I was listening to Peter Noone’s show on Sirius XM (yes, Herman of Herman’s Hermits) and he mentioned that every British Invasion band had to have a Farfisa organ.

I hadn’t heard the name Farfisa for ages and it reminded me that two friends in my first small town bands back in the late 60’s and early 70s played Farfisa organs. That triggered a flood of memories of all the cool equipment we grew up with. You gear gurus, follow me down memory lane.

I’ve always thought that many musicians (the guys, anyway) are more into their equipment than their music. That’s not necessarily a good thing; it’s just that playing live music is a little like motorcycle fever – you always want bigger, better, faster. It takes time and effort to learn how to play better, but accumulating equipment just takes money and the will to part with it. When me and my friends were cutting our teeth on rock and roll, louder was better – and heavier. Compare the stage setups of the 70s with those of today – the backbreaking stacks of guitar amps have been replaced by savvy sound techs who mic small amps and drums and run direct out through mixers to high-powered p.a. systems.

To this day I miss my ’65 Fender Bandmaster guitar amplifier. It just oozed tube-driven mojo with its separate amp head and big honking 2×15 speaker cabinet.

But I admit I was a little jealous of my bandmate’s Fender Twin Reverb (more power in less space). I bought a Twin about twenty years ago and still love playing it at every gig.

My bass player friend had one of the all-time coolest bass amps – a Kustom 200 with white sparkle tuck and roll cover. Made in Kansas, the Kustom sounded great and was eye candy on the stage. Craving more power, he later replaced it with a Fender PS400 with a big 18″ folded horn cabinet.

We thought the Kustom looked so good that we bought a matching p.a. system. It, too, was way underpowered and was soon replaced by a Peavey rig, the one with the tall 4×12″ columns.

A few years later we had a drummer with a very impressive double set of Zickos clear plex drums with roto toms and a mess of Zildjian cymbals. He was not a great player, but that huge set of drums was nothing short of intimidating. Coincidentally, Zickos were made in Kansas too, but it was an Englishman named Keith Moon who put them on the map.

We found ourselves needing a way to haul all of that stuff to gigs, so one of the guys salvaged an old school bus from the local air force base. We removed most of the seats and had plenty of room for equipment. On long summer trips we even camped out in the bus, having spent our money on equipment, gas, burgers and beer, with none left for hotels. We learned that on the road, we could amplify the eight track stereo and plug it into the speaker cabinets. We would slide the bus windows down and terrorize the folks in the small towns we passed through!

Those were the good old days, all those big beautiful amps. But my back still hurts from hoisting that PS400 up into the bus.