Put down the guitar and back away slowly

Saturday night found me at a cheesy chain "English pub". My defense for going to such a place is proximity. It was the closest thing to the movie theater where we'd seen Thank You For Smoking (side note: recommended. Reason? Hilarious. End transmission). Also, it was the closest seller of stiff drinks that didn't price their alcohol "from the low teens".

I'm going to leave aside the complaint that it seems nearly impossible for an American bar to exist without being modeled after the bars in another country as though it's only them that drink too much, and I'm going to confine my grousing to the most obnoxious fixture at all of these places: The Guy With the Guitar.

Even at the Irish places, it's pretty bad. You may hear a "Dirty Old Town" or "Red Is The Rose", but you're more likely to hear "Margaritaville" or that goddamn unicorn song. And I understand that it's supposed to be part of the appeal of these places: that people like the idea that, except for the vomiting frat boys and girls screaming "Wooooooo!" over everything that anyone says, these places are just like the quaint pubs you'd find in England or Ireland, with the guy singing some soft local-color folk songs. And once people have had enough to drink, "Brown Eyed Girl" is as authentic as anyone really needs.

So this guy on Saturday night kind of had his work cut out for him, in that he's trying to make an English "pub" seem more authentic, and there's not much you can do for authentic English folk songs. So he played Radiohead and Pink Floyd, which might have been okay if it wasn't for the fact that he was absolutely butchering these songs. Every single song was played with exactly the same strumming rhythm, and while I'm sure it's really difficult to try and make Pink Floyd's beautiful "Breathe" into a song that doesn't just make you want to lie down for a while, it was painful to hear.

I wonder how much these guys make. It's tempting to try and pull together some songs by English bands and take this guys job. For a couple hundred dollars, I'll take a shot at singing Rolling Stones and Beatles songs for a few hours, and while it wouldn't be great, I will say that I'm confident it'd be better than the guy we heard. Not only would it get me money, and it's not just that it'd be fun to sing some songs for a while, but I'd be putting this guy out of a job. And that would be reason enough.