I love the sound of piano in pop music. Always have.
In rock music, there’s a tension that’s set up. Bass, guitar and drums are very rock. They bash, they shred, they destroy. The piano notes are very delicate, although it is a percussion instrument and you can smash the hell out of a piano.
When it comes to piano rock, it’s always Elton John and Billy Joel. That gets annoying after a while.
(By the way, I read something recently about how the piano is kind of stiff musically, because the notes are set — press a key, out comes the sound. In contrast, notes on a guitar or sax can be bent more easily. In fact, the book Temperament totally changed my view of music. The book illustrates how there isn’t one set method of tuning and shows how such approaches have changed over the years. We think that “C” is always “C” and that the relationship of the notes on the keyboard are fixed and have always been the same. Not so.)
Anyway, there’s this cat Mark Mallman out of Minneapolis, who sounds like a bit of a piano madman. Supposedly, he holds the world record for performing the longest rock song ever written at 52.4 hours, beating his record in 1999 of 26.2 hours.
Here’s a cut off his new album Between the Devil and Middle C (cute title) and one from his last album Mr. Serious.
Mark Mallman – Substances — BUY
Mark Mallman- True Love — BUY
P.S. You can read more about the book Temperament: How Music Became a Battleground for the Great Minds of Western Civilization by Stuart Isacoff, including a Q&A and audio examples.