Go to the Warehouse and see one of those "washboard and saucepan" shows that Snailhook puts on. Plenty of new and different stuff is out there, it's just that most people won't find it until it's on Seth Cohen's iPod.[/b]
hallelujah! thanks for mentioning that, ggw. the reason i book these shows is so people in dc can see something other than the same old emo and indie rock that gets shoved down our throats.
at the risk of sounding like a complete asshole elitist and assuming i'll get flamed for saying this, but most people on this board have an incredibly limited musical palette (not all, but a lot). most of the "great" guitarists mentioned so far are absolute jokes. i think rhett nakatestes' list is interesting, but still limited to his beloved alt-country. the majority of the current great guitarists are not found in the indie rock or punk world. they can be found in obscure bands playing challenging experimental music to avant-jazz ensembles to grindmetal to acoustic fingerpicking (in fact, i regularly book acoustic guitarists that make jack white sound like ashlee simpson).
i think jack white's greatest gifts are his vocals and songwriting. he's a decent-to-good guitarist, but far from excellent.
and even considering comparing the who to the white stripes is idiotic. as is saying they ripped off zeppelin, which is lazy journalism (like how people say interpol rips off joy division). the white stripes came out of a fertile detroit garage rock scene, and they transcended it not because they were/are better than their elders/peers (the dirtbombs, the gories, bantam rooster, the clone defects, etc.), but because they devised an intriguing rock-via-art shtick and self-mythology that stuck with the kids. i remember seeing them live for the first time in 2000 when they were first coming up and thinking that they were good, but will probably achieve massive success because they had "the look."
as far as dropping names, i'll just say that nels cline over the past decade blows away anybody mentioned so far, regarding breadth of style and balls. jack rose, glenn jones, tom carter, ben chasny, michio kurihara, jim o'rourke, mick turner, harris newman, nick saloman, wayne rogers, makoto kawabata, richard youngs, alan licht, loren mazzacane connors, yanni papadopoulos...look 'em up...
