musicbassman

The greatest basslines - like this one - achieve both ! 🙂 👍

Do you know of the Escola Municipal de Música de Sant Andreu in Barcelona? This is the home of the extremely well respected Sant Andreu Jazz Band (loads of videos on YouTube) Might be useful to make contact with them ? Best of luck 🙂👍

Joining a pro band when I was in my early 20's, and meeting their guitarist, who I soon realised had more talent in the tip of one finger than I had in total. I had thought I was fairly on top of my game at the time, but (without putting me down) he suggested a few bands and bass players I really should be listening to, and I then realised how ignorant I was of a lot of excellent players. An absolute revelation. He went on to have a long career working as a successful producer and session musician - still active now, although well into his 70's Forever grateful to him. 🙂 👍

Oh go on, do tell us who this is.......... 😉

I'd never heard of Geordie Greep until a couple of weeks ago. He was the guitarist/frontman with a band called Black Midi. His first album has just been released, and it's the most interesting new material I've heard for a good while. Difficult to pick one track - (it's all on YouTube) - as each track is so different. Here's a track called 'Blues' which maybe gives you a taste. You'll have to watch it on YouTube as it has the dreaded f-word in the lyrics (just once, I think)

Played on the U.S.A.F. bases in Spain in the late '70's Six nights a week. Weekday nights you were expected to play 5 x 45's, Saturday nights were 6 x 45's. Sadly it turned out the band I'd joined for the duration was woefully under-prepared for such long sessions, and it was a killer for everyone. The poor front vocalist could hardly sing after the first week, so there were quite a few 20 minute Freebird guitar solos, I seem to remember. I was relieved to get back to the UK at the end of the contract, and vowed never, ever again. 🥺

Just in case any BC ers haven't heard of this, here's Percy Jones in full flow. Brilliant.

Yes, this is me in 1971 with an original Danelectro Longhorn bass, with the wooden toggle switches. I would guess this would have been made about 1967. Not necessarily of massive value, but incredibly rare now.

I read that as "When the nurse stops you weeing on the stage" Still true, though 🙂

Oh dear. Never heard of it. What have I missed ? 😳

Talking with another muso a few days ago, and we were considering how what was considered cool 'jazz funk' in the 80's has morphed into general polite background musak now. I mentioned a Youtube channel I've come across run by a person (?) called Melvin Pierce which has loads of tracks all done in this style, accompanied by videos of soft focus 'hip' people being cool in various ways, so it all looks a bit like some sort of continuous lifestyle advert. My friend said that he had come across this channel as well and was convinced all the music was AI generated and there was no such person as 'Melvin Pierce' I must admit I hadn't considered this possibility, but the more you look at this channel the more peculiar it seems. Some comments assume Melvin is a sax player, some assume he's a producer, and some think he's a guitarist. Who knows ? There never seem to be the same musicians appearing in any of the videos, of which (I've just looked this up) 132 have been uploaded since January this year. Video below is fairly typical - they're all done in the same sort of style. BC'ers opinions ?

Maybe I have too much gear. 😳 By the way, does anybody know where this picture comes from ?

In my idealistic youth I thought that everyone working together in a band should be equals. But over the years and many, many bands I realised that some people were always going to have the dominant personalities, like it or not. That's human beings for you. A bandleader can enjoy having the final say, but this also means the buck stops with them if their decisions result in failure. This includes choosing new band members. There's no one else to blame.

and the end result is....errr............ 😳