The previous thread made me think about the keyboards that I have played over the years.
(one section is lifted from previous thread although with tidied up spelling!)
My first ever instrument was a keyboard. My cousin Peter gave it to me when I was about ten. It was a reed organ with vacuum cleaner type motor in it. It was Italian (but not your actual Bontempi). I was about as big as a tenor sax case. It was finished in a sort of white and gold leatherette and stood on three brass coloured legs like a sixties coffee table. I never really played it much until I had learnt guitar which was a couple of years later. Then I used it loads and taught myself the basics of keyboard playing on this instrument. It survived until the 70’s when one day the acrid smell of burnt out electrics signalled the end. During this period someone called Heaver Latex purchased an even nastier, cheaper and smaller (Flying Bomb) battery reed organ. It had a lovely red finish.
Nearly all the musicians I knew when I was a kid had pianos in the houses; Gill, Peter Groves, the bloke in Flori-iniad Road. In the eighties we used to often use the grand piano in Val & Alun’s living room. But I never had one at home. It was not until the nineties when Mary Nazareth saw and bought an old cottage upright in the junk shop opposite the flat in Tooting. I think it cost £100. It was tuned up and played and played (by myself and her). It was the first time I had lived in a place with a piano and was very useful and enjoyable. We were able to rehearse the bands in the living room with whoever the keyboard player was (Hammy, John Hudson, Rich Jones) just had to turn up and use the acoustic pianoforte (and the guitar, bass, drums and vocals down at a grown up volume level!). There was an ever changing cavalcade of tuners as well but that’s another chapter: Piano Tuners- are they ALL bonkers? And in the last few years I have used and recorded the piano that is in the garage at Two Farthings. But Gil’s got the best joanna; Steinway Grand in his studio down near Bath. He also, incidentally, has some other great keyboards, Rhodes, Moog, Clavinet and so forth.
The only real keyboard around locally in the early days (1969- 1973) was a Vox Continental owned by a geezah called Chalky White. (Although some bloke who used to jam with the drummer called Rick in Melrose Ave had what I think was a Pianet) We rather coveted Chalky's VC and hoped one day he might lend it out. He never did, however he did flog it to Gill who subsequently flogged it to me in 1977 (for £120 I think!). I played it at dozens of gigs in the Charlie Harper Band in the early 80's (Louie Louie/ She's About A Mover/ Light My Fire/ Can I Get A Witness/ 96 Tears/ In A Gada Davida). It worked very well indeed (in tandem with a 2x12 H&H combo- louder than the guitar in the band generally!) until the Continental preamp went peculiar in the early nineties. It's still in my music room at 163 awaiting anyone with knowledge of strange 1960's transistors to come and resurrect it. I still have the Z frame legs and even the "flight case" made of thick grey cardboard that they go in.
After the Vox Continental, I purchased a second hand Hohner Pianet T. This sat very neatly on to of the organ and gave me a workable piano-ish sound. This went through the other channel on the H&H 2X12 100w guitar combo.
In the mid 80’s I had on long term loan a Roland “polysynth” from Dave Lloyd. This had no preset sounds and you had to programme it each time you used it. It was a pain. But it did have an appegiator which was very au fait at the time! And it did sit neatly on top of the Pianet on top of the Vox.
In the 90’s Rich Jones used to sometimes leave his second/ older/ standby synthesizer keyboard at the flat in Tooting and I often used that although I find you spend the whole time trying out the sounds and never playing any music! On one occasion Eastern European studio entrepreneur Tizer Tabletz and I were trying out the sounds on this keyboard, late at night. Mary had gone off up to bed. After a few minutes we heard a knocking from above. It was her way of telling us to turn it down. So we turned it down to a level analogous to the volume you might get coming out of head phones. Still she bashed on the floor upstairs. So we turned it down even further (if such a thing was possible). Next she was in the room complaining about the noise. We were baffled. Turns out it wasn’t the sound of the keyboard per se disturbing her, it was the clatter of our enthusiastic fingers on the keys and the subsequent pounding noise through the instrument, down the stand and on to the floor boards!
Also around this time I inherited a 1974 Farfisa home organ with auto chords and steam drums from Frank Nazareth. I still have it in my music room and record with it all the time. In the last few years I’ve purchased an Indian Harmonium and a re-issue Stylophone. And I now have a small 2 octave MIDI keyboard for USB-ing into my PC et cetera…
All I need now for my keyboard shopping list is a white Mellotron, a Hammond B3 with Leslie, Wurlitzer piano and an Elka Rhapsody….
http://www.shannonmusic.net/site/c/i/525/mellotron-1.jpg
http://www.theatreorgans.com/grounds/grafx/xb3.gif
http://www.till-kopper.de/elka/overview.jpg
http://www.amoeba.com/dynamic-images/blog/Sarah/wurlitzer-piano.jpg