While organizing an eclectic, daylong celebration of guitar music at the 92nd Street Y, it occurred to me that an accompanying exhibit of guitar-related photography would further engage the audience for an extraordinary array of guitarists from around the world.

Though he was quite possibly the brightest and most philosophically articulate interviewee of his era in popular music, Jerry Garcia was not the guru that the media canonized in his name. While charismatic and charming, he refused to be a leader -- not of the counterculture that flowered in his hometown neighborhood, the Haight-Ashbury of San Francisco in the '60s, nor even of the band, the Grateful Dead, for whom he played lead guitar for 30 years -- "You can call me the boss, man, just don't expect me to make any decisions."

Here’s an odd thing. The New York Guitar Festival includes a Guitar Marathon in the 917-seat Kaufmann Concert Hall at the 92nd Street Y, an all-afternoon-and-after-a-short-intermission-all-evening event that throws every kind of guitarist at the audience until even the most desperate guitar addict leaves feeling as if he’s just about had enough for now, and maybe he’ll go home and lie down with a cool cloth on his face and listen to some Enya.