The Washington Post laments the death of the electric guitar

[Aloysius]

I wish the washington post would die. And take ghetto/rap/urban b/s with you

Unfortunately, WaPo is basically the only national rag that continually reports the most scathing news about DJ Trump and his corrupt posse of treasonous losers. I'm not a fan of WaPo's electric guitar article however.

(DJ Trump... )

Trump WON the election. Get over it. The DemocRATS are the losers.

[pacmanpl]

Russia, am I right?! Guize...?

Just can't stop winning

[Aloysius]

[Hink]

ok...off the politics please or I'll have to move this to hpc

[functionform]

Avid guitar player here, now only synth etc.

A few things happened.

1. the traditional cycle between dance-rock-dance-rock resolved back to pop instead of rock. Heavy guitar oriented rock doesn't dominate pop charts at all any more. I have to tune my local 'classic' or 'oldie' station for that.

2. lead guitar lost relevance as a tool of rebellion - basically brostep and skrillex did lead guitar better than lead guitar. It was angrier, noisier, and more parents hated it.

3. everyone records these days unlike guitars earlier days. Once you have a daw on your computer, the first thing you notice are the ton of vst toys to play where you can emulate any number of instruments beyond (or even including) guitar. So why would you limit yourself?

All things considered, I believe electric guitar will make a comeback, but not to place of dominance. It will come back as another tool in a larger line of no longer dominant but useful textures, like sax for example.

There is no Van Halen around the corner.

[SODDI]

Punk killed the guitar solo in 1977. Rock guitar solos since then have been zombie guitar solos. Stuff in the metal genre, which should have been pushing the envelope, is about the most archly-conservative and hidebound music there is.

But there has been and still is a lot of good guitar work out there - it just tends to be on the fringes (Godspeed You Black Emperor, industrial guys like Alan Jourgensen).

[ghettosynth]

Punk killed the guitar solo in 1977. Rock guitar solos since then have been zombie guitar solos. Stuff in the metal genre, which should have been pushing the envelope, is about the most archly-conservative and hidebound music there is.

But there has been and still is a lot of good guitar work out there - it just tends to be on the fringes (Godspeed You Black Emperor, industrial guys like Alan Jourgensen).

Yep, and while I personally love certain kinds of non-lead guitar work, it's rarely the stuff that "guitar heros" are made of and not the kind of thing that gets average pre-teens/early teens to convince mommy and daddy to pull out that credit card.