Not at all. I merely recognize that, in the settings you seem to seek out for your jamming (by excluding picking parties and other far more inclusive avenues and instead going for the jams at bars-clubs et c.) the wishes of those who've either started the jam, or those who are getting paid by the bar to run it, have a right to control what happens at their party. Just like playing at a bar gig; if the owner says he doesn't want to hear anybody play "Whiskey River," even if you're a Johnny Bush (he wrote it) or a Willie Nelson fan, you don't claim you're getting stepped on, you just smile and say "no problem, is it that song, or do you just not like anything from the Johnny Bush-Willie Nelson catalogs?" No injustice lies in the concept of "my house, my rules." If you take advantage of someone starting up a bluegrbutt version (or even a Taj Mahal-esque) version of "Sitting On Top Of the World" to play the Grateful Dead's pretty darned cool turnarounds, you've stepped beyond what everyone else is playing, and can expect to get your hands slapped, preferably only metaphorically. Likewise if you choose to show off your keenly developed polyrhythm skills by playing your section of that long spell in E in the Orange Blossom Special playing 11-8 into the band's 4-4 (guitar player did that in a band I was in once: we told him not to do that again, not for our sake, but because the audience was looking at him like he'd lost his mind). Don't tell me, you're the sort of person who'd take up a job as a cook at an Italian restaurant, then complained your creativity was being stifle because they wouldn't let you cook General Tso's Chicken.

Oh, and I don't play 'principally' Dobro and pedal steel; when in public, I play them exclusively, except when someone asks me to play bbutt (dad taught me a little bit, I think it came by osmosis) or rhythm guitar. I don't play those by choice, as I don't play them well at all.

-- Lane Gray And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. Gen 2:25 remove the .lead from my address