The Guitar

The Guitar

I’m old enough to remember when guitars became the instrument of choice for college kids. Before that, I think it was the piano. But for folk singers and rock groups, suddenly everyone played or wished they played the guitar. Coffeehouses were popular and held “open mike” nights, where amateur songwriters who had a pawn shop guitar and knew three chords would sing war protest songs or gentle songs about life and love and happiness and sadness.

Now we’ve evolved through amplified guitars and dissonance pedals to electronic guitars at ear-splitting levels and songs about bitches and “ho’s” and guns and incest and drugs and the po-lice. How did this happen? And what could possibly be next? Maybe, as in the ‘50’s there’ll be another music revolution and a different instrument will become the 21st century version of the guitar.

Maybe the flute. No, you can’t sing and play it at the same time. It needs to be an instrument that currently doesn’t have much esteem, but is easy to carry and not too hard to learn to play. I know—it’ll be the accordion. A down-sized, computer-chip driven accordion. You heard it here first.