The Petra Zone

I have watched CITAS many times but this time I notice that on the song "It is Finish" they delibratly don't do any close ups of Mark Kelly because he has a portable keyboard in fact they try not to show him at all I couldn't believe my eyes. here are some pics taken in a 5 second period
is this new to anyone else?

No this is not new to me. He did this on a few songs. On the This Means War! Tour he did the same thing on "I Am Available" In fact for that song Bob played keys with Johnnie and Mark got out that thing. I might be wrong but I think it is called a bass synth. BTW Bob, Johnnie, and Ronny did it also on the song "First Love" on the On Fire! Tour, but that is the last time I saw them do this. I know this might sound absurd but Bob is a pretty good piano/keys player and writes alot of his music using keys.

wow well you learn something new everyday about this band!!

That's true, you do find something new about them every day. I became a Christian in 1988, and had never heard of Petra before then. After hearing them for the first time, I was instantly hooked. It's cool to be able to find out information about them, especially the stuff that happened before I knew who they were.

It is a synth, a Korg I believe. But not a bass synth exclusively. On that tour, he used it on a majority of the BTS songs, to stay true to the album, which had no bass guitar/bass player. There were a lot of fusion and rock artists using it at the time. A female, whose name escapes me, wowed the world with it, when she debuted it in a rock guitar solo on the Tonight Show (when Johnny Carson-the KING had it). Petra never got any props from marketing, and they were high-profile back then. Mark had a Peavey guitar amp endorsement deal, which accounts for the farty bass sound that Peavey was known for.

Bob played the Roland GX-707 guitar with synth module on the BTS songs also. The 707 was doomed the day that it left the production line. A friend of mine was a beta tester for it, since he made guitars for Eddie Van Halen, Steve Vai, Dweezil Zappa and Joe Satriani, they wanted his input. He used it once and put it away. Bob Hartman may have been the only player from a National act to play it, much less play it on a record, video and then have it retired to the wall of the Hard Rock Cafe. The $7,000 product ( a LOT of cash back then for a guitar) lasted a year or two and that was it. Complete garbage and way ahead of it's time. The best thing to come out then was the SynthAxe, but they were $20,000. I was selling Roland at the time, and can't remember if they gave Bob any props then or not. They should have.

On this tour, Louie was playing Yamaha. He used the new Yamaha electronic pads (which were a joke in comparison to everyone elses, and soon would be discontinued) and synth. These would effectionately (not) be called "moon" drums, because of their 80s space/disco/George Jetson sound. He hated them. Louie was one of the first artists, and for sure the first Christian artist to use/highlight a drum machine in the drum solo on video. He started it, then got up and walked around on the tour. You couldn't do that today.

On the previous tour, the band secured the Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) lighting and trussing. It was maximized on the BTS tour.

Interesting stuff. I never knew Bob could play piano/keyboard.

Mark

It's interesting to learn that my know-it-all brother was right when he told me that Bob's Roland guitar was a piece of junk. But on the other hand I always thought that Bob had a Zion guitar in the Hard Rock Cafe.

Hello i am new here

Welcome aboard!

I want that pic of John, Johnny and Ronny.

Welcome.

I think the best part of the picture is actually Bob standing on the right.

I didn't mean to leave Bob out; that is a pretty cool pic of all of them. Sigh.

only spanish

Hola, bienvenido o bienvenida. La foto de John, John Lawry, Bob y Ronny es muy bien.

Help me out here Elo, hahahahahahaha.

La foto creo que es de las mejores.
Estare en el foro para ispanos visite este para que se dieran cuenta


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