Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Guitarists: Guess What's Missing?

Maura put best with this headline that came across my Tumblr yesterday afternoon: "Breaking: panel overwhelmingly made up of white men is really into the artistic output of other men."

Rolling Stone published their list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All-Time . At this point, do I even need to say it? Two. Two of the hundred legends and icons great enough to be called "the greatest" are women: Bonnie Raitt and Joni Mitchell, respectively.

I never really wanted this site to be a collection of posts detailing yet another aspect of the music industry where women are underrepresented, but this is getting kind of old. And I don't entirely fault Rolling Stone for picking the same artists who've been topping lists for decades: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimi Hedrix, et al... because girls are still too rarely encouraged to play guitar, but their panel of experts should, at least, be hip to the fact that some great guitarists exist outside the Beck-Clapton-Hendrix trifecta. And some of those guitarists are women.

Yes, it's a boy's game and all. This is a fact, and not something that's about to change anytime soon. It dovetails nicely with what I wrote yesterday: women aren't seen as masters of their craft. Women may be topping the charts, but lack the respect male artists get.