Guitar Trek: the Next Generation

Thanks for the feature on Plini [April 2021]. I should probably spend more time on YouTube checking out the next generation, with so many great young players coming up. I grew up on players like Satriani, Gilbert, Vai and Petrucci and I could definitely benefit from being more open to giving some of these kids a listen. There’s no genre of guitar-oriented music that’s as popular as it might have been in the late Eighties and early Nineties, but we live in the music-production era. I get the impression that a lot of “popular” songs these days never existed outside of a DAW prior to recording and were certainly not demoed before a live audience. I think there’s still a place for great guitar in popular music; it just has to find its way back! If artists like Plini have any say in the matter, it will. It’s great to see that there’s some solid young players ready for that spotlight.

— Bob Messinger