“Foreplay” by Boston
Could You Be Loved - Bob Marley and the Wailers
Thanks for this thread - I am learning a lot! I found a YouTube channel “Digital Split” that isolates the instruments in various songs and they have a clear version of the clavinet in Free Ride that really helped me hear it better.
Mellotron trivia: the flamenco guitar intro to The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill was a mellotron.
It’s actually an electro-theremin.
Are there non-electro theremins?
ETA: well, I googled it and found out what an electro-theremin is. Nevermind.
Life During Wartime by Talking Heads features a clav but it’s not super-dazzling. Good, but not Stevie-Esque. So is it my favorite clav song? No, but I really like the song as a whole.
Well, speaking of Bernie Worrell who played that line, I’m partial to Funkadelic’s Red Hot Mama, here combined with ‘Vital Juices’, the second instrumental half inexplicably separated on the album. The clavinet keeps the song chugging, but whether this was Eddie Hazel (sounds like him) or Ron Bykowski playing the extended guitar solo (they were so fucking high all the time back then nobody can really remember), this is some damn fine funk guitar work:
That was Worrell on the studio track? He is awesome.
Nah, that’s my mix-up. I identify him with it because of his live performance on Stop Making Sense. But the original recording must have been Jerry Harrison. Live version with Worrell for comparison:
Well, the Stop Making Sense version is a lot better anyway. IMO, The Stop Making Sense songs were all better than their respective studio versions. It’s just a badass bunch of music (and a big part of that is Bernie Worrell. Especially on the Prophet-5 leads).
Oh yes, now I listen again. Clavinet with what sounds like a wah pedal.
Funny, I’d in my mind I’d remembered it as a Jew’s (or Jaw’s) harp sound. I was wrong.
I used to think it was a guitar. No, it was Garth Hudson being experimental with equipment, once again. He was the secret musical mastermind of the Band.
Sounds like the name of an instrument in Who-ville. Electro who cardio theremin floox. Oh the noise noise NOISE!
Another fun clav song is Rocky Mountain Way by Joe Walsh. I think the only clav is during the keyboard / mouth-modulated guitar solo.
The thing about clavs is they’re almost always soaking in effects. Synthesizers are always pretty effected and pianos and organs also generally have a good amount of FX, at least in pop/rock. But clavs usually have even more—plenty of wahwah, tremolo or phaser, as well as chorus and delay–because without that it only sounds like tuned clicks. Very dry and simple.