Music Mondays: Alex's Favorite Instruments

Don't you love fetishes? It's pretty remarkable when someone's fetish is brought into full focus. Like someone who has a red hair fetish. It doesn't matter what the person looks like, if she has red hair, she's "fine." Yeah there are plenty of beautiful women with red hair. But I'm sorry, THIS isn't fine just because there's red hair on the head:



Or foot fetishes. You must go nuts if you have a foot fetish. Almost everyone has feet. If you have a foot fetish AND you're horny and you're at a beach. Aw shit. You know how when you get really drunk your standards drop? Does it apply to foot fetishists too? Corns, calluses, whatever. MMMMM....I need me some fucking foot.

DON'T GET IT! But I do sort of get the fetish thing because I get really excited over certain instruments. When I pick up a new album and read through the liner notes and see "Pedal Steel Guitar" or "Dobro" my anticipation levels shoot through the roof. Especially if it's an instrument that you don't see every day in a certain genre. If I pick up a Hip-Hop album that has melodica on it, oh damn. It could be the most negative 50-Cent derivative shit you've ever heard, if there's a melodica in the mix, I'm down. That's why The Automator is one of the greatest Hip-Hop producers in my mind. His palette is massive. Melodicas, mbiras (that's the real word for thumb piano I hear), vibes. Anything that sounds great.

But please please, don't think I crave a whole smorgasbord of sound. In Brian Wilson's hands that's divine, but I generally don't get excited when I hear "kitchen sink" in an album review. Pedal steel, piano, strings, melodica, etc. Wonderful if woven into a fabric, but pitiful alongside whistles, lawnmower, french horn, recorder, donkey, bells, chimes. If I see all that mess on the liner notes, I assume it'll be some faux-Beck self satisfied boredom.

But a straight ahead rock band with a Sousaphone? Now maybe you're talking.