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Best Blues/Rock Guitarest That Only the Illuminati Are Hip To


OSJ

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As I never cease to be impressed by the aggregate of musical knowledge on this board I thought this might be fun... Who would you put forward as the best guitar player that most folks will either draw a blank on or say "Oh, so THAT'S who that was..." Here's the ground rules: This person must have actually been in a band or two who has actually recorded something that people can buy/download. Your buddy that plays in the house band at Horse Feathers Saloon may indeed be the second coming of Alvin Lee, but as their commercial output consists of 100 CDs that they were able to get produced on a "buy 50 get 50 free" special, we're not going to be listing folks like that. 

Nor should we be listing grotesquely underrated musicians that most people have heard of that don't get their due from mainstream music critics. Just for laughs I looked at a "ten best guitarests" list from whatculture or another of those airhead sites that make absurd lists in lieu of actual content (in other words a seemingly random list of names with no discussion as to WHY said person is listed. Anyway, the first thing I noticed was that Jeff Beck was not on the list, which sort of serves to invalidate the whole thing. Anyway, this exercise is not for people like Jeff Beck, I think it safe to assume that everyone participating knows who Jeff Beck is, and if you don't, you should probably LURK & LEARN. 

Okay, I shall start the ball rolling with a guy that goes back to very beginnings of British blues/rock, jamming with people like Beck, Jimmy Page and others in  Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated and the Cyril Davies' Blues All-Stars. Just a quick aside, pretty much everyone who was anyone in the original British blues/rock scene came from one of these two bands, or at least jammed with them or with Long John Baldry's Hoochie-Koochie Men. Anyway, the guy I'm thinking about finally gravitated toward (and joined briefly) the Savoy Brown Blues Band. Stone left the band before it began to achieve its greatest success touring the US non-stop and fronted by "Lonesome Dave" Peverett. Stone was on the short list to replace Brian Jones in the Rolling Stones, but the Stones opted for Mick Taylor instead.

About this time Stone struck up what was going to be a life-long friendship with Michael Moorcock collaborating on a number of projects that the two men were still tinkering with fifty years later. After leaving Savoy Brown, Stone joined The Action, and was instrumental in moving them from their mod-culture origins to the more psychedelic sound that most people are familiar with. The Action was still all but dying on the vine, even with a new direction, it could be said that the remaining members performed the kindness of figuratively taking the spirit of the Action out back and shooting it in the head allowing the band to be re-born as Mighty Baby, To fully underscore the demise of The Action. Mighty Baby's first release on Head Records, the cleverly titled Mighty Baby was full-blown psychedelia, without a mod-scooter anywhere in sight.  Stone was looking for a spiritual rebirth as well as a musical one, first becoming a sufi and then drifting to Chilli Willi and the Red Hot Peppers, while also finding time to play lead for Marrianne Faithfiul. Other projects included the French band Almost Presley and mirroring his growing dissatisfaction with the music business he became involved with Pink Fairies, a band known for their cheerful anarchism and copious indulgence in mind altering substances. Even as he continued to evolve musically, Stone was gradually undoing the threads that kept him tied to the music business and focusing more and more of his energies on becoming a bookseller. By the 1980s the transition was complete, and the man who was almost a Rolling Stone was instead one of the most famous book-scouts in the world.

So who ya got?

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Assuming metal counts, Joe Holmes. He had a stint as guitarist for David Lee Roth but never hit the studio.  He had a stint as Ozzy's touring guitarist, but only ever did one studio track (Walk on Water from the Bevis and Butthead movie)

He's got his own band, Farmikos, and they are awesome, but not nearly well known enough. His playing sounds like the lovechild of Randy Rhoads (who Holmes once took some lessons from) and Kim Thayil.

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

I'm assuming from the mentions in this thread (and a bit of legwork) you mean MARTIN Stone, since you managed to write all that and never actually give his full name! Unless "Stone" is just how he's known to, I don't know, the Masons or something, and we should be looking for guitar-shaped patterns on our founding documents & paper currency since 1946.

And nope, never heard of him.

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4 hours ago, Contentious C said:

I'm assuming from the mentions in this thread (and a bit of legwork) you mean MARTIN Stone, since you managed to write all that and never actually give his full name! Unless "Stone" is just how he's known to, I don't know, the Masons or something, and we should be looking for guitar-shaped patterns on our founding documents & paper currency since 1946.

And nope, never heard of him.

Whoops! Yes, indeed I did mean Martin Stone (sorry about that), equally legendary in book collecting circles as one of the great book runners of all-time.

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The late John Cipollina of Quicksilver Messenger Service was one of the greatest who has been somewhat forgotten. Look for their live version of "Mona", it's awesome. Also, still with us is Steve Kimock, who might be the best player "no one" has heard of. 

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