Unashamedly following on from @moseleymoles session post.
Mention was made of corduroy trousers and fire extinguishers being ‘played’ on tracks.
Any other unusual credits on albums to delight and titillate the palate?
I recall Fairport used falling chairs and Professor Bruce Lacey’s robots on tracks and Lou Reed played ostrich guitar.
I didn’t know about this until the Oasis documentary that was on over Christmas, but Noel Gallagher’s band once featured a woman playing a pair of scissors http://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/noel-had-someone-playing-scissors-last-night-and-people-are-confused-2155344
Cutting bits out of Neil Innes songs?
On the track “Calliope” on “Blood Money”, Tom Waits plays a toy piano.
Tom has form in this regard. He is credited with playing ‘chair’ on Shore Leave.
Somewhere on The Black Rider he is credited with playing something called a “piano”….
….no, me neither.
Here’s Xenia Pestova playing a piece composed for toy piano.
My favourite B-52s track is Dance This Mess Around because of Cindy’s wild, impassioned singing. Fred plays toy piano.
https://youtu.be/9fnXpuCJldI
Bit of toy keyboard on the first Dan album, if I recall the cover blurb correctly
A “plastic organ” apparently
Famously on the Plastic Ono Band album, Yoko is credited with… wind.
Must be that macrobiotic diet.
I know Swell Maps A Trip To Marineville features a vacuum cleaner on track Midget Submarines but according to Wikipedia there are also credits on the album for balloons, toy saxophone, acquatics, omnipresence and microphone damage. It sounds like it too.
Adolf Hitler on vibes, and Val Doonican on rocking chair spring to mind.
Hello there!
Aussie seventies prog band Spectrum had a lighter , less equipment heavy alter ego the Indelible Murtceps. On their album Warts Up Your Nose they had a sone called Excuse Me Just One Moment that had the line Excuse me just one moment, while I throw up on the couch followed by the sound effect of vomit. the sound effect was created by the emptying of a can of peaches. Main man Mike Rudd is credited with guitar, vocals, peaches.
Amateurs. Pete and Dud just drank themselves to nausea!
It’s a wonder they had to go that far, after that business with the lobsters.
On Terence Trent D’arby’s Neither Fish Nor Flesh album the man himself is credited with many things, including Aural Manipulations, Sound Manifestations, Other Phaqueries and, er, kazoo.
Aural Manipulations? I hope I heard right..
I have mentioned this one before, so excuse the repetition if you’ve read it before.
Beating Oasis both by many years (see Gatz’s post above) and by magnitude, Caravan used a pair of hedge clippers as a percussion device on the song Hello, Hello which appeared on their second album If I could Do It All Over Again, I’d Do It All Over You.
There was a man, he leapt to and fro,
Clipping away at a hedge…
Welcome, Brian Eno, providing ‘cricket menace’ on ‘Lodger’
Sledging in Berlin!
– “Ere, Brian, how come you’re so bald?”
– “Every time I shag your wife, she pulls one of my hairs out”
etc.
Siouxsie and the Banshees once spent a day recording the sound of a spinning coin for the album Peepshow (the one with Peek-a-Boo). In the end, I think, they left it out of the final mix.
On “Another Green World”, Eno used “castanet guitar” on this track. He and Paul Rudolph bouncing a set of castanets off the strings of a guitar.
On R.E.M.’s lovely “Electrolite”, Scott McCaughey (IIRC) was credited with “the ultimate in musical usefulness – the guiro”.
Two weeks’ dole?
On Supergrass’s third (self-titled) album, the band are credited with ‘bells, whistles and bicycle pumps’.
You can play a tune on the skin of your stomach with a bicycle pump. Like a cheap version of a Theremin.
As ever, the answer is Genesis P-Orridge. Credited on the excellent Psychic TV album Dreams Less Sweet with various contributions including “kangling”, which as we all know is a trumpet made from a Tibetan human thigh bone.
Bizzarely he turned up with this on a US reality TV show:
“Reality” TV show doesn’t really describe something as totally out to lunch as that. One could not get further from reality than that extraordinary clip.
A kangling was made “from the thighbone of a virgin or a murderer!”
Just remembered Gilli Smyth was credited with space whisper on several Gong albums.
Here are some other appearances by “wind”.
First, blowing through an Aeolian harp in Cumbria while harpist Sarah Deere-Jones improvises over it.
And now, Norwegian Wind which appears on Jan Garbarek’s 1977 album Dis.
“The windharp heard on this record was built by Norwegian Sverre Larssen. It is an instrument with strings that are brought to vibrate by the wind, thereby creating tones and overtones, which, in turn, are enhanced in a resonant body … an instrument reacting directly to the air stream and creating this sound image of the wind. ”
https://www.discogs.com/Jan-Garbarek-Dis/release/1121407
The wind harp sounds pretty amazing even without Garby’s tootling.
Daevid Allen was frequently to be found playing “glissando guitar”, a playing technique introduced to him by Syd Barrett in the early Pink Floyd days.
“A wide range of objects are applied to the strings of an amplified guitar. Utensils, engine parts, tools, bottles, knives, crystals, plastics, light bulbs (Keith Rowe), bones (Harry Williamson) or, in my case, stainless steel gynaecological surgical instruments. The signal is usually then processed using a compressor and often a repeat echo together with a volume pedal.”
Here he’s playing along with Harry Williamson on aeolian wind guitar drones and angel guitar.
(Twenty Two Meanings – Part 6)
Does a bridge count? I think I first heard John Peel play John Fahey’s ‘The Singing Bridge Of Memphis Tennessee’ when it came out on ‘The Yellow Princess’ album and it was a bit of a running joke between me and my mates at the time. I picked up a second hand copy some time in the 70s for old times’ sake – think I played it twice….it hadn’t worn well.
No mention of clogs or tap shoes yet?
Surely the Unthanks have danced on a track or two? And wasn’t Legs Larry Smith an accomplished tsp dancer?
Roger Ruskin Spear plays electric shirt collar on “Shirt”
Billy Bragg and Wilco
Yeah, Mermaid Avenue. Great pair of albums, better than either Bragg or Wilco.
Wrong thread though.
Dylan and Grateful Dead. Think that gives him the record : ver Dead, Heartbreakers and the Band.
Didn’t Dire Straits also back him?
Still wrong thread, but what the hell.
10cc. How Dare You. Iceberg. Eric Stewart credited with ‘Levi zip’. Presumably Wrangler or Brutus just wouldn’t have had the same vibe, man…
On Jonis live album, Shadows and light, Toller Cranston is credited on skates.
This video (if YT allow you to see it) will explain that.
No musical saw yet? Its spooky sound can contribute a lot to a song and Mercury Rev use it to great affect.
This rather show off clip was not perhaps the best but it does give you some idea of its potential.
Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds deploy Musical Saw on The Death Of You And Me & AKA … Broken Arrow on the debut album.
To be honest, not truly knowing what a musical saw sounds like (tone deaf, cloth ears etc) I’m not sure I can actually isolate it, but I’m guessing if it’s there then it must be adding “something”
Would a Black & Decker Panel saw work in the same way?
Could the tone be varied by using a tenon saw or hacksaw – maybe a whole rack ranging from handheld pad saw to heavy duty circular saw
Not sure, but hitting a brick trowel and submerging it in water always made a satisfying sound.
Amazing how many virtuosos of the singing saw there have been.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_saw
Most famous has to be Marlene Dietrich. Sawing in love again….
Remaining in the Tools and Hardware Department, this thread would not be complete without a mention of Einsturzende Neubaten. As well as playing more conventional musical instruments like pneumatic drills and chainsaws, they also employ an extraordinary variety of home-made devices which make a very impressive noise. I saw them at Roskilde a few years back and the stage was covered with metal pipes, barrels, chains, plastic tubes etc. They probably recruit roadies with a background in the rag and bone business.