"Coming through for schools." Leaves no doubt which side of this issue the reporter is on. So much for objectivity.

The one bright spot out of everything on the ballot. Hope it holds.

Depends - we have an 8:00 'traditional' service that I run sound for about once a month, so I'm usually up by 7:00, shower, grab guitar and X3 and head for the church by 7:45 on those days. Most every other week I'm playing electric guitar for our 10:45 'contemporary' service. We have a sound check for the 2nd service at 9:15, so we're usually out the door by 9. We live about 5 blocks away from church now, pretty nice.

What's your wife think? I shaved my goatee once. Once. She cried, I learned.

Kids spell love T-I-M-E. Spot on, Los. Closing the lid and taking my son for some DQ, right now.

Will the last 5 believers please close the door and turn out the lights on your way out of the building. Thanks.

1984 - have had some sort of mac since they came out. Have had many DOS and Windows machines in that time, too. Now, it's OSX and Linux. I do run windows XP under VMWare Fusion when I need to test something about once a month or so.

oops, delete all those by 'stv' above - hit the enter key a few times, sorry 'bout that.

Wow, great story - thanks for sharing.

Best advice there is the backup, for sure. I agree with the 'keep it going' concept, to a point. My playing realm is in a small-ish church with about 175 people present on a given Sunday. There have been many times where we've 'played through' - like the Worship Leader completely botching the melody in the chorus of 'Amazing Grace (my chains are gone)' on Easter Sunday, or me forgetting to pop off the capo week before last during an acoustic set, or last week half the band remembered the dynamics changes in the Jami Smith version of 'Lord Reign in Me' that we started last week, and the other half didn't.

There have been a couple of times, though, that we've started a song and it ended up being a trainwreck (and not the really cool amp kind of trainwreck!) One time we were playing 'The Lord Almighty Reigns' which has a really cool, bass groove getting into the song. Well, the bass player that day started the song a full step low. He forgot he tuned his low E to a D. The keys (lady with perfect pitch) picked up on it right away, but me and the worship leader both didn't. It wasn't pretty when both guitars started playing a full step higher than the piano and bass. About a bar into the song, the WL just stopped and said, "ok guys, let's try that one in E this time." Everyone had a little chuckle, and away we went, together.

The difference is, of course, is the whole band not together, or is there one person with an issue.

I think that also speaks to the dynamics of the band. In a church band situation, the worship leader is clearly the one in charge on the stage, and should be able to make that call. I'd think a Third Day gig would be a lot different for a couple of reasons. Church bands are almost always all-volunteer. I'm working for a software company by day, for example. We rehearse one a week for that week's performance, and the songs change every Sunday. Third Day are pros, it *is* their day job, and the setlist doesn't change *that* much from show to show. Any band, though, should really have a plan for how to deal with these situations.

Great topic, Mark.

Here's a couple:
The Pedal Pimp: http://thepedalpimp.blogspot.com/
Guitar Lifestyle: http://www.guitarlifestyle.com/
Guitar Teacher's Lesson Notebook: http://www.heartwoodguitar.com/WordPressBlog/

You should do another post on links for other internet resources, like forums, youtube channels, twitter feeds, and other websites devoted to guitar.