Have guitar, will travel

(and probably pick up strangers on the way and get asked to "give us a tune". No! You give me a tune! It is you who seem the more loquacious, and pro the idea of performing on a train.)

WHAT... is the deal... with GUITARS? Climb aboard a bus or tube without one and normal rules apply, no-one is allowed to talk to you. But make the mistake of travelling with a guitar and it's an ice-breaker, a ready made chat up line, AND THAT'S ALL FINE. But I have become curmudgeonly about this merely because in all my time of travelling (and I bet this would hold true if it were in all my time of time travelling) no-one, NO-ONE, has EVER come up with a different opening gambit from "give us a tune, then". Oh, I grant you there's "come on then, give us a tune" but that's very much the same thing but with more drunken menace and overtones of "and cheer up you bitch".

People can't understand why or how you can have been in the same carriage of a tube train as them for upwards of 30 seconds and not given them a tune. It simply doesn't compute. "Barry! This girl's got a guitar and won't give us a tune!" "Don't be stupid - she must know Sweet Home Alabama." In a way, I can understand. I must seem like a really bad sport - there I am, with a guitar, there's no sound system on the Northern Line and, well, you do the maths, the whole situation is crying out for a singalong to Hotel California. Last night, I was coming back from a gig in Birmingham, and when I got on the train, there was a middle class couple sat having a chat. As I walked past them the man cried out "Oh, give us a tune!" and the woman said "Yes, don't go far, we might be needing you later on!" "Serenade or threesome?" I fancied enquiring, but decided instead to smile with unbridled enthusiasm at the offer and giggle "Hehehe, vous etes charmants!!" before sinking down into a seat and pretending to be foreign.

It has its advantages though. Last week in Brighton, the gig was cancelled so we had a bit of a jam instead. I am therefore in a position to recommend very strongly Liam Mullone's "Nazi Soldier" song, which I would undoubtedly not have heard if we'd done the gig (it is very funny, and you know how those comedy audiences hate funny). Yeah! Of course, I insisted on his participation by shoving ther guitar in his direction and going "OI MULLONE GIVE US A TUNE!!!!!!! - oh, a lament for dead fascist soldiers, how unexpected."