Artists Using Unexpected Technology

Found this really neat video of Oscar Peterson with some eighties tech. Anyone else got any other unexpected juxtapositions?

 

I remember Todd Rundgren delving into his, With A Twist album in a most unusual way: he would sit down, pick up a hand-held mp3 player, and push, "play"...and that was his background as he sang! The album was a lite, fluffy take on his bigger tracks, done cocktail style; so it was perfect.

Except, of course, for his audience, who didn't get his deliberately-cheesy approach.

 

And now for something completely different.

Oh God, I mean different. This dude is That One Guy, and he plays...a pipe. Literally. It's a 7-foot-tall length of pipe, with a crook at the top, and a smaller pipe hanging down from it. It has one string running up one end, down the other. He can slap-bass it, he can bow it, he can play either the string, or bang on the pipe itself; he samples it; he plays rock, ambient, Country (!) (wait'll he breaks out his electrofied cowboy boot...!); ballads; funk; rave-ups! The glory of having an unexpected instrument is, you don't know what he's gonna do with it, so, he can do ANYTHING, and you'll be surprised!

Met this fella in a bar in Minneapolis, with some radio guys in tow, and one of 'em bonded with him; brought him to Ocala on an off-night, to play for his COUNTRY RADIO listeners (gave out tickets on-air, didn't tell them what for, just told them to get ready for something they would never forget; got 'em all into a bus, and took 'em to the venue. Next time I saw him, he was opening in Philadelphia for an Aussie DJ who sampled DISNEY music and turned it into house (that's right, lawyers, I said "Disney"!). Best night of entertainment I ever treated my wife to!

Meet Mike Silverman, aka That One Guy:

 

Karl Bartos ditching a vocoder and picking up a guitar-

 

When was that? I saw the With A Twist tour twice, and both times he had a full band.

 

It was a set in the middle of a show he did here, at Forum Theatre.

 

Don Ellis was one of the first big jazz names to embrace rock and electronics

Don Ellis Orchestra "Hey Jude" Live at the Fillmore

 

Roger Waters muting his bass guitar, plucking the high notes to make that ticking sound on "Time" from Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon