A likely candidate for the Leno show.

_________________
"Another day in paradise!"

Some years ago, I went into a Radio Shack looking for a set of monaural headphones, when I asked the salesman if he had any, he said, " Monaural? Is that a brand name?"
I had to explain to him " Monaural, as in Not-Stereo."
This from a salesman in an electronics store. Sheesh!

Maybe he's been living under a rock all his life.

_________________
"Life is like eating jalapenos. What you do today may burn your arse tomorrow"

Pant's on the ground, pant's on the ground, they look like fools with their pant's on the ground.................... Mike

_________________
The blues ain't nothin but a good man feelin bad.

Today I was at a guitar store, and asked the sales guy if they had any 250k CTS audio taper pots, or if it was just the cheap 500K pots they had on the wall. he looked at me and asked "Aren't they all the same?"

To be fair, he tried to help me out, and even looked in their computer for me, but he didn't know what he was doing.

_________________
I'm not an expert, but I play one on the internet.

Oh....believe me....we do......in some of those other 'common' subjects their likely to need know much more about, and often don't. I'm thinking about sharing one of Chromefaces' pics of EC with this guy saying..........."THAT's a Stratocaster. Now if the ARTIST isn't recognized, you'll have a point.

_________________
"Another day in paradise!"

Kind of reminds me of a few years back I was in Sam Ash checking out a Green Clapton Strat and I used to play a little Hendrix medley of little wing, bold as love and castles made of sand. The sales clerk who was in his early 20s comes over and goes that is real nice is it yours and I laugh and ho no thats Hendrix and he goes Oh I've heard of him. I almost dropped right there.

Damn my Father who had no musical skills at all new what a Strat was as did everyone in School if they played or not. What is really mind boggling is they say more guitars are made and sold today than at any other time in history yet you would not know it, since even mainstream music is no longer guitar based.

A couple years ago I went into a music store to buy some CDs. I asked the girl behind the cash register where the classical music section was. She replied "You mean like the Beatles?" I explained to her the difference between classic rock and classical music. I'm not sure if she retained it though.

This is all very interesting because I use a Lentu Spiral as a whammy bar and Cad/Cam Technology as an add-on for my amp. Sounds a bit like a dental drill but with a little more bite... get it? Bite

I once heard a young female "disc jockey" say, "You should check out the Beatles. They were really good."

_________________
James Burton Upgrade Telecaster
Hot Rodded Am Fat Strat Texas Special (now featuring Kinman Traditional II pickups)
Fender Blues Jr.
SWR California Blonde
Pedals Pedals Pedals

Some nearly 20 years back, in their store on Flatbush Avenue in the Kings Plaza area, they put up a sign which read...."Please...no more 'Stairway' !" One wonders if that would make sense to today's JM sycophants and their ilk. All one hears these days, during the weekend 'headbanger balls' is the 'chug-chug-chug' of heavy metal riff monsters, and the Paganini-like pursuits of the shredmaster preening poppinjays. Then, once in awhile, you might find a dirty 'ol man down there, just a'play'in guitar just like a'ring'in a bell.

_________________
"Another day in paradise!"

I use a lentulo spiral to introduce cements into the prepared root canals of human teeth, CAD/CAM technology to indirectly manufacture inlays, onlays, and crowns, a dental handpiece to prepare teeth to received same, and a syringe with a 1 and 1/2" inch 27 gauge needle to level the playing field between me and certain harda--ed moth-------ers often found hanging out on street corners think'in their 'bad'.

_________________
"Another day in paradise!"

Well, as JSJH said, not everyone is a musician and certainly not everyone is a guitar player. I think that because of the passion so many of us have for our guitars, it's easy to forget this sometimes. I guess this is also one of the reasons I tend to get a little bent when people start going on about such and such piece of equipment or that you have to use such and such microphone or recording frequency and such in the studio...most people don't know the difference between a Les Paul and a Strat let alone the difference between playing through one amp versus another on stage or using such and such recording interface in the studio. Honestly I've -NEVER- had a single person walk up to me after a show and say "dude...you play really well but you should be using a Plexi instead of that L5...", LOL!!! What's more is that most people don't even care...all they really think about is whether a person/band/song sounds good to them or not.

Now honestly, I've been playing guitar...on some level or another...since I was actually 4 years old. I played acoustic and took lessons for a few years when I was young, got sick of it (for various reasons) and then I picked it up again when I was 17 when I bought my first electric and I played electric guitars in my folks house until I moved out when I was 21. So for all of those years, my parents had a guitar player living in their house...and they never knew -anything- about guitars...in fact they didn't want to know anything about them! I remember for my 19th birthday my mother was soooooooooooooo embarrassed because she had to walk in to a music store and ask for a "Wah-wah" pedal, LOL!!! She NEVER forgave me for that until the day she died! To this day...even though he's even bought me a couple of guitars here and there, my father still really doesn't know anything at all about guitars...he knows there's "acoustic" and those really annoying things that I always screamed for when I was a kid called "electrics" but that's really all he knows. In fact my father who was an electrician at one point in his life was really blown away this last year when I told him that some guitar amps still have "tubes"...he really couldn't get over that! LOL!

It's kind of funny really...it's kind of easy for some of us to get wrapped up in our own little worlds when it comes to this thing we call "music" and especially guitars. Because it's soooooo common to us...I mean hell, I even dream about guitars...we tend to forget that not everyone is the same in regards to this. Even worse, some of us tend think of it like a religion in that everyone -should- think the same way as we do! The funny thing is that while most musicians will get quite personal about their instruments (as it should be) there's something about us guitar players that can be...well....obsessive. For many of us, playing that one special guitar can be our whole world and quite often it can be hard for us to see the proverbial meadow just beyond the forest...much more so than any other musician I've ever met.

Anyways, next time someone asks you "What's a Stratocaster?" do the same thing that to this day I still have to do with my own father....say "You know who Eric Clapton is? He plays Strats too!", LOL!

Peace,
Jim

Well articulated, Jim. The only exception I see is that it seems to me that both the Fender Stratocaster and the Gibson Les Paul have reached beyond the narrow confines of the home of our little 'club'. The Stratocaster has won industrial design awards, and has been the instrument of choice of music icons practically since it's inception. Les Paul, his namesake guitar, and his tremendous contribution to the industry have been hailed in documentaries and, hell, even a TV commercial ended with the answer to the question "What's your name. 'ol timer." "It's on your guitar", is the response. And ditto for its use. Clapton made his mark playing both, and now he's marketing cell phones in sunburst finish with a backline of Strats as set decoration. So following your seconding my earlier thoughts on the matter, perhaps I'll just mosy on back down the line next week with my DVD of "The Strat Pack", and perhaps Tom Wheeler's book. Might even make a convert out of a dyed in the wool MP3 player.

More importantly Hope this finds all well with you and yours on your side of the window.

Doc

_________________
"Another day in paradise!"

Good point Doc...well taken. Maybe I should have said that the next time someone asks "What's a Stratocaster?" I'll have to remenber to say "Ya know all those guitars behind Eric Clapton in his cell phone commercial? -Those- are Strats!", LOL!!!

Almost makes you wonder if Hendrix had of lived, what kind of TV commercial's he'd be doing now huh? .

Jim