Originally Posted by: paradymeI personally find Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Kerry King, Kirk Hammett, Randy Rhoads, and especially Eddie Van Halen to bore me to tears. Not that they aren't amazing players; they are. They deserve respect and they certainly have mine, but I see the guitar as an ensemble instrument, and I feel that the rock guitarists who handle solos best are Trey Anastasio and Carlos Santana.

I don't want to nit-pick too much in this thread, but having seen Trey Anastasio live, I can tell you with great certainty that he can be as guilty of technical guitar wankery for the sake of technical guitar wankery (and in total ignorance of what the song/jam needs) as (and in a few cases, more than) anybody you mentioned in that first sentence.

In The Mismeasure of Man Stephen Jay Gould took on the issues of racism and classism in the scientific community. One of the things he warned against was the "reification of statistics" by which he meant "finding some kind of numerical correlation (say... an IQ test score) and assuming that it measures a physical thing (ie: 'General Intelligence')."

His point was that it is very easy to do and that people need to be conscious of it so that they don't fall victim to it.

I think the same general point can apply here.