Guitar Clerk's Bane (1969)

 

When guitar players go into music stores, they tend to want to pick up the axes and play a few riffs. The more popular a song is, the more likely it is that -- if you are a clerk in a guitar store -- you will quickly get real sick of hearing it, because every wanna-be who comes in will sure as hell play it.

Recall the sign on the guitar store wall in Wayne's World? No Stairway to Heaven ... 

Now it's different, but back in my day, it was Deep Purple and Led Zep and Beatles, and for the acoustic guys, Mason Williams.

I thought it would be fun to put together a little parody of this, so I came up with this. Did it about … twenty years ago, when I was still playing guitar and ukuleles still
a few years in my future.

A mash-up of the oh-crap-not-again! pieces the guys behind the counter at Music City were hearing in the late sixties: Smoke on the Water, Stairway to Heaven, House of the Risin’ Sun, Classical Gas, Blackbird …