We sat in the front row. We took good notes. We did the readings. We had good class participation. We even aced the midterm. But none of it would matter: They cancelled the course.

If the ’80s had arrived like a vortex, instantly dispersing the sweaty haze of disco and decadence, their sudden, unheralded departure was all the more striking. The wholesale abandonment of fretboard frippery was so swift, that by the turn of the decade, any recording featuring two-handed tapping may as well have been delivered directly to a sandy sarcophagus. The search for clues to the mystery of guitar mastery could no longer take place on pop radio. But that only made it that much more urgent.