Something to Fret About

I have solved the mystery of the fretboard mentioned in item No. 10 of this post. After several weeks of diligent research (OK, actually it was a couple of minutes on GuitarWiki.com, which I previously didn't even know existed), I found out why the markers are placed on the third, fifth, seventh, ninth and then 12th frets, when it seems like the pattern should have placed a marker on the 11th fret.

There are two reasons, says GuitarWiki, the first being that the 12th fret is one octave higher than when the string is played open. Since I don't know the difference between a higher octave and high octane, I prefer the second explanation, which is that the 12th fret is exactly halfway between the bridge and the nut (I know what a bridge and a nut are but a couple of years ago I didn't).

My guitars just have plain ol' inlaid dots for fretmarkers. On the Alvarez the markers are something that looks like abalone and those on the Telecaster are a dark wood. Nothing fancy like this vine or thebear tracks or razor blades. If I was having something custom-made, I would definitely want my fretmarkers to be armadillos.

If you really don't like your fretmarkers, you can fake it with these stickers, which are called Frettattoos.

I Pick the Longhorns

As previously noted, guitars and Texas Longhorn football go quite well together. I bet if everyone started using picks like this one, it would greatly increase the mighty Longhorns' chances of winning a national championship.

You can buy them here and even get a strap if you like.

Duly Noted

It's been almost exactly 34 years since Bruce Springsteen arose and pulled off the rare feat of simultaneously being on the covers of Time and Newsweek. I was in college at the time and remember seeing the magazines side by side as I was waited in the checkout line at a grocery store.

At the time I had heard of the guy but never heard his music and I recall that I was not impressed by the dual magazine covers or even interested in hearing Springsteen. After all, I was in Austin, which had all the music scene anyone could possibly want -- Willie, Jerry Jeff, Stevie Ray, Doug Sahm, the Fabulous Thunderbirds and Joe Ely just for starters. I saw no need to be importing music from New Jersey (although Springsteen did play Austin three times in 1975).

I'm starting to think I might have called that one wrong ...

Random Thought: I've spent a lot of time at home lately awaiting service calls. It's very nice to have a guitar on hand to help pass the time when you're sitting there alone waiting for the plumber/cable man/dishwasher installer/window replacer to call and tell you that he's going to be late ...

Eric Clapton had to cancel out of the huge, multi-night Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 25th anniversary concert at Madison Square Garden last week. The reason: gallstones. Yes, gallstones.
Rock 'n' roll, baby! ...

Christmas list item for guitar nerds: the Electronic Rock Guitar shirt. Each fret contains two major chords -- one on the low side of the fretboard and one on the high side -- that are recorded from a real guitar. You use a magnetic pick to strum and it all comes out of a little clip-on amp. The ad says you can play dozens of classic rock songs with (here comes the part I like) "very little skill."

And just so the bass player will have someone to explain jokes to him, there's a drummer T-shirt, too, with seven different drum sounds. It goes something like this:

The iPod Serves up a Double Shot of Ry

The little elf in my iPod who operates the shuffle function sorted through 12,030 songs for this month's random playlist and came up with two songs from Ry Cooder's excellent-but-overlooked 1972 "Boomer's Story." It pleases me that one of the songs was "Crow Black Chicken," with the memorable line "I like chicken pie."

• "Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down," Waylon Jennings
• "Bring It on Home," Led Zeppelin
• "Cherry Ball Blues," Ry Cooder
• "Afterglow 61," Son Volt
• "Put Me Out of Your Misery," Stephen Bruton
• "Aw Shucks, Hush Your Mouth," Jimmie Vaughan and Omar
• "Crow Black Chicken," Ry Cooder
• "Trouble," Little Feat
• "That's Love," The Resentments
• "Sympathy for the Devil," Rolling Stones
• "Too Much Fun," Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen
• "Well, Well, Well," Lucinda Williams
• "Moanin' Low," Billie Holliday

Seasonal Greetings

WWKRD?

When the question of "who would you invite to your ultimate dinner party" comes up, the first name on my guest list is always Keith Richards. If the dinner chatter ever stalled, you could always talk about all that stuff he's got hanging in his hair.

Having kicked the drug thing and now relatively mature at 65, he's gotten down to his philosophical core, which as the book "What Would Keith Richards Do?" shows, is fairly deep, generous, accepting and irresistably honest. Author Jessica Pallington West lays it all out in a chapter titled "The 26 Ten Commandments of Keith Richards," which probably could be condensed to know yourself and "there's always the future." Drawing on Keith's mumblings over the past 40 years, she compares his thoughts to the likes of heavyweights like Socrates, Plato, Nietzsche and John Locke and the old boy comes off pretty well.

"The good die young but, hey, where does that leave me?" he asks.

It leaves him still going strong despite all the booze, drugs, debauchery, arrests, fistfights, house fires, car wrecks, cigarettes, falls from ladders and trees and a close working relationship with Mick Jagger.

"It's not that easy to be Keith Richards," he says, "but it's not so hard either."

Here are my favorite Keith-talks-guitar quotes from the book:

• "You look at it and it's a ... tennis racquet but the more you find out about it, the more you don't know. Which is great because it means you've still got more to find out."
• "Everybody should be born with a guitar. There'd be far less suicides."
• "If I was suddenly stuck alone, I could probably stop myself from going mad as long as I had a guitar."
• "I found a new chord the other day ... That's what's beautiful about the guitar. You think you know it all but it keeps opening up doors. I look at life as six strings and 12 frets. If I can't figure out everything that's in there, what chance do I have of figuring out anything else?"

Keith's fingers aren't just sticky; they're gnarled and swollen at the knuckles. I came across this photograph in a Google search and was amazed that he can even hold a guitar, much less play one. A London newspaper speculates that he's got some major arthritis going on.

More Trick, Less Treat

I'm trying to persuade my wife to wear this guitar costume for Halloween. No luck so far.

Maybe I'll just wear it myself. That would be really scary.

A Strat Walks Into a Bar ...

Regarding the No. 8 item on last week's post, the PaLG joke factory has been working overtime and came up with the following bit of comedy gold. If you suffer from split sides due to convulsive laughter after reading this joke, my legal team has assured me that I am not liable.

A sunburst Stratocaster walks into a bar, orders a beer and takes a stool next to a hot-looking Les Paul Goldtop, who's sipping an umbrella drink. The Strat leers at the Les Paul for several minutes and then says, "Hey, that's some set of humbuckers you got on you, darlin'."

"You're not getting any feedback off of me with a pickup line like that," the Goldtop says indignantly.

I know, I know -- too guitar-specific for a general audience and too inane for guitar-specific audience. But, as previously noted, guitar humor is not a thriving field.

15 More Things

Just because I'm so darn fascinating and because my guitar playing is so compelling, here are 15 more things about me and the guitar to go with the previous 25:

1. Before I took up guitar, I didn't listen to instrumentals. With no words to sing along to, I just wasn't interested. Now I love to put on some lyric-less Dick Dale or Leo Kottke or Link Wray because I can now appreciate what goes into making that sound.
2. The original bridge pins on my Alvarez were white with black dots. A while back I switched to black pins with white dots. This did not improve my playing.
3. I'm no masochist but I like it when my fingertips are sore. That means I've been working at it a lot and enjoying it a lot.
   
4. It amazes me that Leo Fender couldn't play the instruments he designed.
5. I think if I started taking lessons again I could really make a leap.
6. Once I start to get a song down, I tend to get tired of it and want to move on to something new. I wonder if I have a case of adult attention deficit disorder or something along those ... Hey, look! There's something shiny!
   
7. I played so well yesterday I thought I was wearing someone else's fingers.
8. I'm working on a joke that starts "A Gold Top Les Paul and a Sunburst Strat walk into a bar ..." but that's as far as I've gotten. I can't even decide what kind of drinks they would order.
9. I would have enjoyed "It Might Get Loud" more if the director had found someone other than Jack White to represent the younger generation. No disrespect to Mr. White.
10. There's something about the fretboard that bothers me. There are markers on the third, fifth, seventh and ninth frets but the next one is the double-dot marker on the12th. Shouldn't it have been on the 11th fret? Can anyone tell me why?
    
11. If I ever have to tune a guitar by ear, I'm sunk.
12. I recently put a ding on the front of the Alvarez when I accidentally knocked a stapler off the desk. It's not especially ugly but I was briefly distraught.
13. Finger-picking sure sounds prettier than strumming but I'm just not ready for it yet.
14. I'll never be able to do a full F chord but I'm OK with that. I've got the baby F down.
15. Regarding No. 12, it already had a couple of other minor dings. That just gives it character, right?

Leftovers

As I continue my quest to find a 1959 Les Paul priced under $100, I'll have an appropriate book to read. Author Tony Bacon gives a history of the legendary '59 in "Million Dollar Les Paul" as he tries to find out if an LP -- considered the closest thing to a perfect guitar by many -- has ever sold for seven figures. I'm placing my order for the book with Amazon as soon as I finish this sentence.

I'm back. Amazon indicates Bacon has written a bunch of guitar books, including "Six Decades of the Fender Telecaster" as well has having edited "Totally Guitar: The Definitive Guide" ...

The Texas Longhorns' guitar-playing star wide receiver, Jordan Shipley, talked about his music with The New York Times. He even writes songs with his dad, likes to jam around the campfire and picks with country singer Aaron Watson ...

A football player and a guitar are one thing; a politician and a guitar are another thing altogether. But last week in Washington, keyboardist Chuck Leavell, who's been a regular with the Allman Brothers, the Fabulous Thunderbirds and, for a long time now, the Rolling Stones, recently brought Minnesota Representative Collin Peterson onstage to play on "Brown Sugar" and "Dead Flowers" at a benefit for the American Forest Foundation. If you don't believe me, see it here.

Guitar Fashion Tips

You can't find much about guitar fashion in the mainstream media so I'll be happy to cover it here.

Today we'll consider belt buckles. It seems the Internet is just about overflowing with guitar-influenced belt buckles. (Click on the pictures to enlarge for better viewing.)

You can go with a basic model like the generic headstock on the above-left or show your product loyalty with something like the Strat buckle just below it. Google around enough and you'll find plenty of Les Paul-style buckles, too.

Head-bangers have lots of buckle choices that are guaranteed to frighten the general citizenry. The one on the left is pretty damn classy, what with the dragon hand and the skulls on the tuning pegs and all.

But what if you're more concerned with function rather than fashion and are looking for something with a practical application. In that case, try the buckle shown below. It holds your picks as well as your pants.

I came across a few examples of guitar-influenced suspenders but I think only banjo players should wear suspenders.

Miscellaneous

If the guitar makes you feel generous, there are some good guitar-related charities around.

Guitars for Vets describes its mission as enhancing the lives of injured military veterans by providing them with guitars and instruction. The group got its start a couple of years ago when a guitar student told his teacher how playing had helped him with his Vietnam-era post-traumatic distress syndrome. They came up with a great slogan -- "It's the healing power of music in the hands of heroes."

Hungry for Music of Washington, D.C., works to get guitars into the hands of underprivileged kids in hopes of keeping them out of trouble, much like the previously mentioned Guitars Not Guns. All three organizations will take donations of cash or guitars ...


The GuitarTalk sidebar on the right has some new musing from Robbie Robertson and Joe Perry ...

Meet the lovechild of Leo Fender and Alexander Graham Bell. This special sunburst edition of T-Mobile's myTouch smartphone was done in conjunction with the Fender people and comes in a "guitar-inspired wood-grain finish." It will come with some pre-loaded music but there's no word yet on the price. I bet it will cost more than a Fender Squier, though.

Scenes From My Life (Continued)

If he were still alive, Rodney Daingerfield, who didn't get any respect either, would play me in this movie.

Scene III

A middle-aged wanna-be guitarist father sits on his bed strumming what sounds vaguely like the Stones' "Shine a Light." Lanky, floppy-haired teenaged son enters the room.

Father (fishing for a compliment but knowing he's taking a chance): So, you haven't complained about my guitar playing lately.
Son: No, I've just given up.

Scene IV

A few minutes later, the undaunted father tries the same tactic on the teenage daughter.

Father (still fishing): Well, I haven't heard you complain about my guitar playing in quite a while now.
Daughter: No, I just tune it out.

Photo Album

I've heard about guitar stores that had signs like this but I figured the stories were just apocryphal. What do they mean no "Smoke on the Water??" Try and stop me!

(Click the picture to enlarge if you can't read the sign.)

I'll never have to worry about being the guy in this cartoon. That's because I'll never have an expensive, finely crafted guitar.

The sculpture below is called Cubist Guitar. The sculptress said she got frustrated with trying to learn to play so she broke the guitar and was thus "inspired with the idea to do a more contemporary construction of a cubist guitar." Is a crime against a guitar too high a price to pay for another art form?

Sounds Like New Strings

I've been at this guitar thing for 22 months now so why do I still get so excited about every successful change of strings?

Every time I swap them out and get the Alvarez tuned up again I want to celebrate the fact I didn't somehow terminally screw up the guitar. Plus, when I play those new strings, I think, "Ah, so this is how it's supposed to sound."

Plus, you can use the old strings to spell out acronyms.

Calling Mr. Jobs

As always, I start the month by putting the iPod on shuffle to see what Steve Jobs wants me to hear. It's pretty much the only communication I have with Steve these days. Apparently he was in a Link Wray mood today with two choices from "Wray's Three-Track Shack,"

• "Badlands," Bruce Springsteen
• "All You Need Is Love," the Beatles
• "Born to Run," Emmylou Harris
• "Turn It Up," Todd Snider
• "Werewolves of London" (live), Warren Zevon
• "Texas Me," Doug Sahm
• "A Little Help From My Friends" (live), Joe Cocker
• "Amoreena" (live), Elton John
• "Days Before Custer," Link Wray
• "Splash 1," 13th Floor Elevators
• "Touch, Feel, Lose," Ryan Adams
• "Amen," Otis Redding
• "Juke Box Mama," Link Wray

Hey, Joe, Where You Goin' With That Gibson in Your Hand?

Strange things are going on at Gibson.

A while back the Gibson people announced that they, in conjunction with the Hendrix estate, were going to come out with a Hendrix model. That seemed a bit off kilter since Hendrix played a Gibson Flying V every now and then but was much more closely identified with the Fender Stratocaster.

So last week the Gibson Hendrix guitar is revealed and, as the picture indicates, it looks just like Strat with a reversed six-strings-on-a-side headstock, as if it had been turned upside-down to accommodate a left-hander. This revelation was made with much pomp and circumstance on the Gibson website, including an interview with Hendrix's sister, who seems to run his estate.

But today it has been widely noted that the Gibson website has been stripped of any mention of this Hendrix guitar. It's as if it never happened. Must have been all the negative reaction and scathing comments people were leaving on the website.

In the spirit of spoofery, the Never Too Late Guitar blog dreamed up a nice Fender tribute to Les Paul.

But as the late Bill Mays would say, wait, there's more!

Today the Baldwin piano company, which is owned by Gibson, introduced this $168,848 Hendrix piano, supposedly inspired by the paint job on that Flying V.

A Hendrix piano? That's sort of like a Michael Jordan football or a Tiger Woods baseball glove.


Update: As of Tuesday morning, it appears Gibson has pulled the Hendrix piano off its website, too.

The Babushka Blues

How many old Belarussian ladies does it take to change a light bulb and then play slide guitar with the old one?

Apparently, just one.

Here's the female Elmore James of Belarus performing what one youtube commenter says is an old Soviet tune called "I Love You, Life."

But should she be using a fluorescent bulb for the sake of the environment? Or a 100-watt bulb for more kick?

Guitar Floss

I'm not sure what brought it on but today I was thinking about playing the guitar with your teeth. It's got to be really difficult and this is the best I could do. Maybe I should have tried it with the EZ Chord.

The trick, apparently, is to hit the strings with your top front teeth while doing a bunch of hammer-ons ans pull-offs. A little Internet research shows that T-Bone Walker (another of Texas' gifts to the guitar) often is recognized as the first person to play with his teeth that Buddy Guy and Stevie Ray Vaughan also gave it a shot.

But the guy best known for denti-guitaristry, of course, was Jimi Hendrix. Guitarist with good ears claim they can hear his teeth on the strings on his recordings although some claim he just faked the mouth-playing and was actually just doing the hammer-ons and pull-offs. Whatever, I'm impressed. Here's how he did it:

Now, if he could have set that guitar on fire and then played it with his teeth, that would have been really impressive.

This, That and the Other Thing

As a fledgling guitarist, I like to keep current, know what's going, stay informed about what the kids are listening to these days. That's why I'm currently trying to learn the Box Tops' "The Letter," which was No. 1 for four weeks a mere 42 years ago, and the Monkees theme song, which goes back to '66. That's me -- Mr. Trendy. Now I have to go pick up my Nehru jacket at the cleaner ...

I'm not dreaming the right kind of dreams. In this 2001 article, Australian finger-picking legend Tommy Emmanuel tells how a dream about his friend and idol, Chet Atkins, revealed a guitar-playing secret. Emmanuel and Atkins had become penpals way back when Emmanuel was a kid touring Australia with his family band and 1997 they recorded an album together.

In a more recent interview, Emmanuel, who was named the top acoustic player last year by Guitar Player magazine, offered a contrarian opinion: While conceding that Jimi Hendrix was a great innovator, he greatly prefers Stevie Ray Vaughan ...

The GuitarTalks sidebar on the right has new words of wisdom from Emmanuel and surf guitar deity Dick Dale ...

When Eric Clapton gets up early on Sunday morning to whip up a stack of pancakes, I bet he flips them with a guitar-shaped spatula like this one. I like the picture of the amp on the tag. And like the ad says, it's is 50 percent rock, 50 percent roll and 100 percent Silicone. Get your own here.

Training Wheels for Your Guitar

To quote Waylon Jennings way out of context, I don't think Hank done it thisaway. And I'm almost certain that Jeff Beck and B.B. King and Duane Allman and Lightnin' Hopkins didn't either. But I suppose there are some hopeful, trusting beginners out there who will slap this EZ Chord device on their guitars in hopes of being able to play in one day.

You know you're getting a special product when you see the words "As seen on TV" on the package. And this one gives you the ability to strum songs without ever learning a chord.

Basically, the EZ Chord is training wheels for a guitar. What you do is clamp it on the neck of your guitar at the third fret and retune. Then, instead of pressing the strings, you press the numbered buttons. The No. 1 button will give you a D chord, No. 2 is a G, 3 is A and the No. 4 button is an E chord. When you press down on, say, the No. 2 button, little pins on the underside of the EZ Chord will mash down on the appropriate strings to make a G chord. No tricky alignments of your fingers, no sore fingertips.

But having only four major chords is pretty limiting. Plus, it took me a good 20 minutes to get the thing situated on the fret and lined up with the strings so that it wouldn't buzz. I never completely succeeded, either. The EZ Chord comes with a Xeroxed instruction manual/songbook that includes the greatest hits of the '90s. And I'm talking about the 1890s -- "Oh, Susanah," "You Are My Sunshine" and "Lil Liza Jane."

Let the record show I didn't buy the EZ Chord in hopes of improving my playing; I was just looking for a good blog topic.

For me, the best thing about the EZ Chord was that it allowed me to proclaim for the first time: "Hey, this too simple even for me!"

Size Doesn't Matter

Is that a really big guitar or a just little amp?

It's the latter -- a Marshall MS2, my latest absolutely-not-necessary-but-so-inexpensive-why-not guitar acquisition. It's a real battery-powered two-watt amplifier with volume, tone and clean/overdrive settings and a belt clip so I can roam the streets and thrill legions of innocent bystanders with "Smoke on the Water."

It has a nice, raw quality but doesn't produce a lot of volume so you wouldn't want to play a stadium show with it. Still, it's good to work with when you don't want to disturb the whole household.

Also, it's just about the right scale for a bobble-headed Keith Richards.

'The Guitar Almost Played Itself'

Guy Clark's latest album, "Somedays the Song Writes You," has a song titled "The Guitar" and the lyrics are certainly worth repeating here.

As he explains in the video below (shot at Austin's Cactus Club in February), Clark and Verlon Thompson wrote "The Guitar" as part of a songwriting seminar they held. It was forgotten for four years until someone from that seminar e-mailed Thompson the lyrics and they decided the song was worthy of being on an album.

Clark, who makes his own guitars these days, gives a nice interview here.

The Guitar

Well, I was passing by a pawn shop in an older part of town

Something caught my eye and I stopped and turned around

I stepped inside and there I spied in the middle of it all

Was a beat up old guitar, hanging on the wall

What do you want for that peice of junk I asked the old man

He just smiled and took it down and he put it in my hand

Said, you tell me hat it's worth, you're the one that wants it

Turn it up, play a song and let's just see what haunts it

So I hit a couple of chords in my old country way of strumming

And then my fingers turned to lightning, man, I never heard it coming

It was like I always knew it, I just don't know where I learned it

It wasn't nothing but the truth so I just rared back and burned it

Well, I lost all track of time, there was nothin I couldn't pick

Up and down the neck, man, I never missed a lick

The guitar almost played itself and there was nothing I could do

It was getting hard to tell just who was playing who

When I finally put it down I couldn't catch my breath

My hands were shaking and I was scared to death

The old man finally got up, said where in the hell you been

I been waitin all these years for you to stumble in

Then he took down an old dusty case and said go on, pack it up

You don't owe me nothin' and then he said good luck

There was something spooky in his voice and something strange in his face

And when he shut the lid I saw my name on the case

What's Better than Longhorn Football and Guitars?

I know you're all cheering madly for the Mighty Texas Longhorns this season -- just like me -- and that we all hope they'll be crowned national champions in January.

If that championship does come to pass, Jordan Shipley will surely have had a lot to do with it. Shipley is No. 8 in your program and No. 1 in the UT pass-catching statistics and the long-time pal of the Longhorns' All-American quarterback, Colt McCoy.

It turns out that Shipley also is a fairly accomplished guitarist and writes songs, too. During Saturday's broadcast of the Longhorns' victory over Texas Tech, ABC aired a little spot with Shipley playing and singing (very softly). I was proud to see that he was an Alvarez guy like me.

During another break there was a spot about the Austin music scene that focused on the Collings guitar shop and I was again pleased that the announcers mentioned Robert Earl Keen as a Collings player.

ESPN also brought together Longhorns and a guitar for a commercial that featured UT Coach Mack Brown strumming with some of the ESPN on-air guys. Brown's skills aren't quite as developed as Shipley's -- or even mine -- as you can see here.

Runaways and Jailhouse Rock

There's a trend developing in Hollywood -- actresses taking guitar lessons in order to play real-life musicians in movies.

Dakota Fanning, Kristen Stewart and colleagues are going to star in "The Runaways." It's a pretty compelling storyline -- the first all-female rock band, complete with two solid guitarists, Joan Jett and Lita Ford, whose members were mere teenagers directed by a Svengali of a manager.

Jennifer Aniston also has been taking guitar and voice lessons to prepare for "The Goree Girls," the true tale of a group of women inmates in the 1940s who took up music to show that they had reformed and were ready for parole.

The Goree girls, known formally as Goree All Girl String Band, took their name from the Texas prison where they were incarcerated for crimes ranging from robbery to murder to cattle rustling.

Apparently they never recorded and their story is largely forgotten -- perhaps completely forgotten if not for this Texas Monthly piece -- but they were the Dixie Chicks of their time. At their peak they were bused from their prison to Fort Worth once a week to do a weekly radio show on Fort Worth's WBAP, one of those powerful radio stations that covered half the country. They also performed at prison rodeos and did a few outside shows. In addition to being fairly fetching collectively, they were pretty good and fans sent them gifts, money and marriage proposals.

After being released, none of the Goree girls pursued music careers and all apparently led quiet, law-abiding lives.

Page Turns on in "It Might Get Loud"

While making "It Might Get Loud," director Davis Guggenheim says he came to realize just how bad a guitarist he really is. How does he think I feel now that I've seen his excellent movie about Jimmy Page, the Edge and Jack White?

I'm giving this movie two thumbs up, including the left thumb that I try not to hang over the edge of the fretboard at inopportune times. It's got fascinating subject matter, tells three great stories and ties them all together nicely and is beautifully shot (lots of nice close-ups. The occasional animations were cool but didn't really seem to fit the format, though). Oh, yeah, there's some top-notch guitar playing, too.

Guggenheim said a lot of footage was cut from the screen version of "It Might Get Loud." Hopefully it will be included in a director's cut DVD.

I liked the way the film contrasted the low-tech approach of White, who works so hard at being unpretentious that he comes off as pretensious, with the Edge, the king of the foot pedals, who has a vast board with a different effect for every song.

Maybe it's because I relate more to Page and Led Zeppelin, but for me, the old geezer stole the show. With his white hair on his shoulders, bags under his eyes and ruffled shirt sleeves sticking from his jacket, Page comes off as a world-weary wizard. The best scene in the movie comes when Page is browsing through his music collection and puts a 45 on the turntable. It turns out to be "Rumble" by Link Wray and Page breaks into a huge joyous grin and air guitar routine as he discusses the song's importance to him. He looks 20 years younger while the song's playing.

Page says he took up guitar as a boy after his family moved into a new house and he found a guitar left behind by the previous occupants. How's that for a twist of fate? What if those previous occupants had left a soccer ball behind instead?

A Sitting Ovation

I survived my first command performance. The audience -- strategically selected to give me a friendly crowd -- was composed of my parents.

When my mom and dad came to visit earlier this month, there were frequent requests for me to play. I stalled and tried to fend them off. We were having such a nice visit, I figured, why send them home with traumatic memories of a horrendous sonic assault and battery? Couldn't we just watch TV? If they really wanted to hear a gutiar, I could put on a Leo Kottke CD.

But they insisted. I am not what you call a natural-born performer (although I am an excellent audience member). When I was taking lessons just having my instructor watching was sometimes enough to tie my fingers in knots. You know how Miles Davis used to play with his back to the audience? I wanted to go him one better. I proposed having my folks stand at the bottom of the stairs while I played upstairs but that seemed a little rude.

Once I relented and we gathered in the living room and I went to work with the Alvarez. This marked the first time people had willingly gathered for the specific purpose of hearing me play a guitar. I didn't intend to do much more than a few little runs and scales but I found myself getting unexpectedly comfortable. So comfortable, in fact, that I brought out my songbook and went through most of my repertoire -- all the way from "Happy Birthday" to "L.A. Freeway." I didn't sing, however, because I still wanted to send them home with somewhat pleasant memories.

The audience wasn't familiar with most of the material but still seemed enchanted by my dazzling performance and seemed to buy my lame excuses ("That buzzing sound I made toward the end? It's supposed to sound like that"). No one booed or hissed. No rotten tomatoes were hurled at the performer. No one even walked out or demanded a ticket refund. I take that as a good review.

Blutarski Strikes Again!

Every broken guitar has a story to tell and this one's story sounds like it came straight out of "Animal House."

The remains of that Taylor 114ce electric-acoustic pictured above are up for grabs on eBay for anyone who might need a neck, tuning machines, a pickup or any other salvageable parts. As of this writing, the top bid is $38.99 and there are six days, eight hours and 18 minutes left in the auction.

According the eBay entry, the guitar, which goes for about $850, got smashed (literally) at a UCLA frat party. Someone must have left it too close to the keg.

Shipping is free but the seller says no refunds.

Starting a Band, Made Simple

Every aspiring guitarist should have a shirt like this and take its message to heart. Learn a G chord, a C and a D and you're in the music business. Hire some security, rent a touring bus and prepare for fame and riches, to say nothing of an onslaught of groupies. Like they say, anything more than three chords is just showing off.

Those chords will certainly get you a start. In my own humble little repertoire I can take them and make them work -- more or less -- on "Truck Drivin' Man," Keith Richards' "Eileen," "Long Black Veil," "Love Me Do," Robert Earl Keen's "Rollin' By" and, if you throw in an occasional A7 and Em, Steve Goodman's eternal "You Never Even Call Me By My Name."

And if that D chord is too much work, the Georgia Satellites' "Battleship Chains" only calls for G and C.

Feel free to add to the list of songs that get by with just G, C and D.

PS/ The T-shirt above is by Paul Frank, the same guy who came up with this ever-popular monkey, Julius.

Happy Hollyday

If Feb. 3, 1959, is the day the music died, Sept. 7 is the day the music was born.

Yesterday was Buddy Holly's birthday and he'd be 73 if that plane hadn't crashed in Iowa. For someone who died at 22 and had a career that really only lasted 18 months, his impact was enormous. And he was a Texas boy, too, of course. Also, a Fender guy, too, just like me. Eerie, huh? Sometimes it's like we're the same person.

I really prefer to note Holly's birthday, rather than his death. I never liked that Don McLean song, either.

Now to see if I can play "Peggy Sue."