OT - Talking Music Monday
Slow day on the blog; let’s have fun with music.
I listen to a wide spectrum of rock music, from classic to 80’s to progressive, alternative, and grunge. Every once in a while, I hear a song with instrument that just doesn't fit with the normal rock band ensemble. But, the song works non the less. For example:
Clarinet
- Billy Joel – Scenes from an Italian Restaurant
- Supertramp – Breakfast in America (Tuba as well!)
- Wings – Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five
- Sting – Englishman in New York
Bagpipes
- AC/DC – A Long Way to the Top
Flute
- Jethro Tull – many songs
Strings
- Elton John – Madman Across The Water
The entire USC marching band
- Fleetwood Mac – Tusk
Rock bands bring in an Orchestra for live concerts and I’m sure I’ve heard a trombone in a song somewhere. What are songs you’ve listened to where they drop in a different sound?
Training For Utopia worked in a didgeridoo!
I didn’t see this mentioned in the comments I read -
The chainsaw in “Lumberjack” by Jackyl
Does that qualify as an instrument?
Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea features a lot of non-traditional "rock" instruments, e.g., accordian on "King of Carrot Flowers Pt. 1," horns on "The Fool," etc. along with a number of other experimental instruments, but that was their sound.
Full dixieland band via the Humphrey Lyttelton Band on Radiohead's "Life in a Glasshouse" on Amnesiac.
Which all begs the question, what is a traditional instrument in rock music, besides the obvious?
Does clavinet count?
I remember big Peter Steele, from type O negative, playing a huge double bass like a bass guitar in their music TV version of Black NO.1
There is a German band that plays vegetables.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM1EjIDLMLY
Also a huge amount of weather powered instruments. If you lived through 80s Industrial Bands you witnessed a whole garage full of power tools put to use in odd ways. All of them loud.
Tom Waits does pretty things with old weird stuff.
How about the song Siberian Khatru by Yes. It has a sitar solo, a harpsichord solo, and a slide guitar solo all back to back to back.
The Flying Lizards reportedly threw toys and stuff inside their piano for their cover of "Money."
I don't know if this runs against the spirit of the question, but Springsteen's appearance at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival 2006 playing with his band on the Seeger sessions has all sorts of things: accordion, violin, banjo, tuba, etc. Google it or at least "Pay Me My Money Down," quite a fun performance.
"Wrong Way" by Sublime - the only song I can recall with a trombone solo.
Bagpipes: "Shoots and ladders" - Korn.
Church bells: "Hells Bells" (AC/DC) and "For Whom the Bell Tolls" (Metallica)
Mandolin: "Losing my Religion" REM
Theromin: "Good Vibrations" Beach Boys
For the flute - "Autobahn" by Kraftwerk, the flute being played by Florian Schneider, who sadly left us in 2020 quite unexpectedly.
The banging of a trash can was a nice touch on Slipknot's "Duality".
Everyone knows George Michael put the sexy back in sexyphone with Careless Whisper.