Missoula.

Dana Carvey?

Andy Cohen?

Joey Kline's a fine player and a great guy (and for sure can whip up a hell of an appetizer), but I don't know if anyone else calls him "skinny."

You know Joey Kline? WTF.

You don't know Richard Mockler, do you? I haven't seen him in years, but you actually kind of remind me of Richard Mockler.

How about Randy Pepprock? You know him?

tmidgett wrote:You know Joey Kline? WTF.

You don't know Richard Mockler, do you?

I do know Richard! We worked together fairly closely (phone/email) for several years, I've stayed at his house a couple times and hung out at length, which is also how I got to meet Joey. Richard's a great guy, a hilarious conversationalist, a fine musician, and a hell of a cook. We're not working together at the moment, but we stay in touch. That said, I haven't seen him face to face in too long, either (a breakfast when we both happened to be in NYC at the same time). For the record, I didn't list him under Missoula guitarists because of his Wyoming origins.

I did learn of the RM<->SKWM connection shortly after we first started working together, when we were setting up a meeting, and I mentioned that I didn't want to miss a then-upcoming SKWM show here.

tmidgett wrote:I haven't seen him in years, but you actually kind of remind me of Richard Mockler.

Thanks! That will either tickle or horrify him, possibly both.

tmidgett wrote:How about Randy Pepprock? You know him?

Dunno Randy, unfortunately.

I'd have to see the sex tape first.

here's a question, maybe dumb enough to be in that one thread. was hendrix musically educated, or did he "play-by-ear?"

Jimi Hendrix was an ear player.

I think his soloing ability is highly overrated. To me, he was a blues\R&B player on steroids. What I do think he was good at was songwriting, use of effects and chord tones.

the heaviness of the music is the rocks, the stones
the harmonic/overtone brilliance are the hieroglyphics

with these, hendrix built a holy temple of rock. i am referring to his oeuvre in general. he took hard rock to the moon and back. no guitarist has ever been able to match what he did.

yes he's the greatest. i do enjoy randy rhoads, zakk wylde, dimebag darrell, but nothing means as much to me as hendrix.

Jimi. Yup.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHC9bxQkLCQ
Esp. around 3:40...Awesome.

After 40 years of middle-aged white men hijacking post-Hendrix blues guitar and smothering it to its turgid death, our 2008 indie rock ears tend to take Hendrix too far out of context. It sounds incredibly rote only because we made it that way post facto.

In 1967, the Civil Rights Movement was underway with MLK still alive and the Black Panthers in their formative stages, along with civil unrest of the draft for the Vietnam War and a sexual revolution. Hendrix’ sadomasochistic treatment of blues guitar was unprecedented and spoke to anything and everything going on in those times all at once in ways the British Invasion blues-rock and Motown that came before it didn’t. What his playing had to say to the world was as significant as Coltrane or Miles, and even Miles himself recognized this. Hendrix said what had to be said.

It’s also worth noting that, for a time, both his bands and his audiences were racially integrated. This hasn’t happened on that scale since he died and his followers went their separate ways into funk and hard rock. He also fused other things that are considered mutually exclusive these days: he was both a hipster aesthete and a musical technician, both a blues traditionalist and an innovator, both abrasive and accessible.

Your average metal or fusion shredder is more of a technician, but none of those types have anything musically significant to say to anyone besides other musicians in those respective genres. Hendrix, on the other hand, mattered to a wide swath of people, not just random douchebags at Guitar Center. So yeah, Hendrix is still the #1 rock guitarist 40 years on.