By Jim Hagarty
I’ve played guitar for 45 years but I have never owned a guitar amp. I play an acoustic guitar and when I perform, I sit on a stool and pull an instrument mic up to my guitar.
But a friend with a music store finally talked me into buying one. He gave me a good deal.
So one day I finally got up my nerve and went out into the garage and set it up. My guitar has a pickup inside it so I plugged it into my new, cool, rectangular box on wheels.
I experimented with it, turning all the buttons every which way and checking out the neat sounds it can make. After a while, I became curious about how loud it would go. So I cranked it up. All the way. I strummed my guitar strings a few times, didn’t care for the distortion at maximum volume, and shut everything off to take the dog for a walk.
I got three houses away from home and my neighbour came out of his house.
“My power just went off,” he said.
Another neighbour came out his front door, directly across the street.
“Have you got any power over there?” the first neighbour asked him.
“Nope,” was the reply.
Then a woman emerged from the house next door. She too had no power.
“Have you got any power?” the first neighbour asked me.
“Yes,” I said. “I was just playing my guitar in the garage there and my amp was plugged in …”
Oh, oh. The report arrived later that almost the whole city had been down for a while.
Oh well. I am hell bent on becoming a rock star and my neighbours are powerless to stop me.
