Friday, February 23, 2024

Learning some keytar songs for my local music collective

Hopefully nobody in my regular "Songs from a Hat" music collective sees this because we're supposed to arrive each time with a musical surprise, playing a song or a few songs from a category that we have previously selected. Tonight's category is "keytar," meaning songs that were played with a guitar-looking keyboard around someone in the band's neck. It's looking like "Don't You Want Me" from The Human League will be my spotlight number. I remember loving the boy-girl vocals and super-80s electro vibe all the way back to when it spent three weeks at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the summer of 1982.


I think I'll also play: 
  • "Sister Christian" by Night Ranger. It's unbearably long at 4 minutes so maybe I'll find a way to do a three-minute version. 
  • "Sunglasses at Night" by Corey Hart. The toughest thing to learn about this song is getting Corey Hart's Night at the Roxbury head-pumping right. Watch the video for this one; it's hilarious. The song surprisingly climbed all the way to #7 in 1984. It's at the same time oddly surprising it didn't go to #1.
  • A mellow version of "Jump" by Van Halen would be a good choice if it were more original, but what I've worked up sounds a lot like the Aztec Camera cover version. We'll see how the night goes. If it gets late and we've been drinking too much, this could be a good sing-along candidate.
Other songs I worked on a little but will probably save for another day:
  • "Tempted" by Squeeze
  • "Angie" by The Rolling Stones
  • "Just What I Needed" by The Cars
  • "Home Sweet Home" by Motley Crue

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