THE ROLLING STONE AGENDA

Rollingstone's daily poll:

Who's the greatest guitarist ever?

-Jimi Hendrix

-Eric Clapton

-Eddie Van Halen

-Jack White

Look, I like the White Stripes--a lot--but this is ridiculous. Despite its penchant for abominations like putting the Olsen twins or Ashton Kutcher on its cover, RollingStone's greatest annoyance may be its self-righteous pushing of this-or-that pretentious artist as the Second Coming. Maybe this is my intellectual musician Sister Soljah moment, but I must say that something strikes me as uneasy when I see Jack White or the Flaming Lips treated as deities because they borrowed music from the early 60's that you've never heard, or because they could take sounds not actually made by stringed instruments and percussion, no less!, and put them on their records.

Am I anti-experimentation in rock? Hell no. I love Kid A, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, etc. My point is that just because a band starts experimenting with tape loops and techno beats, that doesn't mean they've suddenly "found their voice". The Bends is every bit as good as Amnesiac, A.M. is just as good as the aforementioned Foxtrot, and so on.

Where was I? Oh yeah, Jack White. While he's made great progress in the realm of distortion, and he has some skill (he certainly needs some to be able to stay with his ex-wife's sister's erratic drumming), he'll never be up there with those other three. Going out with Renee Z doesn't help either.

Again, I want to reiterate, I really like the White Stripes, and their cover of "I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself" is among the greates covers in the past decade, if only for the sound of the distortion in the chorus.