David Bowie play's FLY on 50'th birthday

[MadMac]

hello,
just saw the video...
and surprise... a Parker Fly he play's live

M.

[vjmanzo]

Love it!! I really liked this era of Bowie’s music, and I totally remember seeing this! Thanks for posting this!

[Browndog Owner]

Yep, Reeves told me that Bowie borrowed it from him. It wasn't his guitar, only a loner.

[vjmanzo]

Great info, @Browndog Owner; thanks.

I recall seeing Reeves playing a Fly (Deluxe?) without magnetic pickups, but I can’t remember when that was exactly; it was striking because it was a vibrato-equipped Fly but without mags (like the Fly Concert).

Of course, if you search Reeves+Fly you get some variation of this NiteFly image, which is impossible to not stare at

[jb63]

He played an artist during the 1995 tour, but he and Carlos mixed things up a bit.
I think it was 1996 where the guitar you mention turned up, but it wasn't used a lot.
By the end of 96 he'd use a the nitefly with the GK2 almost exclusively.
I can't remember which synth he had it plugged into. Its mentioned in some interviews at the time. GR20, maybe.
One of the ones that uses the strings so its more like a pedal than a synthesizer.

[Browndog Owner]

Ken Parker made up the guitar shown above and it indeed features a GK-2 pickup and a Fernandez sustainer kit installed. The piezo saddles in the bridge are disconnected. He used this guitar on both of Bowie’s Earthling and Hours albums. At that time he played through a Roland GR-20 guitar synth, and Roland VG-8 guitar processor. He told me that his custom made live stage 13 pin cable was the longest that Roland has ever made. He also used a Roland expression pedal to get lots of sound variations.

[vjmanzo]

Great info, @Browndog Owner! Thanks!

I really like David Bowie’s music, and I was just listening to Earthling the other day!

[jb63]

Earthling is great but you have to hear the live treatments to really appreciate it.
There's an album called Live and Well.com you should check out. Really great guitar stuff.

[Browndog Owner]

True. Earthling is a brilliant album. Reeve’s regretted that there wasn’t another follow up album in the same genre. From there to Hours was a bit of a leap. More could have been exploited with their (Bowie / Reeves) sound at that time.