Someone hands you a guitar and says "Play something.."

tone1

Queen bitch Bowie
Wish you were here Floyd
about a girl Nirvana 

Dontgiveupyourdayjob

Yellow Ledbetter - Pearl Jam

PolarityMan

chugchugchugchug chuggitychuggity triplet widdle widdle 

flying_pie

Eugene's Trick Bag




Okay, seriously I'd probably play my stolen from Puddles the Clown version of Crazy Train and hope for the best when the high notes come without a vocal warm up

Listen to Crazy Train by TheFlyingPie on #SoundCloud

https://on.soundcloud.com/oGsN8

prowla

guyinlyon

"Pay me"

digitalkettle

prowla said:

And that, kids, is how you get 3.85M subs ;-/

merlin

LionAquaLooper said:

Someone hands me a guitar and tells me to play something? I'd tell them to fuck off. I'm not anyone's performance monkey  

C'mon dude, you've been invited to a party and you're telling people who just want a good time to "fuck off"? 
It's one way, but I find it hard to let an opportunity slip through my fingers so I say, "Sure, who shall I make the invoice out to?"

  

equalsql

If it's an acoustic then normally I'd play Blackbird by the beatles.
If electric probably that outro solo on Goodbye To Love by the Carpenters, or if it's a clean tone most likely Sultans Of Swing.

digitalkettle

If acoustic, probably ‘Necrophobic’ by Slayer.
If electric, probably ‘Postmortem’ by Slayer.

Come to think of it, I haven’t been invited to a party for ages!

jasonbone75

What's wrong with "feck off I'm not a performing monkey" and going back to the party?!

Nitefly

Why bother learning to play, if you're not going to play for people? 

LastMantra

Nitefly said:

Why bother learning to play, if you're not going to play for people? 

It's only really at parties that I've ever played "for people" other than myself. 

Why do I do it...because I enjoy playing guitar. 

Not that I don't get your point though. 

steven70

"Do I look like a f_cking jukebox?"
Don't seem to get many party invites these days...

munckee

I think saying to the person handing you the guitar “sure, what can you sing” would probably kill the request pretty quick.  

LastMantra

munckee said:

I think saying to the person handing you the guitar “sure, what can you sing” would probably kill the request pretty quick.  

That's what I do, basically. 

At a party there's generally music on anyway and I wouldn't ask for the music to be turned off while I play a fancy "party piece", but if it's something everyone, or at least a few people, can sing along to I don't mind strumming some chords for it.

Shrews

A rock and roll medley using three open chords - A - D - E

Rock Around The Clock
Johnny B Goode
Oh Boy
I Saw Her Standing There

and a change to G-Em.Am-D to finish with Let's Twist Again

hollywoodrox

digitalkettle said:

If acoustic, probably ‘Necrophobic’ by Slayer.
If electric, probably ‘Postmortem’ by Slayer.

Come to think of it, I haven’t been invited to a party for ages!

Damn I was. Hoping for war ensemble or south of heaven 

LastMantra

I remember a party many, many, moons ago when I had just started playing basically this happened. 

There was a guy there that had been playing for a good few years that was handed a guitar. He started playing some quite complex metal riffs/licks (on an old cheapo acoustic that probably wasn't in tune and had rediculous action) don't know what, at a guess it sounded like Metallica or maybe Maiden or something. He kept fluffing it because of the guitar and the fact we were all quite drunk/stoned. Everyone went quiet and nobody was smiling. 
I was quite impressed that he could even attempt stuff like that, as I was still struggling with cowboy chords.

After that he passed the guitar to me remarking that it was virtually unplayable. 

Someone said to me "do you play"?
as I appeared to be holding it correctly and was fingering chords. 
For some unknown reason I started whacking out Wild Thing. I wasn't playing the right chords, I assume, just a, d and e7 or something, can't remember, but as soon as I started loads of people started singing, laughing and smiling!


Was a bit of an Ulrika moment for me.

stufisher

40+ years ago when I was a partygoer I used to play a range of Simon & Garfunkel stuff (The Boxer, April Come She Will, Kathy's Song, Sound of Silence, Only Living Boy In New York, Old Friends, etc. etc ), Scottish folk songs and Neil Young songs (Sugar Mountain, Out of the blue and into the black, Ohio, Needle and the damage done, A man needs a maid, Campaigner, Cinnamon Girl, Cortez the killer, etc. etc.).

Nowadays I play predominantly electric so I'd be struggling to play any of the above without practice. The only tracks I practice on acoustic these days (which I could play upon short request) are Black Velvet, Blackbird and Seagull ... it's embarrassing when I reflect on my youth