Man, I can relate with you all as well. Excellent thread. My dad likes to mention that I play guitar whenever there is a family function (he's got 3 brothers and 3 sisters so you can imagine how many people are there when you start adding up my cousins), so there I go, a lonely soldier off to battle the requests of everyone's favorite cliche songs. BTW, stairway to crap was AWESOME! Usually I don't mind playing for a few folks, but by the time I'm nagged to death about it, theres just no hope left.

Also I must agree about the (people don't wanna hear a solo) post. Last time I was playing for people I was busting out the fiercest solos in my repetoire only to see looks of indifference on everyone's face. Lay people just don't appreciate the vast difference of skill between a well defined lead piece and some casual power-chordin'. Breaks my heart :(

Finally about the guy who said to play the first 5 notes of stairway... That's actually an inside joke between me and my best buddy. On cue, he'll request stairway, then I'll get a serious look on my face and play the first few notes, the drop my guitar (ode to vai from crossroads) and say, "F--- this, I'm out!". It cracks us up everytime. It stems from when I was first learning to play and couldn't do any more than the first few notes smoothly. It's a nice reminder of how much progress I've made over the years :)