Welcome Mr. Wheezy

Since the days of the Green Shed Studios and the big Farfisa organ we had there, I've always had a bit of a soft spot for the sound of the organ. Nothing else sounds like a proper pipe organ being played well in a cathedral and echoing round the space, filling the audio spectrum with trouser-flapping bass and angelic overtones. And the latest addition to my sonic arsenal fits the bill - it sounds nothing like that, but perhaps a bit more like an asthmatic monk playing an accordion in a public toilet.

Introducing the J. Busilacchio electric reed organ - it's a keyboard in a suitcase, includes 4 legs which screw in to the bottom and an on/off switch. Turn it on and a fan starts pumping a cool breeze across your fingers and you're ready to go. It has a great sound - effectively it's a harmonium without the bellows, or a horizonal accordion. The air gets pumped over metal reeds which results in a rich sound a bit like a pipe organ with a bad cold - not as bold or clear, but with a dignified, if slightly dishevelled, air. It's defintely more Ivor Cutler than Van der Graaf Generator, but that's certainly no bad thing. It sits quite well with theremin, so I may create something to feature the two together.

There's really not a lot of information available about these - they do crop up fairly regularly in online auctions, along with similar items by other manufacturers. I've seen them described as dating from the 40's, which I find a little hard to believe, as they have more of a 60's feel to them. They're also known as Chord Organs, due to the panel of accordion-like chord buttons to the left of the keyboard, though this tends to lump them in with some pretty ugly-looking plastic things with plastic reeds which really are not in the same league. If anyone has more information about the history of these critters, let me know.

UPDATE

I've done some more digging around, and discovered various different versions of the organ. I've put details on a new page on the Deserters site, here.

Note to eBay sellers: You are welcome to use the details about Busilacchio/Lorenzo organs from this page on the condition that you include a link to this page (http://www.the-deserters.co.uk/inst_organs.html) on your listing so that your potential buyers have access to all the information.

Farfisa Frenzy

For some reason, perhaps Google have recently updated their index, there has been a large jump in visits to the blog here, 90% of which are from a Google Images search on Farfisa. The post from April this year Makkie's Rhythm included a picture of a Farfisa organ, which is now appearing as 4th in a google search. All very nice, but apologies to anyone searching for information about Farfisa organs here - I don't have any!

Well, okay, here's some background about the one we used... It came from some club or other and was on its last legs when it arrived at the Green Shed for us to use. It had a solid veneer of nicotine mottled with beer and grew progressively smellier as it warmed up with use. I don't know what model it is - I did a bit of research recently for more information, but came up with very little, but it had a built-in rhythm section (as used in the aforementioned track) and tape recorder. It also supposedly had a Leslie cabinet built in, but the switch to turn it on did nothing. At the time none of us had any idea what a Leslie was, sowe didn't realise what we were missing, or even how we could go about fixing it to get that unique sound. Oh well. At the time we did think it was an incredibly cheesy addition to our instrumental ranks, but it served us well whilst it lasted.

Unfortunately, one day it just died in a shower of sparks and our association was almost over. I did manage to salvage the rhythm unit from it and get it operating as a stand-alone analogue drum machine of sorts. It was not programmable, but you could jam two or three rhythm type buttons down together to create new composite and quite dense mega-rhythms, which was pretty nifty. I don't know what happened to that part of it, though - I can only assume it was 'lost' in a house move.

The Green Shed Googlewhack

Every so often I'll check to see how people are arriving at the blog or the main Deserters site. There's usually a fair mix between people looking for the band specifically and 'accidental' visits by people looking for information on military desertion or fire engines. Every so often there's a little gem that makes me smile - somebody does a search for 'what does eximious mean?', for example. The latest was for 'greenshed, progressive rock' from Yahoo japan.

When I did a search on this myself, this blog was the only entry (a Googlewhack, I believe?), so I dug around for anything else about 'green shed' that could be remotely related to progressive rock. Not a thing could I find. So the question is; is there somebody over in Japan creating prog rock under the name 'Greenshed', or was this a return visitor to the site who's enduring image of the band is of us recording in a green shed? Who knows (or cares)?