Here in Mexico there continues to exist the odd, though generous, tradition of allowing total strangers to “cut in” on your guitar if they feel like playing it. Long before I visited these sunny shores, watching the movie Under the Volcano, there’s a scene where the dashing young nephew gestures to a passing Mariachi musician, who promptly and cheerfully hands la guitarra to the young war hero so he can sing a moving ballad from the Spanish Civil War. At the time I thought, “That’s preposterous. What kind of musician would willingly lend his instrument to some stranger?” Where I come from, most of my old jamming buddies would rather see you slow dancing with their old ladies instead of holding their cherished Lucille in your arms, running your hands all over her rosewood neck and curved body. One Mexican friend of mine told me he was in New York (giving an art show; he also happens to play great blues guitar), and went to one of those Monday night blues jams, where everybody sits around drinking beer, waiting their turn to get up and try to sound more like Stevie Ray Vaughan than the last guy. He arrived there early, but never got to play all night because, to his amazement, nobody would let him borrow their guitar. And it’s not just New York, even in easygoing Portland Oregon it would be the same story. Here it’s different: they call it a palomazo, and if you are picking in public in Mazatlán, it seems any old drunken slob who thinks he can strum feels entitled to have a go at your guitar. I learned this the hard way back in the nineties when I started sitting in with Memo and La Leyenda at the first micro brewery in Latin America (it’s closed now —funny, that blueberry stout stuff never caught on here, though I drank my share). We were set up outside under a latticed spiral staircase next door to BoraBora, a girl-watching paradise. The only problem was the waiters were mostly wannabe guitarists

and were constantly trying to wrest Rosie from my grip, sometimes in the middle of a song! As for pleading tourists, I’d just tell them to buzz off and get their own gig. Finally the guys in the band took me aside and said that much as they liked having me hang with them, buying beers, paying taxis, amusing them with my broken Spanish, et cetera, unfortunately I’d have to quit coming around if I kept rudely hogging my guitar to myself all the time. Management was complaining, waiters were complaining, customers were complaining. OK, fine. Years later, my guitars have been manhandled, woman-handled, detuned and string-broken. I’ve found that what’s worse than someone getting up and sounding lame is someone getting up and sounding great and making you sound lame. But of all the grandstanders I’ve endured, by far the worst invitado was the brilliant young music school grad who managed to both blow me away with his fluttery modern technique, and also sink his hand into the axle grease on the sliding garage door protecting the stage, then unwittingly give my rare ’74 semi-hollow bodied Telecaster an unwanted lube job. “Sorry, dude, I tried to wipe it off, but it just kept spreading around more and more.” Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, and one crazy day on Stone Island I actually found some Mexican musicians reluctant to hand over their instruments. A scarily over-served horde of sweaty, briny revelers realized that, counting the cello teacher, we had enough musicians to make up an acoustic blues trio. We were right on the cusp between courage and clumsiness, so we hailed the Mariachi quartet that had been pestering us all day and explained that we would pay them the going rate if, instead of singing El Rancho Grande, they would let us play their instruments, minus accordion, for a few songs. They politely said of course, but first they had an engagement down the beach. They never returned. Sometimes prudence overrules tradition.