{"id":23787,"date":"2020-08-26T08:42:38","date_gmt":"2020-08-26T12:42:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=23787"},"modified":"2020-08-26T08:46:36","modified_gmt":"2020-08-26T12:46:36","slug":"devices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/devices\/","title":{"rendered":"Devices"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Piano man performed on a harpsichord\" width=\"695\" height=\"391\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Rtx6vn5Tr54?feature=oembed&amp;wmode=opaque\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>There was a time when I imagined a harpsichord could make anything sound better, even <strong>Billy Joel<\/strong>&#8216;s &#8220;Piano Man.&#8221; I don&#8217;t remember specifically how old I was, but I was probably about 15, the year my head exploded with dreams of becoming a professional musician. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;d long loved the harpsichord &#8211; or some electronically manipulated version of a piano to sound like one &#8211; on <strong>The Beatles<\/strong>&#8216; &#8220;In My Life.&#8221; They used the instrument, or some approximation of it, elsewhere, like &#8220;Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds&#8221; and &#8220;Fixing a Hole.&#8221; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Rolling Stones<\/strong> used harpsichord to great effect on &#8220;Play With Fire.&#8221; Oh, the thought of those savages unleashed on an instrument befitting a man in tights and a powdered wig!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Walk Away Renee&#8221; and &#8220;Sunshine Superman&#8221; featured the harpsichord. And who could forget the chill that ran up their spine the first time they heard it bang out the chords in <strong>The Yardbirds<\/strong>&#8216; &#8220;For Your Love&#8221;? Not I, not the day I sat down at the harpsichord in my high school music room and painstakingly figured out how to play that song&#8217;s four magical chords. Or more likely it was my close, personal friend <strong>Townsman Andyr<\/strong> who figured out the chords and showed me how to unlock the magic. His family had a piano, and he already knew how to play the intro to &#8220;Evil Woman.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--nextpage-->\n\n\n\n<p>For a couple of years, I thought I&#8217;d own a harpsichord and feature it in my work. Then, I bought <strong>The Kinks<\/strong>&#8216; <em>Face to Face<\/em> album and realized how quickly the harpsichord could exhaust its welcome. The pervasive use of harpsichord on that album, it gives me the image of an old lady scurrying around the house to throw down lace doilies on her fine wood furniture before company arrives. Afternoon tea needn&#8217;t be so fussy. The harpsichord would cease to be one of my favorite devices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Likewise, the megaphone voice device, another one my beloved Beatles leaned heavily on, would eventually run out of gas for me. I clutched onto that device much longer, as it was successfully employed by my favorite artists of my late teens and early adulthood, artists I still cherish as much as The Beatles today, like <strong>Elvis Costello<\/strong> and <strong>XTC<\/strong>. In 1988, my band did some recordings employing this device on two songs. That batch of recordings is near and dear to me and remains unreleased. Maybe the disappointment around that time in my life is connected, but that was the beginning of the end of the line for me and the megaphone device. I still like hearing it in small doses, such as on the intro to XTC&#8217;s &#8220;Respectable Street,&#8221; but <strong>The Strokes<\/strong> ran it into the ground on their debut album, on which the device was used to criminal levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On the other hand, I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ll ever get tired of fuzz guitars; four-on-the-floor drum beats; octave bass leaps, best represented by the bass part in <strong>Spencer Davis Group<\/strong>&#8216;s &#8220;Gimme Some Lovin'&#8221;; the unintended squeak of a kick drum beater, such as on a few <strong>Led Zeppelin<\/strong> songs, or bass guitar frets, such as <strong>Bruce Thomas<\/strong>&#8216; fret squeak on Costello&#8217;s &#8220;Pidgin English&#8221;; and the drastic edits into a coda, such as the thrillingly clunky edit into the coda of the original <em>Loaded<\/em> version of &#8220;Sweet Jane.&#8221; Don&#8217;t get me started!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So how about you? What&#8217;s a device you&#8217;re happy to have put aside and a device you don&#8217;t see ever leaving your side?<\/p>\n<nav class=\"page-links\"><strong>Pages:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/devices\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">1<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/devices\/2\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">2<\/span><\/a><\/nav>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There was a time when I imagined a harpsichord could make anything sound better, even Billy Joel&#8216;s &#8220;Piano Man.&#8221; I don&#8217;t remember specifically how old I was, but I was probably about 15, the year my head exploded with dreams of becoming a professional musician. I&#8217;d long loved the harpsichord &#8211; or some electronically manipulated <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/devices\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[1057,1056],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23787"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23787\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}