Rick, you are out of your mind. (You wanted criticism!!!!)

Right. You are in a jam session, and you have no idea what is going on. They are playing in Eb, with occasional shifts into C#m to keep themselves amused. You are sitting there thinking: BASS NOTES ARE ON THE THICK STRINGS NEAR YOU and/or MY GIRLFRIEND SAID PHOTOGRAPHY, BUT OH, NO, I HAD TO PICK GUITAR. Guys are sitting there with over 1mm flatpicks, suitcases like Jackie Gleason hauls around in The Hustler, callouses on their hands like clubfeet, and what does Rick advise? "You start the next one...."

You are in the ring with Muhammed Ali. When he hits you, lean into the punch.

I mean, really.

No. The real answer is: when the first song is over, go to the bathroom and look at yourself in the mirror, fall down upon your knees and say: "Elizabeth Cotton, wherever you are, please help me. If you help me, I will move to wherever it was Albert Schweitzer helped lepers and played Bach organ works in the depths of the African jungle where no one except lepers could hear him for 375 kilometres in any direction". Then, as you are coming back into the room, buy everyone beer.

Wouldn't it be a good idea to get all those people who hate being in groups together for an evening, and do the old 1,4,5 thing, and give them pointers on how not to panic. REALLY SLOWLY!!!!!! I mean, if it works in group therapy. I guess people do this sort of thing in summer workshops. Anyway. Did I mention that in group sessions the songs are moving forward into an open temporal void, and that there are lyrics, and everything happening at once????? I guess I did. "You start the next one." Jesus!!!!

yours, Peter T.