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CASIOTONES |
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Rod - Guitars, vox, Casio
Butterfingerer
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In about 1981, my parents gifted me with a Casio keyboard for Christmas. Before I go on about that, I should provide some background about what is coming next. You see, my parents were very enthusiastic and supportive of the musical endeavors of my brother and I. My dad would scour thrift shops, swap meets, yard sales, and the like to try to score a guitar or amp for us, and he often succeeded. He brought home 1950s Fender and Supro lap steels, a beautiful sunburst hollowbody Ibanez ES-345, Sears Silvertones, a BC RIch Seagull, and one of the coolest finds, a 1960s Gretsch Corvette. He also bought me a brand new 1974 Strat for my 12th birthday. Over the years my brother also came away with many cool items, among them a 1960-something Twin Reverb amp and a now impossibly rare 1968 Gibson Trini Lopez. Unfortunately, my brother and I were not very wise when deciding what equipment to hang on to, and what to sell or trade. That Trini Lopez? Sold to some guy for $400. It's worth about $4000 now. The Sunburst Ibanez? Lost it to a pawnshop for $200. The Gretsch Corvette? Traded it for a TEAC 3340 4-track tape deck. The latter was one of the dumbest moves I ever made, but then again, I would not have made the music on this page without that TEAC. Combining the four-track and the Casio was the equivalent of thinking way outside of the box for me in 1981. I took full advantage of the cheesy plinky drum sounds and the one note Casio chord, and ran my vocals through an Electro Harmonix Memory Man to create these pieces of....um, masterpieces! While this collection of strictly amateur recordings (my first attempts) falls under the Casiotones moniker, there were a number of songs recorded that were done without "the cheese machine." And I still think Michael Jackson could have done a helluva version of the song "The Pleasure is Mine." |
"Fan Club" Cassette
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