MLT Club Member Chris Weber
MLT Club MemberForum Replies Created
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All star backup band, and serious blues tunes. This movie gave a boost to careers of some great musicians.
Belushi and Akroyd are the amateur musicians, they’re comedians. A lot of the other actors are HOF level musicians, including James Brown, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, John Lee Hooker, Matt Guitar Murphy, Steve Cropper, Cab Calloway, Chaka Khan, Pinetop Perkins, Luther “Guitar Jr.” Johnson, Willie “Big Eyes” Smith, Lou Marini, Calvin “Fuzz” Jones, Steve Lawrence – who I don’t think sang anything, and I don’t think Joe Walsh did either. Who am I forgetting? And lots of cameos by other famous non musicians too.
https://youtu.be/o5xexv-dMrM?list=PL4sfVCWR8nGJ0iZTaheuqSoZ2JC16JEBp
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My grand nephew went out trick or treating tonight dressed as Gordon Ramsey.
Very scary.
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The first keyboard I ever used was an upright built in 1919. It couldn’t be tuned up to concert pitch, so it was half a step below that. That’s what I practiced on when I was taking lessons. So between lessons and practicing, the fingering was the same, but the pitch was different.
That piano was definitely on theme for this thread as an unusual instrument.
I remember learning Billy Joel’s New York State of Mind by ear on that thing and playing it in C#. Which sounded like the key of C that Billy played it in, more or less.
Never did figure out how to make my guitar capo work on that piano. Lol.
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Chicken wire?
So I’m thinking that there may be people here who don’t watch many movies, so maybe I should add a few more details. I can think of 2 people in particular.
And then you post this. I guess I haven’t historically watched many movies either, and I don’t remember this movie.
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This one has to be on the Wien greatest hits list. Johann Strauss.
An der schönen blauen Donau.
The Blue Danube waltz.
On YT, you can either see part of the video from 2001, which is what’s below, or you can hear the whole tune without the video. I think they want to sell you the movie. I wanted to see the whole scene, with the music, but they said “I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that”.
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I’m thinking it’s more of an archeological dig than a crime story.
I forgot it had been painted. If it said the maker’s name on the outside, it doesn’t any more. I also forgot that it originally was a player piano. You can see some buttons and levers below the keyboard. But we never had all the pieces for it to work as a player piano.
Some keys are broken. I push the key down, and that’s where it stays. I recall the action had a strip of leather as part of it, so it may have weathered enough to break, Idk. In the pic of the insides, if you zoom in you can see near the middle and down near the bottom, a little reddish tab sticking out towards the camera. I think that’s the leather.
I could reach in with one hand and play chopsticks, so I’m guessing it could still be made about as good as it was when I first used it 60 years ago. Which is not very good.
When was the last time you saw a real ivory keyboard? One of the keys had come off completely, so you can see it up close. If you look near the bottom of it, there’s a horizontal line across it. I’ve read that ivory keys were laminated together from multiple pieces, and that looking at that bottom is one way to validate that it’s ivory.
So what do you think? I know my brother would sell it cheap, like $0, although my sister seems to think it’s a family heirloom. Lol.
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Now you know why they called him Screaming. That’s great.
I never saw that before.
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Jürgen,
That piano may not be gone. It sounds like it’s at my brother’s house.
So I might be able to tell you who made it and get a pic. It might take a few days.
As I recall, it’s so old it has real ivory keys. Some of them anyways.
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I remember the year it was built because that’s the year my dad was born. Don’t remember who made it, and don’t have a photo of it. It’s gone.
In America, even today, if you want a piano like that, you can probably find someone who’ll give you one, as long as you agree to move it. I found a list of almost 300 “prominent” American piano makers from around that time. I expect there were a lot more less prominent ones.
Next my parents bought a spinet, also not a great piano.
In 1976, I bought a Rhodes, and I still have that. What I use now are synths – the Yamaha has the best action of any keyboard I’ve ever had.
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David,
You wrote: “a condenser microphone that allowed you to input your own short sound, and then the different keys played that sound at different speeds”.
That sounds like a sampler.
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I bought the albums when I joined the Club and noticed what I think you’re saying.
I had been watching videos on YouTube, and when that happens, I see them communicating with each other, I see their fingering and the chords they’re playing, the foot tapping, which instruments they’re using, all of that.
When I listen to the CD in my car, I hear more of what’s going on in the music. Including a lot of stuff that you can’t see in the video, you can only hear it, like the extra instruments in the background.
When I’m working on my laptop, I have the music playing in the background, but not in view, usually from a YouTube playlist. There are songs that start with loud footsteps. But I know which songs they are – if there’s a strong wind blowing, it’s Starman. If I hear the creak of a door, it’s I Bought Myself a Politician.
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Jürgen,
If they were musicians, I’m sure there would have been more broken glasses. Some planned, some as improvisation, some by accident. Engineers tend to be a bit more deliberate, even though I bet they broke some too.
I was half expecting at the end to see a sign that said:
“No glasses were harmed in the making of this video.”
But it probably wouldn’t have been true.
