Okay, Family! Let’s Play: WHAT THE HECK IS IT!?!?!?

April 10, 2008 | Items of Interest

Any guesses?

(Buddy, you can’t play until at least three others have tried to guess).

30 Responses to “Okay, Family! Let’s Play: WHAT THE HECK IS IT!?!?!?”
Oh, and btw: This actually belongs to me…or will, as soon as I cough up the other half of the money I owe the guy that built it.

By bill on Apr 10, 2008
It starts with an “m”.

By mother on Apr 10, 2008
No, Mom. It’s not a Melodeon. They have keys.

By bill on Apr 10, 2008
A “mini scroll bass”

By lainie on Apr 10, 2008
Wait Mom said it started with an “M”, then I will just say a “scroll bass”,

By lainie on Apr 10, 2008
Short scale bass

By lainie on Apr 10, 2008
A zither

By lainie on Apr 10, 2008
Lainie, those were all…interesting…guess. Actually, I think “zither” was pretty clever.

But no.

I’m sure if you STICK with it, you will TOUCH on it eventually, or Mom’s maiden name isn’t CHAPMAN.

By bill on Apr 11, 2008
It is electric and starts with an ‘S’:)
Ravi Shankar would have loved it
George Harrison would have loved it.
It is played on BJ Thomas’ version of
“Hooked on a Feeling”
(Not the Blue Suede version w/ the ‘Unga Shaka’ background singers)

By Bud on Apr 11, 2008
sitar

By lainie on Apr 11, 2008
oops…
Lainie got what I described right but I got it wrong… What IS that Thang!!!!

By Bud on Apr 11, 2008
a back scratcher and a toothpick

By lainie on Apr 11, 2008
okay…a bouzouki, charango, dombra, tambura surbahar, oud, mandcello, setar, tanbur..are any of these close?

By lainie on Apr 11, 2008
Lainie:

No, no, no, no, no, no, no…and no.

Buddy privately emailed me, and he ALMOST got it. That is, what he called it is FUNCTIONALLY the same thing but it’s not actually made by those people.

Just like “I bought a Frigidaire,” meaning I bought a refrigerator, but it was actually a Kenmore.

By bill on Apr 11, 2008
I can’t believe its not a back scratcher or toothpick

By lainie on Apr 11, 2008
A chinese hairbrush and chinese comb for bald people

By lainie on Apr 11, 2008
Lainie:

I suppose you could scratch your back with it. However, I have no idea how you might pick your teeth of it.

By bill on Apr 11, 2008
Okay…vielle, vihuela, rebec, crwth, psaltery?

By lainie on Apr 11, 2008
a 12 string bass…am I getting closer

By lainie on Apr 11, 2008
Lainie: Did you see the post I made later, showing the video?

By bill on Apr 11, 2008
yes, but I couldn’t figure out where he was on youtube. I will just go to http://www.krappyguitars.com and see if I can find it

By lainie on Apr 11, 2008
okay…its either a krappy touchguitar or a krappy 12 string bass guitar like I said earlier.

By lainie on Apr 11, 2008
Lainie, you’re tenacity has paid off.

It’s a “Krappy” touchstyle guitar. Also, you might want to check out http://www.stick.com/ for more on the Chapman Stick, which is the original touchstyle instrument of this type.

(Since the Krappy Guitars instruments are one-of-a-kind, you get to name yours. I have dubbed mine the “Krapman Schtick”).

By bill on Apr 11, 2008
Oh, and the “toothpick” is actually a lap-bar. You hook the back of the guitar onto it, so that you can hold it upright in your lap, since you play it with both hands.

By bill on Apr 11, 2008
i did see the chapman stick, but I only found it because I typed in “12 string bass guitar”

By lainie on Apr 11, 2008
Lainie: I actually have a twelve string bass guitar:

By bill on Apr 11, 2008
Whose children are you?? Where did you come from?? What were you doing in the premortal life, while I was lolly-gagging around on some cloud, with my head stuck in another cloud?

I’m just constantly amazed at the knowledge that you have, and the many talents that you possess. Good for you, lainie. You just kept at it, and got it!!

I gave up with, “it starts with an ‘m’”.

Those instruments are real beauts, Bill!!

By mother on Apr 11, 2008
Mom, you had the unwitting luck to have a bunch of kids who grew up in the sixties and seventies, when Rock ‘n’ Roll became a way of life.

It’s funny: I think “kids these days” actually have more in common with us than we did as kids, with our own parents’ childhood.

Yesterday as Nancy and I were returning home from running errands, we saw a couple of high school-age boys walking along the side of the road. They both sported long hair, and were dressed in raggedy jeans and t-shirts. One of them had a Fender Stratocaster electric guitar slung across his back.

That could have been Keith Smith and me back in 1972, a third of a century ago. Nothing much has changed.

You guys just kinda missed it, and you’re still perplexed by it.

By bill on Apr 12, 2008
Well, Bill, we’re the generation (fifties) that started the rock -’n’ roll era. The girls were a disgrace with their short, short, shorts. But the guys didn’t get out of hand until the late sixties, after the Beatles brought their mops across the ocean, and yes, you and Keith Smith were still fighting with your Bishops and parents about your long locks. longer than the Beatles, I might add.

When the “Grease” gang sang “Rock and Roll is here to stay”, by golly, they nailed it.

It hasn’t gone away.

By mother on Apr 13, 2008
Yes, Mom, your generation brought rock ‘n’ roll into the mainstream, but in the sixties, with the Beatles and (people often forget) the Beach Boys on both sides of the Atlantic, it sort of “attained Nirvana.”

It became a cultural phenomenon that pretty much replaced anything before it. Even the Jazz world adopted it, with Miles Davis’ “fusion” movement. It became serious business, serious art, and to millions of teenagers, it also became the great connecting principle. It became a religion, for better or worse.

You remember me sitting up in my room playing my bass. Buddy did much the same (except he actually liked to go out of the house from time to time, to play with Bill Grantham and others). And that was multiplied by “millions” all over the land.

I guess what I meant by my seeing those two kids walking on the side of the road, is that “in my die” it rose from phenomenon to establishment. If those two kids somehow, via time-warp, were able to meet up with 16-year-old Keith Smith and 15-year-old Bill Polhemus Jr., they’d all have spoken the same language (aside from references to something called “video game systems,” that is – “Pong” was still a few years off when Keith and Bill were stomping the streets of “New Merkle”).

By bill on Apr 14, 2008

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Okay, Family! Let’s Play: WHAT THE HECK IS IT!?!?!?

April 10, 2008 | Items of Interest

30 Responses to “Okay, Family! Let’s Play: WHAT THE HECK IS IT!?!?!?”

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