Another naff poll

Anybody checked out the latest (?) edition of Mojo, with it "Greatest British Guitarist" table? (Polls here in Prog Archives I take as fun - too many omissions normally for them to be taken seriously)
Polls in magazines that sell lots of copy should be constructed with care. What factors make Mojo's bo**o**s IMHO, are as follows:
1. Mojo had a similar poll in the last 5 years for world's greatest guitarists, in which Peter Green was the top positioned Brit  and now he's 5th behind Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton .....................
2. Rory Gallagher and The Edge are included - don't these compilers  have life - these guys are/were Irish - a war was fought!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
3. Only prog guitarist included is Dave Gilmour. Bemused as to  how Steve Howe can be  ignored.
4. As Holdsworth freak, I know the guy has regularly over the last 20 years, been voted in all time top 20 guitarist polls voted by his peers. How can they ignored Holdsworth?


Suggestion: swamp Mojo with e.mails telling them to remove their collective heads from their fundaments.

Dick Heath said:

Polls here in Prog Archives I take as fun - too many omissions normally for them to be taken seriously )

You know something Dick; I take more seriously the polls, articles and reviews in Progarchives than the ones in Mojo, Rolling Stones or Blender Magazine for a few simple reasons:

1. A reviewer or poster in Prog Archives is not paid by any band or web page to help a determined band or artist.
2. People here post FOR FUN, and when doing this is more honest than those who post an article for other interests.
3. Prog Archives is created for the music and fans, the magazines are created for commercial success and to help the music industry, in other words to guide the taste of the readers towards what they want to sell.
4. Nobody will touch a word in our reviews (unless they are offensive or aggressive). An editor corrects and censors everything the reviewers want to write in a magazine.
5. Nobody manipulates the polls here; I'm not sure about the methodology of the magazines.

So our polls, posts and reviews are written because we love the music (for that reason are much more honest because we have no financial interest), the magazines articles and posts are manipulated because they love $$$,$$$.$$

Iván

Edited by ivan_2068

However, as I've said before polls here tend to be compiled unilaterally rather than by concensus - take the kraut rock one running at the moment. With a little effort a concensus-based poll could be posted, having first asked everybody to nominate  their top 2 or 3 three bands, etc. and then construct a poll on the first 20 nominated.

I agree with your point of view Dick, would be much more accurate to let people choose the names of the artists or albums instead of limiting their vote to a short list chosen by a single person with a lot of subjective elements.

Reality is even worst, being that any poll made in a forum can't be taken really seriously in statistical terms because:

1. The universe of voters is too small to even count.
2. The voters have not been chosen randomly, so they don't represent all the musical genres.
3. 9 out of 10 musicians voted here will be progressive.
4. Most of us hate POP, Rap and hip Hop, so you won't see any vote for N'Sync, Eminem or Britney.

But if you compare results with other Progressive Rock forums you'll notice many coincidences, so in some way a poll done here represents at least in a small degree the opinion of progressive rock fans.

But polls and lists made by MOST musical magazines are even worst, because they have the chance of doing something serious but they chose to manipulate the votes to promote the artists that musical industry wants to promote, specially when this industry feeds magazines with advertising or even worst I'm almost sure in some cases with direct payments.

Iván

 

Edited by ivan_2068

Sure enough somebody has compiled lists of lists; check the following out covering a lot of past Mojo top whatevers:

http://www.rocklist.net/mojo.html#guitar

in fact not just guitar but allsorts. Jon Savage's top hundred psychedelic tunes (given here but presented originally in Mojo edition 2 or 3 in an excellent booklet), is worth a read and then tracking down a lot of those tunes with reference to early day prog. Having said that, it seems somewhat ironic since Savage wrote one of the definitive books on the British punk rock England's Dreaming.