The Longer I Get, the Play I Worse

I started out this morning like the reincarnation of Ritchie Blackmore. I was nailing that "Smoke on the Water" intro time after time after time. The purple was very deep within me, indeed. I should have quit at 9 a.m. but I kept picking up the guitar throughout the day and got progressively worse. By evening I was plinking and buzzing and stumbling as if I'd never heard the song before. Maybe I had a case of finger fatigue. I was expecting a visit from Deep Purple's lawyers.

Mark the guitar coach had told me (and I'd come to the conclusion independently, too) that sometimes it gets bad and you just have to put the guitar down, walk away and leave it alone for awhile.

I seem to be having a lot of those moments lately. Maybe that's what Joe Walsh meant when he titled that album "The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get." But maybe not. It's hard to tell with Joe Walsh.

Ol' Joe sure has a knack for naming albums: "You Can't Argue With a Sick Mind," "You Bought It -- You Name It," "But Seriously Folks ..." and the one that asks the question of the ages -- "Got Any Gum?"