Music journalism is just like any other career: you have your good days and bad days. Though it’s hard to imagine what was going on in Spin magazine contributor Christopher Wiengarten’s day when he compiled his recommendations for their list of the greatest guitarists of all time, placing Sonny Moore aka Skrillex at #100.
Wiengarten explains his decision saying he chose Moore due to the fact that “… no contemporary musician has a more primal understanding of adrenaline-pumping, pulse-raising, chest-caving bulldozer riffs than dubstep mosh ambassador Skrillex”; a very fancy and well-articulated statement that doesn’t really prove anything. I often wonder what Dimebag Darrell, Kurt Cobain and Jimi Hendrix would have said if they saw how skinny my jeans are, but imagine what the gods of guitar would have said about this.
Wiengarten even begins his statement by disclosing: “Look, as far as we know, our asymmetrically coiffed party pal has never held a guitar in his life”, which in my opinion is where the discussion should have stopped. But he continues, stating that Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites was Gen Y’s answer to Smoke On The Water (coming from Gen Y, it’s not), comparing Moore to a “Gaping Sarlaac” (The sand monster that ate Boba Fett in Star Wars VI Return Of The Jedi). First he contaminates a well-constructed list of great guitarists populated with names such as Lee Ranaldo & Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), Kevin Shields (My Bloody Valentine), John Fahey, Kurt Cobain and Prince with a name that will be outdated as soon as his laptop technology, then he brings The Wars into it? Dude, people are going to take this personally.
He is the self-confessed ‘last rock critic standing” and can be found here: twitter.com/#!/1000timesyes for all of you who want answers and believe that music journos should be accountable for their opinions.
