led him to develop the Magic Pipe. Eventually frustrated by the inability to get all the sounds in his head from the upright bass, he built a system of electronically wired, steel plumbing, shaped somewhat like a harp, with a thick bass string wired from top to bottom and a hole that billows smoke during the climax of his live shows. Adding an electric cowboy boot plugged in and played like an African talking drum and an electrified musical handsaw, Silverman evolved into That 1 Guy, playing everything with his hands and feet while incorporating such disparate influences as Dr. Seuss, Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa, Rube Goldberg and Stanley Kubrick. He would never play a conventional bass in concert again. “The Magic Pipe basically employs the same principle as a gutbucket,” he says of the instrument’s origin. “That was the initial inspiration for creating it. It also resembles the diddley-bow, which was basically a metal cable attached to the side of the house, from the roof to the porch, and played by the original bluesman with a beer bottle like a slide guitar.”
Not only am I not learning, I'm forgetting stuff I used to know