Morrissey

+1 on Aretha. I think she may be the best example of what the OP is describing. The average person remembers Aretha Franklin as a vocalist, but we know she was a stellar pianist, too.

We may want to carve out effects pedals and tube amps -- crybaby wah, Fender Twin, etc. have been in production forever... and I don't think that was exactly what you were looking for in this thread

First gear that came to mind was Sony MDR-7506 headphones As for keyboards, the Korg Microkorg has had a good run -- I think that was released in 2002. 17 years.

SO jealous! What color top did you get?

They are fantastic showman and musicians. Vulpeck is part of a cool community of music makers, too. Dig that Ryan Lerman (Scary Pockets) is manning the on stage video camera. Crazy impressive this group was able to play MSG.

I agree with that. My curiosity about his piano skills remains, however. I mean, Axl Rose can manage November Rain and Tommy Lee can plunk out Home Sweet Home -- and I'll respect opinions they are good musicians, but I've never heard anyone claim they are good piano players. I suppose I'm just wondering what kind of chops Jack has. I'm already jealous of his many talents; perhaps I'd be gratified to know he doesn't have giant chops, to confirm he is indeed mortal.

This may be part of why I asked the question. I'm never going to play as well as Bill Payne or Herbie Hancock or [insert your favorite technical piano whiz]. But I think I can do justice to those Scary Pockets keyboard parts.

As a tangent to the recent thread about Ben Folds appearing in a Scary Pockets re-arrangement of a Ben Folds tune, I'm curious as to takes on whether Jack Conte of Scary Pockets is a talented keyboard player. He is without a doubt a savvy entrepreneur, a great bandleader, and a tasteful musician. But I've watched a lot of videos of him playing keys (primarily Wurlitzer and Rhodes), and he always seems to be playing very simple/sparse piano parts. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt that he is playing parts that fit the song/arrangement/musical style. But I'm left with lingering curiosity as to whether his videos are the limits of his keys talent. I know there are Scary Pocket fans here: what videos would you point to as Jack's "best" playing? Is there anything out there where Jack rips a fierce solo? Again -- much respect to Jack for his many, MANY talents -- just wondering how deep his keys talent goes.

Brent was known for having a dirty mouth. Prior to Brent, a Dead concert featured precious few curse words, often used in lyrics for meaningful poetic effect. But Brent injected a more casual swearing style into the live performances, which some Deadheads got a kick out of but I think the larger portion (including me) found distasteful. Fortunately, Brent's keyboard chops outweighed his swearing!

Similar to Wastrel, I've played this song in a lot of bands, and it is always used for extended solos by everyone. The band usually abandons the song structure and just jams on C while the soloists blow til they run out of licks. Can be magic or can get very boring very fast.

Man, I love "Skin it Back." Paul added a fresh counterpoint to Lowell's Americana.

I love Brent Mydland. This comedy bit is a bit too dry for me, though.

In a quest to determine whether I was in fact hearing Mellotron in the first verse of Aerosmith's Cryin, I happened upon the Planet Mellotron website: CLONK. The site includes a pretty comprehensive review of albums featuring Mellotron. I didn't find a discussion of it on the forum, and thought you guys might get a kick out of it. [video:youtube]

Man, there isn't a deep catalog of tunes in 5/4. If I may add in about a multiple of 5/4 -- 10/4 -- I dig the Grateful Dead's "Playing in the Band." During the sung portions of the song, the rhythm is probably most fairly counted as two bars of 4/4 followed by one bar of 2/4, but some of the instrumental portions can be reasonably counted as measures of 5/4. Too hard to count all the way to ten!

I hope we're not in an echo chamber here in KC, but I'm with the consensus opinion: technically remarkable / emotionally unappealing. I did enjoy around the 1:15 mark where Quincy is holding the piece of paper that gives the re-harmonization in real time.

I use an On Stage WS8540 "T stand." I like the sturdiness and how it folds up compactly for transport. It is a little heavier than I'd like. I worried the width might be too short -- the legs don't extend to the ends of the SK2. But it works for me. There is a slightly large model, too. Price is pretty good, relative to some other options mentioned in the thread.

Based on some lively threads here about the key of Lou Rawls "Natural Man" -- I thought this group might enjoy this music theory article I happened upon: "Fragile, Emergent, and Absent Tonics in Pop and Rock Songs" http://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.17.23.2/mto.17.23.2.spicer.html What key is Get Lucky (Daft Punk)? She's Gone (Hall & Oates)? Raspberry Beret (Prince)? Jane Says (Jane's Addition)? There's something for everybody! I learned some new vocabulary, like "melodic-harmonic divorce" [13] Let us consider two such examples. Example 6a shows a transcription of the opening of Jane"s Addiction"s 1988 alternative rock classic 'Jane Says,' a track built entirely on a repeating two-chord guitar riff of G majorâA major. Above Dave Navarro"s incessant guitar riff, Perry Farrell"s vocal melody insistently outlines the tonic triad of D major, and seems to be at odds with the oscillating chords below; indeed, this is an excellent example of what David Temperley (2007) and more recently Drew Nobile (2015), following Allan Moore (1995), have termed the 'melodic-harmonic divorce' in rock. To my ears, this divorce between the melody and harmony causes the whole song to sound like an ever-repeating IVâV that is searching for its tonic but never resolves

That setup has all the mojo!

The timestamp didn't work -- syntheslalom feature about the 23:15 mark.

OT: but the question reminded me of the Syntheslalom feature on the Farfisa VIP combo organs. Ahead of their time! [video:youtube]

+1 on Tell Me Something Good. I STILL have to think hard about that one. And Drive My Car was a tricky one at band practice... not too bad for keys but gave fits to the stringed instruments.

Here's one thread about using the Yamaha FC7 with a Roland keyboard: KLONK

Going off memory: isn't the Korg expression pedal just a rebranded Yamaha FC7?

This is the most popular pedal placement -- trigger Leslie with left foot. Expression pedal with right foot. We did a thread a few years ago with a poll: Klonk

I'm a tapper