Macalpine: Well, Macalpine took some of the tapping popularized by say, Eddie Van Halen and really took it to another leve (even before Greg Howe!). Thats called being innovative. As far as rasising the bar... he had very innovative phrasing, his songs were great, and he maintained an almost unheard of level of musicianship during those early days (still does, but now its a more common thing).
All of Macalpine's solo albums not only feature INCREDIBLE guitar work, but also feature him on keys..and not just neoclassical stuff, he's a classicaly trained pianist that plays everything from Chopin to Beethoven!
As for Paul Gilbert... as far as raising the bar, he was definitely the fastest guy out there when Racer X's first album came out! But he didn't only play fast, he was a very controlled player. His alternate and sweep picking was absolutely flawless, so precise.
Some of the others I mentioned, to go into more detail:
Greg Howe, the guy took what Van Halen did with tapping (and although I don't know for sure, I'm assuming he heard some of MAcalpine's work, since he used a few of his ideas), and just completely turned it upside down. He tapped up, down, all over scales and arpeggios.
Frank Gambale, is quite simply, the sweep picking master. One of the best fusion players out there. His music is very complex, but still is very listenable and catchy. Not to mention he's a very well learned musician. When a lot of more rock players play jazz, you can tell they're not used to it, they only know a few inversions. When I saw Gambale last summer he played like he'd been playing off those charts for all of his life.
And please don't go into that top 40 nonsense.
But hey, since you tried.
Greg Howe.. has played guitar for the Backstreet Boys, Enrique Iglesias, and Justin Timberlake for the past few years. I even went and saw him live, just to support him. Its not my kind of music, but they really let him rip out some awesome guitar parts.
CAB (with Tony Macalpine) won a grammy a two years ago for their second album (not exactly top 40, but grammy's and pop music have always been closely linked).
But just because they aren't heard on the radio much, or aren't on tv doesn't mean they can't influence people.
And why do they have to be new?
Greg Howe may have been around for 15 years or so now, but he's STILL improving, still doing new things, writing better music.
Hell, heres an extreme example, Allan Holdsworth... I think his first recordings were around '68 or '69. The guy is still trying new things, improving his musicianship and playing. For all you know his next album may just be the next Rising Force, or (insert some other big guitar related album here).
