Gladys…NOOOOO!

By Dan Willis

The crowd is swaying to your music in perfect sync with the movement of your beet red plectrum across the strings; the lights are flashing across your eyelids enhancing your buzz; the humidity inside the room has grown tropical; you’re in the groove and nothing can stop you from performing at your peak…when out of nowhere you’re strumming air. The weight from your neck and shoulders is gone with the screeching clang of your guitar named Gladys dropping to the stage, setting off feedback out of the loudspeakers more ear piercing than when you told your last girlfriend to shove off. Frantically you stumble as you come to the realization that your guitar strap just came off and you’ve ruined the perfect moment that all those people were feeling with you.

So maybe that’s an over dramatization, but it’s not far off from absolute fact. Guitar straps never seem to fail in practice, but during a kick ass show, you’re left holding the… well, nothing. After my first band started playing live, literally within the first two shows, while jumping up and down to Green Day’s, When I Come Around, my guitar fell to my knees as I tried to keep playing with only my left hand on the neck supporting its entire weight. Then, you guessed it, I discovered why strap locks exist and hit up the local music store the next morning.