thank you, ExtenZe!

One of the most hateful and aggravating jobs in the music business is changing your guitar strings. I hate it with a passion and I don’t know anyone that enjoys this tedious, laborious task. This is why my son always gets me to change his. I’ve shown him enough times, but “I just do it better”. Yeah, right. So now he’s got this Telecaster courtesy of my friend, Joey Ward and on Wednesday day night of this week Will showed me what he really thought of me. He walked in the living room and handed me the guitar and a pack of strings. Now, this is no ordinary Tele. No no, this one has a Bigsby whammy bar on it. I’ve never changed strings on a guitar with a Bigsby so I had no clue as to the extent and depth of the Hell that I was being sent to, and to make matters worse he had already taken all of the strings off so I had no idea how the strings actually had to be woven through this fancy apparatus. Enter Google. So having figgered that part out, I made several attempts using only MY two hands at getting that little ring thing at the end of the string to stay on that little stem thing sticking out under the Bigsby whilst at the same time turning the tuning peg at the other end of the guitar. This was maddening. So after 15 tries too many by myself, I asked my son for a hand before the F bombs start explode. It takes BOTH of his hands AND mine to get the first string to stay on. I’m cussing the designer of this contraption in my head. I’m in a baaaad mood. The TV is still on and I’m hardly paying attention but my son has one ear open as we attempt the second string. At this point we feel like surgeons working on a dying patient. All of a sudden Will gets tickled about something on TV. “What the hell?” I’m thinking. I look up and it’s an “ExtenZe” commercial. You know, the little blue pill for “Male Enhancement”, making men “Larger”. So I try to diffuse the awkward moment by saying “Yeah, it makes little dudes…THIS tall” holding one of my much needed hands up over my head. Will could NOT stop laughing and I needed him to stay focused on the bitch of a job that he gave me. Finally, we get that string on and then the next. OK! Making progress! And just as we’re getting to the worst ones to put on, the final two that aren’t wound, here comes another “ExtenZe” commercial. Damnit! And then ANOTHER one came on. Hilarity ensued. So what would normally be a ten minute job on MY Tele took an hour and a half on his. Jeez! I hate you Mr. Bigsby, but thank you ExtenZe! You made a hard job even…well…weirder.