The New Baby Comes Home

Meet Baby Taylor, Martin's new baby brother. He is way smaller and his pitch doesn't have anywhere near the depth of Plotnik's big and beautifully seasoned old guitar, but the Taylor is the perfect size for traveling. He came with a padded gig bag and after a bit of haggling at the antique gift mall only cost Plotnik $100 including the gig bag, plus a few bucks for a new set of light gauge strings when he got back to S.P.

Plot has been looking for a travel guitar for years. He thought he'd found it when he spent a lot more money to buy...



...his dreamy eight-string custom ukelele, a few years ago on Waikalua Avenue in Waikiki, but as it turned out the uke, which is 'way lighter and smaller than even Baby Taylor, is a bit too limited for Plot to want to play it all the time, plus it's so gorgeous that if he lost it while traveling he'd be very upset; if something happens to Baby Taylor he can always replace it.

That's what he says now, anyway. Plot has noticed a tendency in himself, first voiced by Blonde Bombshell in reference to herself in particular and women in general, to fall at least a little in love with the men they sleep with; in Plotnik's case he seldom brings his guitars to bed with him but after playing them for a little while and discovering their secrets he becomes deeply attached. Let that analogy simply die where it lies.

Plot is assembling a nice stable of stringed instruments, but he only really cares about big brother Martin. Plot brought Martin home when Martin was brand new and he turned 40 last year. Martin replaced Plot's two classic guitars that were stolen out of his car when he first arrived in Nashville, Tennessee, just out of college. Plot mourned those guitars but then he found Martin, and now he can barely remember what the others sounded like.

Except for that Gibson 12-string, Oh Cbrist what that guitar must sound like now. How many pawn shops did Plotnik prowl through for the next few months, looking for his dears, how many newspaper ads did he peruse...but Nashville is a city of guitar players. Somebody is still playing that Martin 000-18, that Gibson 12.

Can you believe this? As Plot writes these words he realizes he is still pissed off about a theft that happened when he was 22. I thought age was supposed to make you mellow?

You can't build age into an instrument -- which is why Mummy P.'s 1936 Chickering spinet outplays even new baby grands. Old guitars acquire a patina in every strum.

Come to think of it, you can't match age in people either, and some of us, like pianos and guitars, mellow as we, uh, antique. Others just get stupid.

A few years ago, Plotnik and BZWZ passed an older guy walking on the street in LA, with an unshaved face, drooling while he stumbled down the sidewalk. Plot asked BZ to please shoot him if he ever gets like that.

Fast forward to an Italian restaurant waiting area a few days ago. A pudgy guy walked by in a toe to cap running suit that was hard to believe: cream and burgundy with BOTH stripes and checks. BZ agreed to shoot her father if he ever wears that suit, whether or not he is drooling while he walks down the street, and regardless of his supposed patina of maturity.

Plot could tell you the most beautiful pianos he's ever played -- no contest. The very old Steinway grand in the practice room at Carnegie Hall where his band gave a concert a long time ago (Mummy P. still remembers that concert -- she was there. She sat next to Plotnik's violinist's mother, who spent the entire concert vilifying Plotnik and Jon while extolling the virtues of her darling daughter, the gifted and insane violin prodigy.)

And Mummy P.'s. The list ends there.