I know this is guitar prejudice talking here but I’ve always been suspicious of keyboard players in rock bands.

It could be because I feel threatened by them. They’re typically the most musically literate in the group and they have an instrument that can go both lower and higher than mine. They’re also an entire band in one octopus-armed nerd. There’s nothing more emasculating than bringing a tune to a band, only to have the pianist play the bass, rhythm, and sing the whole thing by themself. Fuck me. Since you’ve got this covered, I’ll just pack up my shit and go home.

It could be that I think an acoustic piano has one of the most boring timbres of any instrument. Instead of being an instrument in its own right, piano feels like a blueprint for a better instrument. While a grand piano in a treated auditorium has a weight and density, in rock contexts, most pianos sound like tink tink tink. Musicians I should love, like Warren Zevon and Sparks, I only like because instead of rocking cool-ass guitars, they choose to play five-foot long music desks. Even my favorites, piano men like Nick Cave and Tom Waits, don’t capture my full attention until they bring in the guitars or circus instruments, respectively. And piano jazz trios? Forget about it. Zzzz.

It could be that due to its construction, there are fewer ways to express yourself on a piano than on other instruments. While nothing beats a piano for composing (that’s why it was the go-to tool for all our favorite historical Germans), it’s limited when it comes to channeling raw human emotion. Try playing a blues third on a barroom upright. Ain’t happening. Chromatic notes only. With the right fingers or embouchure, you can make a guitar or violin or saxophone sound like a human voice. You’re not getting that type of portamento on a keyboard. And, because its noise-making mechanic involves pushing a button to trigger a mallet to strike a string, a piano can’t really do ghost notes or, even, if we’re being honest, play…softly (yes, I know the una corda pedal is supposed to allow for softer tones, but we’re still hammering strings here). In fact, the most expressive way to play an acoustic piano is just to beat the shit out of it, which is probably why my favorite ivory ticklers (Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, and Little Richard) pound the snot out of their instruments. Jerry Lee Lewis even played his with his feet.

It could be that, in my limited experience, playing with keyboard players has generally sanded down the edges of my bands. Have you ever eaten at a place like Sweet Greens that throws a salad into a bowl and grinds it up into a million pieces? Chopped salads are an abomination. A Cobb salad, for instance, typically features bacon, avocado, and slices of hard boiled eggs. It’s delicious. But when Sweet Greens chops all those ingredients into a predigested slurry, everything tasted like fucking hardboiled eggs. That’s my experience playing with a pianist in a rock band. Things I like by themselves in small doses (like hard boiled eggs, avocados, Hammond organ, and Fender Rhodes) get fused together into an unpalatable mess. You know what sounds cool? A rhythm guitar with little distortion. You know what sounds like ass? A rhythm guitar with a little distortion and a Fender Rhodes playing the exact same thing.

It could be that I’m just tired and cranky and, towards the end of a three and a half hour bar gig (as if I’ve had one of those recently), I’m just jealous that keyboard players get to sit down on the job.

But, I’m changing my ways.

The last seventy years have been really good for keyboard technology, so I’m coming around on keyboards themselves.

First off, we now have the aforementioned Hammond and Rhodes sounds. Where an acoustic piano is the Wonderbread of instruments, a B3 organ is like a dark rye, and an electric piano is like a brioche. It’s still bread, but it’s got some flavor. Hell, I’ve even got time for the deathless piano jazz trio, as long as its ivory pounder is mashing a Hammond organ, like say, Charles Earland.

But the really big leap happened in the ‘60s and ‘70s…when the keyboard developed into the synthesizer.

Subtractive synthesis, and later FM wavetables and sampling opened a whole new world for keyboard players – a world greater and wider than even what effects pedals did for guitarists.

Now, by using a pitch shifter knob, a keyboard player can follow the microtonal arc of a human voice. Now, by using a modulation wheel, they can expand or contract the width of their notes.

Today’s keyboardists aren’t slaves to the on/off/on abruptness of a hammered note. They can adjust their instruments’ envelope filters, their attack and decay, and they can add effects beyond the one-trick pony of an upright’s sustain pedal.

Now, dare I say, keyboard players can be as expressive, noisy, and violent as guitar players. And that’s something I want to play with.

For today’s Heck Record, I recommend the vintage Colorado act The VSS’s Nervous Circuits. The 1997 album of punk rock plus keyboards pressaged dance-punk outfits like Death From Above 1979 and The Faint (and yours truly’s Thic Masc), as well as the entire genre of egg punk.

Always distorted and cranked, The VSS’s keyboards never soften the band’s sound or invalidate its guitars. The do, however, add a cyberpunk dimension to what could’ve been just another shouty collection of allegro-tempoed punk.

Try out the last minute of “Swift Kicks” to see how discordant guitar and synthesizer arpeggios can go together like peanut butter and chocolate.

Next week we’ll run a column dedicated to albums of keyboards in rock that I like and find inspirational.