Bill H.

Right now - literally meaning now - I'm listening to Low Boob Oscillator because it's in a commercial for hotels on TV. Stereolab in a commercial... who would have thought. This commercial plays all the time too.

OK this is a bit of a stretch, but he did have at least one single that charted:

That was a much bigger forum and needed it.

Watch your PSA levels everyone.

My gigs can lean one way or another for sure, but practically all of them have been a combination of listeners and non-listeners. I've played dinner piano where I didn't think anyone was listening - only to be surprised when a couple would come over and thank me for the wonderful music. And I've played in bands where I thought everyone was listening, and have someone come up and request a song we just did. But basically if there's a song you really want to do and the best solution would be a backing track, don't let what people may think hold you back - because no one even thinks about that stuff anymore. In my experience anyway.

I had the opposite feeling when I switched to backing tracks. It was liberating to not have to do setup between songs, and do what I was getting paid to do - entertain. But I was about as far from festival gigs as you can get - low key lounges. But it was a huge relief to just double click on a file in Windows Media Player and go. No one cared that I added a big clunky laptop to my gear, and that was 20 years ago. And now it's so common. It sounds like you already know what you're going to do Craig, but if it's a difficult track to pull off manually you could keep the door open for those tracks. And no one even bats an eye anymore. I think I told this story before, but I was blown away when a very popular regional band flew in the piano part to Don't Stop Believin'. They didn't have a keyboard player that night, and no one seemed to even notice! The only thing they cared about was that the lead singer nail Steve Perry's range and timbre, which he did splendidly. And why this band gets paid in the thousands per gig instead of hundreds.

Eagles's approach to not being able to hit the high notes live was a lot different in the 1970s. Something I ran across this morning in Wikipedia: According to Frey, fans of the band loved Meisner's performance of "Take It to the Limit" at their concerts, and came to consider it his signature song within the band. Henley, too, noted that fans "went crazy when Randy hit those high notes". Meisner, however, was concerned about not being able to hit the high notes. Frey was insistent that Meisner should perform the song in concert, and live performances of the song then became a source of great contention between Frey and Meisner – eventually becoming one reason for Meisner's departure from the band. Meisner had been struggling to hit the crucial high notes in the song during the Hotel California tour. According to Joe Walsh, Meisner could perform the song, but would become nervous when told he had to sing it. By the time they had reached Knoxville, Tennessee in June 1977, the band was feeling the strain of a long tour, with Meisner unhappy and suffering from a stomach ulcer. Meisner decided not to sing the song for an encore because he had been up late and caught the flu. Frey and Meisner then became involved in an angry physical confrontation backstage over Meisner's refusal to perform the song. After the altercation, Meisner was frozen out from the band and he decided to leave. He left the band at the end of their tour in September 1977 and was replaced by Timothy B. Schmit – coincidentally, the same bassist who had replaced him in Poco. As far as Eagles today, it's one thing to look at graphs and see lines match up, and quite another to listen to two separate performances that are exactly the same. If anyone hasn't already listened to that clip, just check out the part between three and five minutes in. It's chilling. The crazy part is that Desperado is one of the easiest Eagles songs to sing. Heck I've sung it hundreds of times. Even in G it's not that bad. If Desperado is mimed, then everything is.

The big difference between those two is that Taylor Swift exists purely in the pop realm, while Michael Jackson's reach existed much further than that. I don't DJ to young adults in clubs nearly as much as I used to, but I still do a few nights here and there - including last Saturday. I never get requests for Taylor Swift in that environment. But I can still - even now - drop Billie Jean into the mix and get a crowd response. And back in the 1980s... wow. His music was a club staple.

^ Well yeah. The reason you can't hear those piano parts ( and I never did until now with that iso track) is that everything was already so busy that they didn't survive mixdown. It's weird when you come back to a track you haven't heard in years. The instruments are so hyped and busy that it sounds like everyone was high on coke. Then when Clapton laid down his vocal track, it's so laid back that it sounds like he'd just smoked a bowl of weed. And maybe that's what happened way back when.

I played this track for years live. I sang lead, so kept my part pretty simple - mostly on EP because it seemed to fit better than piano with all the guitar clatter going on. On the original you've got a super busy guitar riff, 16th tambourines, 16th HH, 16th hand drums, a bass that gets into the range of a guitar... this song can get really cluttered really fast if you try to do all that live. Cover it verbatim if that's what your band is about, but this is one you might want to consider stripping down a bit.

I heard Royals this afternoon while I was getting my teeth cleaned. That song is still literally everywhere.

The guitar player of the band I was in borrowed my 45 of "Tonight" and I never saw it again. He about drove his girlfriend crazy he played it so much. We were trying for the same sort of sound as Raspberries. Raspberries just did it so much better. RIP Eric.

I'll be honest. The only Lorde song I'm familiar with is Royals. And it is something special. I remember when it came out - this hauntingly beautiful distinctive track wafting through the summer air from every venue within earshot back then. Speaking as a DJ it's the only Lorde track I've ever had a request for. Ever. So now that she's approaching 30, do I feel sorry for Lorde when people mostly identify her with a song she wrote when she was a kid? Well maybe a little. But it's hard to feel too sorry for someone who wrote one of the most defining songs of her generation, and one of the top singles of its decade. Carrying teenage fame into adulthood is so hard to do. Taylor Swift has done it. Billie Eilish is doing it. But they are exceptions.

The reason I got rid of my Pianet was that it was too muddy. I was just a kid back then and didn't have a lot of tools - and plugging it directly into a Fender Showman just didn't cut it. I bought it used but it was in good shape... we're talking late 60s here. Anyway that's why my memory of it is a little fuzzy. I didn't have it for more than a few months.

John is sure getting a lot more dynamics out of his Pianet than I ever could with mine! But that was over 50 years ago... maybe my memory is faulty. Or is someone riding the faders on the board? Any ideas?