Keira WitherKay wrote:
yeah it's all perspective tho.........if i made a list i would not even consider hendrix and even less david gilmour..cos his influence on the music world has no impact to what i listen to at all........ so yeah it's all perspective thats what i feel is so flawed in these exercises....
Yep! How do we go beyond our own spheres of interests?
And another trap is the fame trap - or "completeness of knowledge trap". Most of us tend to "know" what is famous, maybe not in terms of household fame but in the areas that we know about.
My current loo book is
Dazzling Stranger which is about Bert Jansch. This morning's reading (brief, thanks for asking) led me to ponder layers of knowledge and influence. People who have read a bit about Led Zeppelin would probably regard Jansch as an important influence on Jimmy Page. People who pay attention to a certain school of acoustic guitaring will probably regard the late Davey Graham as an important influence on Jansch.
But according to this morning's reading, just about EVERY acoustic or folk guitarist in the UK in the late 50s and early 60s is influenced by one man - Steve Benbow. In fact prior to Benbow there was very little in the way of playing British folk music on guitar. So Graham was influenced by Benbow, and so was just about anybody who was a contemporary of Graham's (guys like Martin Carthy and Robin Williamson).
Yet Steve Benbow is all but forgotten about these days and certainly not remembered as the father of British folk guitar as most of his records were sort of smooth easy listening. Very influential (though obviously not on heavy metal players or even your average LA studio player), but also almost forgotten.
So I'm not sure that "influence" should be a big factor in trying to determine greatness. It's also not easy to quantify. In the case of Hendrix it's easy I suppose because you still hear echoes of his playing all over the place (John Mayer for example).
Joe Boyd says that he hears the influence of Ashley Hutchings in the playing of many heavy metal bassists. I must say that surprises me since Hutchings, with Fairport Convention, was one of the originators of British folk rock and has long confined his activities to the genre which he helped to create. I wonder how many heavy metal bass players would know about Ashley Hutchings or listened to his heavily folk-influenced records (EG the electric morris dancing stuff that he did)? More likely Hutching's influence has somehow crept into other genres (Jethro Tull's cod-medieval period in which they were clearly influenced by Fairport would have been a big part of this) and now those licks are part of the common vocabulary of a genre he had nothing to do with and the people playing them have learned them 3rd hand and have no idea who came up with them first.
