These days, with digital keyboards all the practical rage, I’m sure there are countless examples of bands playing music identified with a certain era with the keyboardist playing some newfangled synth. So let’s not count those instances of incongruous pieces of onstage gear. I mean, it’s hard enough to find a solid Southern Rock band these days let alone one willing to haul a Hammond B3 from club to club. I’ll even forgive the example used to kick off this thread.
What I’m hoping to find are photos or tales of bands featuring a piece of completely incongruous gear, such as a rockabilly band with the lead guitarist playing a B.C. Rich Bitch or a garage band with a guy playing a headless bass. Feel free to take it one step further, as I nearly did with the Spanish rockabilly band pictured above, and point out incongruous accoutrements, like the swept back mullet on the guy playing the black Tele. For now, though, I’ll refrain from pointing that out. This is solely mentioned as an example of what may be identified.
You may have been one of the band members with an incongruous piece of gear at one point. We were all young and short on stage savvy at one time, right? Feel free to have a laugh at yourself if it helps moves the discussion along.
The Powderhorn Jones Review featured a harp, to interesting effect, in an otherwise rock and roll review with rockabilly tendencies.
My band in college played garagey versions of classic rock and r&b songs. When we first started, the drummers entire kit was a snare drum and a pedestal ashtray as a highhat. For some reason, I had a BC Rich Bich. It had 11 different knobs and switches including two built in pre amps. I didn’t even play lead and I’ve never liked heavy metal. I got it because of the picture of Joe Perry playing one in the gatefold of Live Bootleg I’ll see if I can find a picture or two.
Can chick singers qualify as ‘gear’? If so, I suggest the eye candy with Gang of Four on the tour following the Hard album.
And I wish Steve Nieve would leave the theremin in the studio.
I just watched Kenny Chesney on this week’s Austin City Limits. I swear there were more Olivers onstage than I’ve ever seen. (Ok, maybe not Olivers, just sidemen.) There were a few things that might once have seemed kind of unusual for a country artist — one of those slanted, multi-tiered synth stacks, a bassist playing Music Man Stingray, a fine instrument, though not exactly Nashville.
But those guys were on risers in the back. The frontline sidemen very occasionally played banjo, fiddle, and steel, but there were FOUR of them (maybe five, they were indistinguishable, as befits Chesney, Nashville’s most faceless star).
They mostly played guitars, sometimes acoustics, but most often electrics. Here’s the thing — not a single Telecaster all night long. There were a couple of Strats, but mostly the stage was full of Gibsons — on one song three Les Pauls and one SG! At the same time!
This is a bit much for any band, but a ‘country’ band? And then, most incongruous of all, there was a dreadlocked black dude playing miscellaneous percussion.
Oh I forgot, a four-man horn section too.
That’s what I’m talkin’ about, BigSteve. Is Chesney’s Look incongruous for country music? I’m not up on the modern-day country scene, but he always strikes me as a porn actor or Chippendale’s dancer more than a ranch hand.
Kenny Chesney crossed over from country music to being a landlocked Jimmy Buffett years ago. His songs are more likely to be about drinking beer and/or tequila in Mexico than anything along the lines of “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy.”
Musicians are so damn ironic that I just assume they are making fun of cheesy gear when they use cheesy gear.
I found a used CORT headless bass (Stinberger Geddy Lee copy) at a pawn shop for $75 and I used to keep it on stage as my “backup” just to take the piss out of my band mates and super-hip club-goers. (I am 99% sure I never actually plugged it in at a show)… Ended up selling it on ebay for double what I paid for it.
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Z27G2Br05aA/0.jpg
the veritable definition of incongruous, dangling there like a giant christmas ornament. great story in the most current biographical book about how they couldn’t even get it into the first few places they took it. guess it’s easier to get roadies when you start raking in the big bucks.