Looking for a minimalistic theme to build on

Hello All;

I am fairly new to WordPress and love the theme setup and there seems to be 100s (if not 1000s) of great themes out there. However, I am sort of an old school programmer and was looking for a very minimalistic (public) theme that I can use to make my own and add things to it as I like. I have been trying to add a slideshow to one of the current themes that came with my installation and it has proven to be nearly impossible. At this point, I am considering looking for another theme that has a slideshow as part of the theme; however, I have setup many of my own jquery slideshows and such and am starting to think it may just be easier to do my own. Can someone comment on this one way or another and how you would move forward.