Aug 042011
Is there any instrument that takes more abuse than the keytar? And does anyone ever feel the slightest regret for taking said shot at the instrument and any musician who’s ever played one? Today I challenge you to state the best argument for this deservedly derided instrument. I present the above clip and challenge you, Townspeople, to make a better argument for the instrument! (And don’t think I haven’t made it to the 50-second mark of this performance.)
Donald Fagan springs to mind, but i can’t tell if that would be an argument for, or against the Keytar.
this video made me play with myself…so thank you.
The ecstatic look on Belinda’s face is as if she was lying on the floor and inserting the narrow end of the keytar into….no, I’ll leave the rest up to your imaginations.
The justification for the keytar was that keyboard players were tired of standing or sitting behind their rigs while the guitar players got to stand up front and flaunt themselves for the benefit of female fans. Keyboardists wanted the easy blowjobs too, so the keytar was developed to liberate them from static second-line obscurity. Even though I’m a keyboard guy, I never had a keytar. I had a saxophone instead which is far more legitimate as a crowd-pleasing weapon.
Based on the Steely Dan live stuff I’ve seen on VH1 and PBS, I’m convinced Fagan never actually plays that keytar. It’s a prop. He does sometimes sit behind a Fender Rhodes, which I’m assuming he does play.
I saw Ben Folds play a keytar on his first solo tour. He’s dorky and hammy enough to pull it off, and it was only for two songs.
Whenever I see The Dears play, the lead singer, Murray Lightburn, usually plays keytar on a song or two. He’s a kinda emotional guy, and he makes it work, because he owns it. There’s no shame or kitsch, and he doesn’t use it for some extended fusion-prog workout. So there’s my nomination.
I suspect Fagan pulls out the keytar to ensure there’s a bigger tool on stage than him.
“Fagen”
Okay, here goes: If the keytar wasn’t invented, the video above wouldn’t exist, and if that video didn’t exist, the following comments under the video, both of which made me laugh out loud, would not exist:
“My penis is confused …”
“This sounds like something Borat would listen to”
And that Allman Brother’s video is a shonde.
Yes, this video is a tough argument to beat – and don’t forget news that kilroy has already pleased himself to it. So far no one’s come close to wrestling the belt from this Mistress of the Keytar.
I have confessed in the Hall a deep love of Gary Wright — who used the keytar on for many years — most notably here on a vintage performance of Love Is Alive.
http://youtu.be/wCc7XJRDD74
With the dueling keytars and bonus cowbell, I will close my case and defend Gary’s keytar til I die. P.S. I still have a mixtape I made in high school of Gary’s solo stuff and Spooky Tooth reunion stuff with Foreigner’s Mick Jones — which I majestically titled “A Decade of Gary Wright — 1970-1979”)
Look, that’s great stuff and I am not one to dismiss the great Belinda Bedekovic. By no means. And although someone is going to pince-nez me and say that he is not playing a keytar, but I gotta go with one of my all-time faves, Gary Wright’s Love Is Alive on the Midnight Special http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCc7XJRDD74
But if I am to be disqualified on a technicality, I hereby submit this in advance for any future Battle Royal that takes up the much-vexed issue of hot women background singers/cowbell & tambourine specialists in silky quasi-judo outfits. Ok?
We are brothers in arms!
Well played, my man!
Close, but no keytar. Good song though.
I am going to see Steely Dan this sunday, so I can offer “Keytar Watch 2011”. He usually uses it mostly as a prop. He also played the “hooters” harmonica with keys thing at some point during their shows. the Dan is my dad’s favorite band in the world, so we go to see them every time they come to town, this will be my 4th show I think.
Wayne Famous of The Producers was the only “Key-Tar God” in the rock world. Didn’t the guy from The Busboys play one?
I would totally buy one if I saw it at a pawn shop, love to have it hanging on my wall.
Drats! We have been pince-nez-ed!
Gosh, I have to reach for my shake weight after that.
The only musician who I ever saw onstage break out the keytar was Herbie Hancock. This was on the Headhunters tour in 1998 (also only the second show where I saw a bass player break a string mid-song).
Herbie strutted across the stage with his keytar and the crowd loved it. Show was so good I gave him the benefit of the doubt that he knew what he was doing.
Here is a great vid of his keytar in action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4EhaQklWqA
That’s the worst strip club on Earth. Can I get my cover charge back?
The opening sounds to me just like the intro to Devo’s Whip It.
WTF is the point of having a Keytar on a stationary rack? You might as well have it flat. You can still walk around it and squat like she does.
The Keytar allows you to walk forward and put one bended leg up on the monitor at the front of the stage. It allows you to go back-to-back with the guitarist. You can jump off the drum riser. And you can treat it like a stripper pole at the worst strip club on Earth.
Wow, you’ve got one of those? What was Paris Hilton’s catchphrase again?
Yeah, but not if you want a blowjob, right?
Yeah, but isn’t that just because no one had invented it yet? So Gary had to actually wear a keyboard around his neck. Look at that cable coming out of that thing and going up the strap. I bet it weighs two pound per foot.
You don’t think sax players get blowjobs? Hah. How little you know. The dirty little rocker chix might go for the guitar players. The slightly older and more worldly and/or sophisticated women who would dismiss the guitarist as a juvenile showoff can appreciate someone who can kiss and caress a thing of cold brass and get warm and seductive sounds out of it. Trust me on this – I know whereof I speak.
Funnily enough, the next video on YouTube IS Borat with Belinda on Conan’s show, doing a song featuring a dueling Keytar section.
Hey man, the lady has serious chops, so stop trying to diminish her worth as an artist with your patriarchal sexist hate speech!
I’ve never heard them called ‘chops’ before.
Badaboom!
Nicely played, sir.
http://www.virtualrimshot.com/
I think Jan Hammer had the first handheld synth. He had one custom-made during his stint with the Mahavishnu Orchestra.
Nope don’t have one but now I can feel better knowing that I just need a keytar.
This may actually be a turn for the worse if I actually looked it up on the YouTubery, but without the keytar we wouldn’t have gotten that thing that the Bela Fleck drummer plays, which I remember enjoying on occasion while under the influence of dirt-weed way back when.