Phil Keaggy? Reason, cause he's too religious for a lot of peoples comfort? Even though he's a fantastic musician? not trying to goad you . just is that " underrated " in the correct sense then?
doesn't Glen & the rest of Alice's band on Rock & Roll Animal ? Had the Lp in the late '70s (now long gone) so forgive if I have this wrong. If not wrong on this ,that's a great showcase of him& the Alice's band live,I believe.
This guy ruled in BADLANDS ! Late '80s leaves Ozzy forms this dry gritty under produced hard rock band proudly seeping with '70s roots all during a time when that was uncool. Glad I saw them live when I did!!!
I saw Bruce Cockburn on Saturday night doing an acoustic set, and I was struck by what a superb acoustic guitarist he is. He is not quite in Richard Thompson's league, but, like Richard, he makes a solo performance sound like he has full band accompaniment. Cockburn has never got his due as a song writer (outside of Canada), and his wonderful guitar playing is also under-appreciated.
I remember seeing him with Ozzy and was amazed to see him using his tuning pegs like a tremolo arm - manually detuning strings and back again. I've never used a guitar with a locking trem - is this one of the benefits or was he just incredibly accurate in bringing the string back to pitch?
“Underrated” has its appropriate uses, and it definitely could be reasonable to describe a virtuoso guitarist working in a somewhat walled-off genre like contemporary Christian music as underrated due to lack of wider recognition and awareness. But I still feel that in general “underrating” should be a matter of incorrectly rating someone via unfair criticism, damning with faint praise, discussing the work with less respect or enthusiasm than it deserves, etc. I object to the practice of by-passing straightforward praise and leaping to loose, lazy claims than someone is “underrated” without offering any scrap of evidence that the musician has ever been unfairly mis-rated and marginalized. And its particularly weird when you’re talking about a successful, beloved, respected musician who’s a very big deal, but people insist that because they love the artist, that artist should be an even bigger deal, therefore they’re underrated. I guess I’d start by asking: Is Phil Keaggy underrated among people who listen to and care about contemporary Christian and gospel? My impression is that he’s very highly rated in that world, and beyond that people just don’t know about him.
+1000 on the folks above who offered Roy Clark. To most, he was just the Hee Haw guy, but RC was a legit virtuoso. I remember watching the Mike Douglas Show in the mid-70's and Roy was on a "guitar panel" with Ted Nugent and a couple of other rock guitarists. Can't remember who they were, but the Nuge was there. There was an impromptu "guitar playoff", and Roy Clark blew those guys off the stage and out the door.
Yes, I remember seeing Dick Clark when I was really young. He is an all time great! Some of the fastest fingers I ever saw.
Glenn Tilbrook of Squeeze. Marshall Crenshaw. And though he is not a lead guitar player and mostly has played an acoustic, the most overlooked guitar player of all time in my opinion is Paul Simon, who knows his guitar inside and out but only plays what the song requires and no more. I admire the basic, functional simplicity of Lou Reed's playing on the New Sensations album. Songwriter's electric guitar playing.
If it's a locking system at the nut, it stays locked...the pegs are redundant. It would have to be a standard guitar and him being accurate. Aidrian Legg does similar..