Mark McGuire and the fetishising of lack of technique

I have a reputation for being opinionated and argumentative online, which is one reason I don’t post much on band forums nowadays - there are too many self-important sycophants who take offence, often on behalf of others, at what was intended as constructive criticism. So now I’m back baiting Guardian music journalists again.

Such an example is Ben Beaumont-Thomas’ Guardian Music Blog piece attempting to praise the guitar talents Mark McGuire, which starts with this opening paragraph:

Claims for the greatness of guitarists are often badly skewed. Many seem to regard guitar playing in a similar way to skateboarding, that greatness is about isolated feats of technical brilliance (an idea which Guitar Hero taps into and perhaps slyly satirises). Therefore songwriting from the likes of Dragonforce, and to a lesser extent Van Halen, Queen, and Guns’n'Roses is modular: guitar theatrics slotted into a framework, rather than folded into songs.

To which my first reaction is “Oh dear”.

Whatever you might think of Mark McGuire’s music (It sounds interesting, reminds me a bit of Matt Stevens or even very early instrumental-era Twelfth Night), I still maintain that opening with a thinly-veiled slur at Dragonforce (of whom I’m not a particular fan) is equivalent to me opening a review of someone like Panic Room with a paragraph about why I think The Libertines are rubbish. It would rightly be a distraction from the main body of the article.

After getting a few responses from the author in the comments, I realised that the thing wasn’t just about McGuire’s music at all, but was using him as a hook to hang a piece fetishising lack of technique. But far from being the iconoclastic position he implies it to be, all he’s doing is restating the orthodox position of the majority of rock critics from the past thirty years. 17-year old Dragonforce fans do not represent the establishment; that position is held by 40-something old punks. And I believe their attitude is deeply damaging to music. As commenter Troyka says:

Since the punk era it has been the norm to pretend that technique and ability don´t matter as much as enthusiasm. The result of which we can see in the uniform dullness of a lot of today´s younger guitarists (in the U.K at least).

Which is pretty much why we haven’t seen any great guitarists emerge in mainstream British music for at least 15 years. Yes, there are plenty of younger guitarists in metal, blues or prog, but they’re minority genres and largely aren’t on the BBC/NME/Guardian/Q radar screen.