---------------------------------------------------------------------------
sao (Andy Oakland):

From Musician, Dec. 1992,  by J. D. Considine.
As reprinted in The Utne Reader, March/April, 1993.

Remember the scene in Wayne's World, where Wayne, about to buy 
the guitar of his dreams, begins to pick Jimmy Page's most famous 
arpeggio and is interrupted in mid-strum by the salesclerk, who points 
to a sign on the wall reading "No Stairway to Heaven"?  
Pure fantasy, right?

Wrong.  Though there may not be a sign on the wall, there is a 
"No Stairway" policy at the Sam Ash store in White Plains, New York.  
"There's no 'Stairway to Heaven,' no Poison songs, no 'Smoke on the 
Water,'" explains guitar salesman Rob Knippel.  "The keyboard players 
can't play 'Jump.'   No keyboardist who plays a Van Halen tune is 
allowed in the store."

Seem a little touchy, do they?  Well, you would be, too, if you had to hear
the same half-dozen songs butchered over and over, day in and day out. 
"It's not that you get sick of it," avers Knippel, sounding, frankly, sick
of it.  "It's hard to say.  We know a lot of these kids, and we'll rap with
them or whatever.  The first time they'll play this song, it'll be like,
'Can't play that song.'  'Why not?'  'You can't.'  'Why not?' 
'Because we don't like that song.'"

Part of the problem, argues Ralph Perucci, a former Sam Ash salesman 
who now reps for Paul Reed Smith guitars, is that none of these kids 
knows an entire song.  Instead, what they'd wank away on would be a 
jumble of bits, what PRS general manager Mike Dealy describes as 
"House of the Rising Smoke on the Stairway to Freebird."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------