Firstly, Philly & Afghan Dave thankyou, you summed up the majority of my feelings
Personally I'm tired of footstamping and accusations (it's always the same person when these subjects turn up) Should we not learn that once the usual accusations as made earlier in the thread has become pointless and we should ignore it ?
Still once puberty runs it's course things should calm down a bit.
The words many of us are working towards are 'Dynamics, Contrast and Variation.' Theres nothing wrong with playing fast, but if it's all that you have then you are heading nowhere (fast)
Just as I would get bored in the pub of somebody calculating square roots in his head, many of us get tired of what has become known as wankage, though the phrase 'One trick pony' may be a little more polite.
I will happily sit down (for a while) and listen to some DiMelola, Vai and even some (early) McLaughlin at least they they play 'for the song' much more than many of those mentioned earlier. I can listen to Holdsworth, Ollie Halsall (look him up) & Paul Gilbert for considerably longer once again becasue the song exists as a song not as an excuse to say "look at me and only me I'm the star"
There is a reason why EVH (for example) became famous, he had all the guitar gymnastics, strange noises and off the beaten track scales (modes) as far as regular rock music is concerned. It comes down to songs and the ability not to ruin the bloody things by playing entirely inappropiate guitar lines all the fecking time
Theres a reason why some guitarists never make it out of obscurity they simply didn't deserve it as theyre basically reciting Pi to 30,000 decimal places, and for most people this gets boring remarkably quickly.
Other players are too avant garde (Henry Kaiser), not prepared to compromise (Holdsworth) or simply never got the breaks (Robert Quine), but they didn't let technique become the sole purpose.
Anyway this is boring and pointless becasue it will happen again, and again and again...... (how many digits does Pi have ?)
Perhaps TO will have the decency to perform a mercy killing and kill this thread
