skankdelvar

What do audiences really want from the bass player? Newsnight asked 1000 regular gig-goers and here are their top 5 responses: Don't wear those pork-pie hats like that bloke out of Breaking Bad, the one that gets ill and turns into a drug dealer. They look good on him but they look sh*t on you Please don't play a bass solo unless its going to last long enough for me to go and siphon the python or have a smoke outside. About 5 minutes should do it. Bye. That thing you guys do when you turn round and accidentally smash the singer in the face with the sticky-out end of your big guitar is really funny. Keep doing that. Don't keep trying to look like you're having a good time. It's creepy and it's not believable. Bass players should just be themselves and look glum and / or irritable Whenever we ask to 'have a go' on your big guitar don't keep saying 'Only if I can have a go on your wife'. She'd never shag you in a month of Sundays.

That's a substantially nicer combination of bass and practice amp than most of us started with, back in the day Good choice, Sir.

Fall 2018: Hedge fund announces Juskiewicz to step down Winter 2018: 400 Gibson workers laid off as solid body production moved to Cort plant in Korea. Fanbois shake their heads Spring 2019: All Epiphone models rebadged as Gibson. Fanbois write to Congress Summer 2019: Gibson 'The Leo' range launches with Clapton 'Blackie' tribute - Fender sues for copyright infringement. Fanbois weep silently. Fall 2019: Bozeman and Memphis plants close; no more Gibson semis or acoustics. Solid body range consolidated to Korean Les Pauls only. Fanbois riot in Gibson parking lot. Winter 2019: Hedge fund ends all Gibson activity in USA, moves production of 'The Leo' range to China. Final Les Paul produced. Fanbois rent bus and drive off cliff Spring 2020: Hedge fund sells Gibson name to Chinese investors. Nothing from fanbois as all dead.

Lest @TripleB67 conclude that BassChat is a home for geriatrics it should be noted that we (possibly) have some members under the age of 40. As for having some lessons, that's a good suggestion. Even things like positioning the bass properly to avoid hand strains and the difference between playing seated or standing up is all useful for the future. Serious theory shouldn't really come into it at this stage - just easy stuff like where the notes are and why they're where they are. Also seconded: simple blues jams off YouTube.

It's funny because the Royal Danish Orchestra dates its inception to 1491 and nobody seems to complain that none of the original musicians are still in the band. Mind you, there was nasty spat a few years ago when the Hallé Orchestra got into one with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic over who'd been going the longest. The Scousers eventually prevailed but not before some serious argy-bargy. To be fair, hardly anyone plays like Wilko. His immediate replacement - the late Mr Gypie Mayo - was more 'conventional' but still came up with some interesting twists on the standard RnB cliches. Thereafter (and not wishing to be unkind) the Feelgood guitarists have all been a bit meat and potatoes though I suppose that copping Wilko's pretty unique style would expose them to accusations of plagiarism and - anyway - we've got the original studio recordings and Stupidity upon which to recline. Though I applaud the band's longevity and persistence the Feelgoods kind of stopped being the Feelgoods when Brilleaux croaked 24 years ago. Even though The Great Man himself wanted the band to carry on it must be admitted that that he was irreplaceable - as time and events have sadly demonstrated. Funnily enough, that legendary figure from my own musical past - The Guitarist Who Could Only Play In The Key Of A - claimed at our first meeting to be a Feelgoods fan. I should have smelt a rat when he later confessed he'd never heard of Wilko.

Knocking on Heaven's Door (Dylan), Cortez The Killer (Neil Young) and The Joker (Steve Miller) are nice easy three chord songs. Paranoid by Sabbath is fast but easy. When you're more comfortable with the bass maybe try some slightly more difficult, riffy numbers like Sunshine of Your Love (Cream) or You Really Got Me (Kinks). You can probably guess my vintage from the suggestions above...

Outwith the rock spec on this occasion. Maybe next time

They were from his later period and consequentially would not have troubled the morals police.

Funnily enough, I dumped some Sinatra 78's out of my Dad's garage about 15 years ago. If I'd known about this thread I'd have kept them

We have a winner!

Frank Sinatra on rock n roll: '...the most brutal, ugly, degenerate, vicious form of expression' Bing Crosby on Frank Sinatra: 'A jumped-up, oleaginous goombah who wriggles his filthy hips for the bobby-soxers and utterly devoid of morals' Rudy Vallee on Bing Crosby: 'A slick, crooning snake in the grass preying on muddle-headed American womanhood'. Al Jolson on Rudy Vallee: (Holds finger and thumb a millimeter apart) - 'This much talent and thoroughly evil' Dame Nellie Melba on Al Jolson: 'A foul beast bent upon undermining civilisation with his jungle-jazz rhythms' Lily Langtree on Dame Nellie Melba: 'A shrieking Jezebel; no more, no less' Franz Liszt on Lilly Langtree: 'Entirely without a spiritual compass and sings like a moose. A bad actress, too. Can't do an accent to save her life.' Richard Wagner on Franz Liszt: 'His tight trousers are an offence to the eye. My special friend The King of Bavaria should do something'

Frank Sinatra defined rock n roll as: "the most brutal, ugly, degenerate, vicious form of expression it has been my displeasure to hear... “It fosters almost totally negative and destructive reactions in young people. It smells phony and false. It is sung, played and written for the most part by cretinous goons and by means of its almost imbecilic reiterations and sly, lewd—in plain fact dirty—lyrics, and as I said before, it manages to be the martial music of every side-burned delinquent on the face of the earth'.

Here's my handy cut out and keep guide to the genealogy of Rock'n'Roll:

These two opinions are not mutually exclusive The things that struck me about the list were: * Only 22 of the top 50 billing artists were Rock, of whom 14 are legacy acts - Springsteen, U2, Metallica, etc. Most of the 'newer acts' date from the late 20th century or the early noughties while only two could be reasonably described as 'new'. Further evidence that Rock is curling up at the edges like a stale sandwich. * The highest billing act U2 grossed a mere $1.7m in recorded music sales but $52m from touring. This sort of disproportionate ratio seems to be the norm all the way down the list and - given that tours are now basically greatest hits packages - suggests that the real money is in hawking one's back catalogue round the boonies rather than recording new offerings.

Quite so, though we should not ignore the contributory nature of established male mating rituals when it comes to matters of presentation. Rappers are rather like those chaps of one's youth who upon encountering an attractive woman would proceed to do handstands or knock tennis balls all over the landscape. In short, they swagger and show off in manly fashion, this - as they freely admit - in the expectation of a tsunami of punani. By contrast, young rock performers today are like those bookish, bespectacled fellows of the 1930's, all pale and doomed, quoting Auden and Trotsky, and expatiating about the plight of the international working man. By assuming a weedy demeanour these types endeavour to convey the impression that they are un-threatening and trustworthy, and were they to be invited back for 'coffee' they would sit nervously on the edge of their seats and mumble diffidently about kittens and knitting. All self-serving guff, of course, unless they actually mean it, in which case their genetic line will come to a dead stop and the problem will solve itself. In days of yore, rock performers conformed broadly to two paradigms, these best exemplified in the respective stage personas of Mr Ronald 'Bon' Scott and his successor Mr Brian Johnson. One was described as 'a lascivious pirate', the other as 'a randy bricklayer'. No prizes for guessing who was which. Mr Robert Plant was / is an interesting conflation of the Scott model and a modified Pastoralist. One minute he'd be singing about his unfeasibly large penis, the next about fairy queens in hedge rows, thus demonstrating both his masculinity and his sensitivity, a shrewd strategy which enabled him to maximise his chances of docking. In this respect, today's rappers are missing a trick; were they to throw in some stuff about Hobbits or the Misty Mountains they'd get even more than they're already getting. Fact.

As Mr David Coverdale opined some years ago: 'Dark days for a cöcksman, dark days indeed'. It's true, of course and it all comes down to the fundamental misapprehension held by some men that these days the only way for one to get one's leg over is to feign 'sensitivity' and to pretend to oppose 'patriarchy'. These chaps think that coming on like a feminist is the surest route to the love bower. It's all nonsense; most women are entirely open to a dash of roguish male charm; well, not the ugly ones, of course - that's why they go round wearing püssy hats. It's a way of getting noticed.

I recall that circa 20 years ago the then new editor of US mag Guitar Player announced that he was instituting a policy of brutally honest reviewing. GP's judgement would be unsparing. And sure enough, the next issue contained a couple of reviews which administered a savage beating to the products concerned. As one might expect, all hell broke loose and manufacturers began to pull advertising. Poor old GP had walked up to the cliff edge and now found it very difficult to back away without looking like it was the plaything of vested interests. GP's next move was to continue to publish 'bad' reviews but allow the manufacturers a right to reply. This was walking back from the cliff edge into a swamp of disagreement, harsh words and bitter recrimination. In the end they fudged a compromise whereby they would publish reviews of stuff which they thought was 'good' but send sub-standard products back to the manufacturer without reviewing them. In the end, the smoke cleared but the wounds remained raw for some years. Frankly they'd have been better off following the standard model of reviewing duff gear in such a way as to very visibly damn with faint praise: 'The tuners worked adequately in normal use but big bends revealed some instability ... an instrument clearly built down to a price ... slightly uninspiring pick-ups ... good for slide or a spare guitar in an emergency'. Those competent to read between the lines could recognise the difference between 'So good I went out and bought one' and 'Ho-hum' and everyone was happy.

Quite so. Advertisers with a long term presence should rotate their copy to avoid counter-productive overexposure. Some of them do, some of them don't.

Good point, well made. Without the ads the mag's cover price would be higher. How much higher would probably depend on the mag's internal economics or those of the mag's ownership group. I think people are mostly OK with ads as long as they're tastefully executed, there aren't too many of them and they're spread out fairly evenly. Compacted blocks of nasty little quarter page B&W ads for string-winders and snake oil Learn-In-A-Day courses tend to pïss people off.

Sorry, Dave, but it doesn't work like this and hasn't for decades. The reason that stations now sound so homogenised and samey is far more prosaic. When there were only a few radio stations (R1, R2 and perhaps one local commercial station) DJ's and PD's used to choose songs that stood out from the crowd, the idea being to compete for audiences through innovation and difference. There are now many more competing radio stations (and media outlets) so programmers have adopted a defensive philosophy where the aim is to retain audience for longer periods of continuous listening. It's no longer about gaining an audience - it's about preventing loss of audience. A PD once said to me: 'We have to make it like a constant stream of warm water, not too hot, not too cold. No nasty surprises or anything that breaks the flow and makes the listener hit the button'. Songs are chosen not because they're 'good' but because they comply with a policy of anaesthetising the audience so they don't change stations. Mediocrity prevails not because of corporate greed but because it's the objective. Indeed, on bigger stations many PD's are careful to be seen to be not choosing the songs. New records are put out to panel testing where interviewees listen to 30 sec snippets and rank them. The results go back to the radio station and the playlist is structured accordingly. If a station's audience subsequently declines the PD can hold his hand up and say 'Not my fault, guv. We played the records the panel said they liked'. So: not so much a corporate conspiracy as an institutional failure of nerve and good, old-fashioned ärse-covering.

About ten years ago a bunch of young people walked into a blues rock gig I was playing. Our setlist was all the usual cliched Blues standbys rocked up a bit but these kids seemed to be enjoying themselves. Emboldened by their positive reaction and hoping we might have converted them to the old stuff I approached them afterwards. 'Hope you liked it,' says I. 'Yes,' says their spokesman. 'You sound just like The White Stripes'. Oh.

If someone at BC will slip me a few bob I'll write a florid puff-piece about RIC with a fawning pen portrait of utter flange respected industry figure John Hall thrown in. That should be bait enough for BC's ad sales people to dangle before the King of Torts. Ker-ching!

It would seem from my good friend @NancyJohnson 's post above that the Bass Player crew have taken this rather badly. Were further confirmation needed I have been passed an unredacted copy of the BP FB post as originally drafted: Bass Player Family When we launched Bass Player almost 30 years ago we were motivated by a festering resentment at the way that guitards had three or four magazines for themselves but we bass players didn't merit more than a single page shoe-horned into the back of Guitar Player in among all the other bits of articles that started at the front then unaccountably broke off and continued after the classified ads in the weird way that we Americans lay out magazines unlike anyone else in the world because they do it wrong and we do it right, kinda like football is football and soccer is soccer. We digress. BP was meant to show the world that bass players are the most important people in the band and not at all sulky passive-aggressives who can't get laid. And over the years, we've succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. No one ever laughs at bass players these days. Now on the eve of our 30th anniversary we have been stabbed in the back by those treacherous sons of bïtches at the hedge fund. All you need to know about these guys is that only one of them plays a musical instrument and it's a PRS. What's worse is we've been sold to a bunch of effete limeys who sip their tea with their little finger stuck out and curtsy to each other when they meet. Was it for this that thousands of our best young men crossed the Atlantic to join the 8th Air Force and save the Brits by raining death and destruction on Germany? All we have to say is 'Semper Fi'. Could it get any worse? Turns out the upstart English magazine is in bed with those anti-American, Rickenbacker-hating dirtbags at the 'TalkBass rip-off website' BassChat. All you need to know is that the owners of BassChat wear bowler hats and say things like 'God save the Queen, actually'. Anyway, the murderous English redcoats who are taking us over will completely screw the pooch so please cancel your subscriptions now and protest this unwanted takeover by burning the Union Jack flag. We wish the new editor well but it will be a clusterf*ck of biblical proportions and in the end it's all down to Donald Trump and his fascist nationalism. Make America Great Again? We think not. Bass Player