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On Revisiting Santana (Columbia/Legacy) and the Woodstock performance — really any of Carlos Santana’s early work — his genius echoes in the perfection of his chiseled tone and technique, which he borrowed from the great bluesman B.B. King and inflated to ’60s rock proportions. But his innovation was their fusion with his Latino roots, which bear on his phrasing, the notes he accents in scales, and, of course, his band’s monster percussion arrangements. The resulting sound moved rock toward a more diverse and adventurous future. The biggest kick here, though, is listening to the entire Woodstock set, which the group played for $1500 while Carlos labored under the effects of drugged wine he’d been given backstage. By the time the set concludes, with "Fried Neckbones," the chemicals seem to have worked their way to his fingers, which deliver some blunted notes and imprecise bends. But what the hell, it’s history. And history is change.

Through the fog of decades — the decade of low-tuned grunge guitars, the roar of the Ramones, the thrum of early Metallica, the crunch of Limp Bizkit rap-metal frat-boy kitsch, and the hubris of David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar — it’s hard to remember how distinctly Van Halen sounded like both history and change when they arrived in the winter of 1978. Especially if you weren’t born yet. But the group seemed to be major-label metal’s response to punk rock — proof there was still life in the beast that Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath built. The sheer, rambunctious surprise of Eddie Van Halen’s tapped notes and wide-torn tone — as big as anything since Hendrix — on the flagellate solo "Eruption" and the scalding, mean-spirited "Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love" sent thousands of guitarists back into their woodsheds and even more wanna-bes into music shops, where the nattering notes of two-handed tapping became as irritating as the rodents who chewed the speaker cables at night.

Hand it to Eddie, whose guitar heroism sparks life in the recently issued Van Halen double-disc retrospective The Best of Both Worlds (Warner Bros.). On his own, he discovered the same two-hands-on-the-neck technique that avant-gardists like Fred Frith and Derek Bailey had been perfecting for years, cranked up the speed and volume, and made it palatable and exciting for Jane and Joe rocker. He also modified his guitar into a one-of-a-kind monster that helped him achieve his gigantic sound, and he radicalized the use of the vibrato arm with his dive-bombing downward swoops. Sure, the repercussion was a lot of bad music by less gifted imitators, but that ain’t Eddie’s fault. If his total output had been as durable and continuously inventive as Hendrix’s, and his taste as trustworthy, Van Halen instead might today be considered the electric rock guitar’s most brilliant advocate.

Then again, Vernon Reid might be the better musician. He’s certainly better versed in overall guitarology. Reid came up playing rock, R&B, and jazz and listening to virtually everything, from Mahler to Varèse to Josh White. He emerged as the loose wire in drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson’s Decoding Society in the early ’80s; by the end of the decade, he was the sparkplug for Living Coloür’s #6 album Vivid and its Top 20 single "Cult of Personality." But compare that song title with "Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love." Rock school is the only place where someone can be held back for being too smart, and that’s what happened to Living Coloür, who could outsing and outplay Van Halen but wrote songs about urban problems and the color line. Oh, and did I mention that they were black and they weren’t playing funk or doing steps? (Sorry, Prince.)

Actually, they’re still black and still writing smart songs. The band re-formed a few years ago, and between occasional concerts, they seem to be at work on a new album. Meanwhile, the new Living Coloür Live from CBGB’s (Sony/Legacy) is a good tide-over. It captures the group, with Reid playing full-bore, on the New York club’s small stage a year after the release of 1988’s Vivid. Reid sounds like a distillation of every guitarist mentioned above. He has the funky blues soul and dynamic attack of Hendrix, the sensitivity and vibrato of Clapton, the ripping sensibility of early Page, the chromatic intensity of Winter, Santana-like sustain, and phrasing that exceeds the breach between B.B. King’s tastefulness and Van Halen’s charge toward purgatory. Add to that a knack for dropping rich jazz chords into surprising places as well as an extended technique that includes two-handed tapping (sweetened by the judicious use of effects on the unreleased "Fight the Fight") and atonality. Like Hendrix, Reid is not afraid to create sheer noise if it speaks eloquently enough, and his playing all over Live from CBGB’s is both raw and unflaggingly eloquent. There are times when his sonic elocution translates like a blueprint for the future that few other musicians seem to have read.

Not that there’s anything wrong with the past. Hell, some of the most enjoyable git rock around, from the Strokes to new-millennium Metallica, wallows in it. But as Hendrix noted in song, the real heroes "keep on pushing straight ahead."