johnny lee hooker is up there. not necesarily his stuff with a band but if you ever pick up the live album "alone" by him, he is spectacular.

this makes me think about masturbation porn. if there's this guy who jerk's off blindingly fast on tape, would you consider him a pornstar or a freak?

Kristin Hersh
Juliana Hatfield
Thurston Moore
Lee Ranaldo
PJ Harvey
Kurt Cobain
Noe Venable

i was really sick and sleepy when i posted this list and i couldn't remember most of the people's names but i'm better and, therefore, the list will be edited so it doesn't seem so ignorant on my part:

masaki batoh of ghost
munehiro narita of high rise and mainliner
joni mitchell
billy zoom of x
east bay ray of the dead kennedys
stig from amebix
max cavalera and andreas kisser of sepultura
mike bruce and glenn buxton of alice cooper band
dave brock of hawkwind
justin trosper of unwound
scott kelly and steve von till of neurosis
aaron turner and mike gallagher of isis
roger mcguinn of the byrds
stephen brodsky and adam mcgrath of cave in
paris mitchell mayhew of cro-mags
tommy victor of prong
page hamilton of helmet
mary timony
isaac brock of modest mouse

and i can't believe no one has mentioned:

sm and spiral stairs of pavement

VERY good call. I love High Rise.

And on a totally different tack, Loren Connors.

Off the top of my head, Thurston, Lee, Lou Reed, John Frusciante, Kevin Shields, and George Harrison.

Well, I don't know about gay porn, but a short review of porn involving females will find that there are an awful lot of solo women masturbating, and a lot of them are somewhat alluring. Meh.

Yar. I was drunk. I shouldn't post things like that whenst drunk. You're entirely right and you can have some props.

I don't know anything about guitars or playing them so I'm not exactly entitled or qualified to aswer this question, but I've noticed that taste kind of goes hand in hand with your own or techincal skills and musical background, which is pretty evident I suppose...
I have a friend who's a fan of dream theater, which I after a couple hours of forced listening grew to dislike enourmously, and he's very trained guitarist, hence he digs something just for the technical side of it, although he openly admits it and in his case he's also able to enjoy less technical things too.
To me very technical playing sounds often untiresting and even annoying (if it means fast playing only for the sake of speed).
I can "relate" to artists like Haino and magik markers and the likes better. I dig the sound, not the playing and I don't care about the way the sound is produced.

Well, Haino is a for real guitar virtuoso who uses his skills and stamina to push the instrument forward. He can play circles around MM.
The difference between Haino and someone like Steve Vai is that Haino has taste and is interested in music over a flashy display.

I concur entirely with the above. It's maybe not that easy to tell from his records, but Haino can seriously play the shit out of any guitarist. I mean, if you watch the Fushitsusha live DVD, there's about 2 bars where he plays the unbelievably fast run from top to bottom in a major scale that Vai and the like would murder for, and then he goes back to playing the more expected avant-jazz/rock fragmentary wonder. And live it's just... I can think of no one with a style that is so entirely his own (even Bailey has his imitators - I should know, I do a fair impression).

Graham Coxon is great.

Tom Verlaine / Richard Lloyd
Tim Buckley / Lee Underwood
Nick Drake
Neil Young
Jeff Beck
Jimmy Page
Ron Asheton
Robert Smith
Johnny Marr
Jeff Buckley
Markus Acher (from The Notwist)
Laura Veirs
Thom Yorke / Jonny Greenwood

Rudolf Schenker from german rockers The Scorpions

edit: sorry. the guy who shot this photo asked me to unlink it.

-ch

Damn, I forgot to add Lou Reed on my list. Velvet Underground are beyond amazing. I'm getting a limited edition VU record very shortly too :)

ron asheton
john mclaughlin
sonny sharrock
robert fripp
jimi
greg ginn

John Frusciante kick ass

I've got a thing for Dan Auerbach lately. I lurv dirty guitar.