Mister, I’m a bigger man than you may have suspected.

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.

Do you partake in gear talk? I don’t. Although I’ve played guitar since I was 16 and have been recording music in studios and at home since I was 17, yet I have almost no interest in nor, more importantly, ability to discuss gear.

• Is it a classic brand guitar of guitar, like a Fender, a Gibson, or a Rickenbacker – rather than some new-fangled “pointy” guitar?
• Is it a funny model among one of those classic brands, like a Gibson Grabber bass?
• For recording equipment, does it have big knobs?

That about does it for my interest in guitar and recording gear, the gear I’m most likely to handle. Likewise, I can’t be bothered to talk about stereo stuff. Will it play music? Yes? Great!

I do, however, get a kick out of listening to two drummers talk about their gear. The other night, for instance, I spent about 15 minutes listening to discussion between our band’s drummer, Townsman Sethro, and Billy Ficca, the “wackoid” Television drummer touring with his old bandmate, Richard Lloyd. When I walked over, Sethro told me wide-eyed that Billy was playing the snare he’d used on Marquee Moon! I had to admit, that was pretty cool, but given the chance to open a dialog about the recording techniques employed by producer Andy Johns, I just sat back and listened to them talk about what the snare was made of, what kinds of heads they used – on the bottom as well as the top – and so forth. Drummers have lots of necessary gear, and I think it’s important that a drummer know about that stuff, much more important than it is for a guitarist to be a gearhead, for instance. Plus, you don’t have to understand anything about electronics to at least get the gist of what drummers are talking about when they talk gear. Have you ever heard a bassist go on about his or her gear? No offense, but that may be the gearhead discussion I least want to hear.

Do you talk gear? Do you listen in to gear talk? Do you prefer to talk gear that you know or listen in to discussions over gear you don’t really understand?

This will likely be the most discussed topic EVER on Rock Town Hall, so please be patient if the servers slow down. Thanks!

Everybody’s happy nowadays

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve finally gotten around to doing a couple of 21st Century Things: I finally fiddled with the GarageBand program on the Mac Mini we bought about 8 months ago and I watched the movie 24 Hour Party People and marveled at both the director’s self-referential verité style and Steve Coogan‘s glib narration. The fact that I never paid much attention to the Madchester scene and rave culture did not hinder my postmodern faculties.

As the film moved from the early Factory bands, such as Joy Division and A Certain Ratio (ie, bands I owned albums by and liked) to the later bands I’d missed the boat on the first time around, such as Stone Roses and Happy Mondays, my interest in the film was challenged. The Tony Wilson character’s credibility was challenged too, and maybe it was no coincidence that he was being ravaged by Hacienda drug culture while extolling the virtues of the Happy Mondays frontman. But what do I know? That stuff was fantastically popular for a spell, especially in the UK, where the validity of popular musical tastes has been borne out by as many great and bad acts as our own nation’s hit parade.

I was curious to hear these bands again. It had been years since I heard a Happy Mondays song and watched those videos of vaguely ’60s-influenced guys in baggy, vaguely rap-inspired clothes dancing around like the “toaster” character in any ska band to some overly active snare and tambourine pattern. To my surprise, the first Happy Mondays video I checked out was fairly entertaining.

Then I checked out another video, one a bit darker but still fueled by a hyperactive, rest-free beat and repeating nuggets of rhythm guitar.
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