by Brad Wendkos, Founder of TrueFire
We’ve all seen and read with some degree of interest many of Top 10 or Top 100 lists that claim to represent the “best” or “greatest” guitarists in the land. Guitarists generally have a couple of issues with those lists; firstly, there’s no such thing as a “best” guitarist, nor is there any viable way to quantify a list of same. At best, the lists represent only the most popular and/or most commercially successful guitarists based on public polls or a consensus of music editors and writers.
The more disappointing characteristic of these lists is; a) they’re always packed with the usual suspects; and b) 80% or more of the artists on the list are rock or blues players. I’m sure we’d all agree that there are plenty of “great” players out there that; a) most of us have never heard of, and; b) play other styles of guitar.
Don’t get us wrong; we here at TrueFire are also enamored with Jimi, Eddie, B.B., Stevie Ray, Satch, etc., and we certainly wouldn’t disagree that these guitarists are indeed the most popular and successful players of our times, but we’d be hard pressed to agree that these are also the “best” or “greatest” guitarists walking the planet today.
We understand the whys and wherefores of lists like these — they sell magazines and online ads. And we’re cool with that. But how cool would it be to compile and share a list of accomplished players that might not be household names but clearly deserve wider recognition? So, with that end in mind and with your help, that’s what we hope to accomplish with TrueFire‘s Who’s Who of Guitar 2010.
This “Who’s Who” list might not sell ads or magazines at newsstand, but we’ll betcha dollars to donuts that the list will turn a lot of people on to some very happening guitarists and hopefully that exposure will in turn broaden awareness of those players and help them career-wise.
Here’s the plan…
We’re hoping to be able to identify roughly 100 “gifted” players that qualify for the 2010 list in the collective opinion of TrueFire folk (artists, students, members and friends).
We’ll accomplish this through a nomination process, followed by a consensus of which nominees deserve to be on the 2010 list.
We’ll use the following guidelines for the nomination and selection process:
1. The nominee must be living and actively performing, teaching and/or recording in 2010.
2. The nominee possesses extraordinary musical, technical and/or compositional skills on guitar and consistently demonstrates same across the major body of their work.
3. The nominee is NOT a widely recognized household name amongst the general population. For example, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and George Benson would not qualify but Tommy Emmanuel, Monte Montgomery and Frank Vignola would qualify even though they may be widely recognized amongst guitar players. However, the ideal nominations are “gifted” players that are largely unknown, even amongst most guitar players, such as Joscho Stephan, Guthrie Govan or Carl Verheyen.
4. Any TrueFire artist, student, member or friend of the ‘Fire can make a nomination by posting a comment in this blog post, on our Facebook page, our Twitter profile, our YouTube profile, or by starting a new thread in the Who’s Who forum using that player’s name as the title of the thread and including at least one link to an audio or video file so that others can see and/or hear their work. Any and all additional commentary, links, images, etc. would be appreciated by all I’m sure. See examples of nominations in the forum.
5. The final selections will be made by a consensus of TrueFire artists, educators, students, members and friends of the Fire. We’ll first seek feedback from TrueFire students and members directly in the thread or blog post. If the nominee gets at least 20 “ayes” with a minimum of “nays” or negative feedback, the nominee will then be presented to a panel of 12 artists who will likewise chime in on the nominations. If the panel likewise “ayes” the nominee, then the nominee makes the list.
6. We will not rank the Who’s Who list; rather we’ll present it in alphabetical form.
As this is our first project of this sort, the guidelines and process are subject to change based on practical application and your feedback. Please feel free to make suggestions and express your opinions anytime in the blog or in the forum.
What’s most important is that we all embrace the spirit of this initiative; this is NOT a competition – it’s purely a platform for discovering, celebrating and broadening exposure of those gifted guitar players that deserve wider recognition.
Let the discovery begin!
