Bean9seventy - the first UK funk / slap bassist?

[Bean9seventy]

24 minutes ago, lojo said:

As I funk , soul and disco fan who was only a toddler in the 70s I like this thread, nothing new with regards to bands for me but to hear you guys where playing and heard this stuff first hand is exciting.

My route in was through Northern Soul 

i remember when northern soul came down to london , they were still into 60s Motown music wore clothes from 1972 ,, & never danced to the beat of the music ;D

they also had a chance to see punk rockers for the 1st time , as they would have a 30 min spot of punk in certain discos ,

thus underground disco & punk were side by side in the history time line

[lowdown]

My first club experiences were all about 'The Sound Of Philly'. Just loved that period (still my guilty pleasure).

 

Edited April 2, 2018 by lowdown

[Bean9seventy]

11 minutes ago, drTStingray said:

I first heard Bootsy on Flashlight in a club - and on other Parliament stuff which I had to learn as I was fortunate enough to get the bass job in a soul/funk band in the later 70s, which gradually morphed into disco/funk. The main men were Jamaican and had an encyclopaedic knowledge of black music since the 60s - hence covering bands like Fatback and Parliament.

If you saw Bootsy with Funkadelic they had up to 40 odd people on stage, with three or four bassists and each song went on for about 30 mins - you couldn't really pick out who was doing what and it was more of an experience than a gig/concert - a bit like a fink version of Zappa!! Except that squelching bass sound ha ha!! 

in the UK people only knew, herd of Boosty via one song

a 7 inch single that was part of a bundle of 7 inch records ,, bt express , fatback band , ohio players , cameo etc ,,, that's why i didn't go to the gig ,,

known as " we want the funk "

however there were a few magazines & articles on Bootsy at that time that were praising the Pinocchio theory & his genius  ,, but i was not a bass player yet & took little notice

[Bean9seventy]

7 minutes ago, lowdown said:

My first club experiences were all about 'The Sound Of Philly'. Just loved that period (still my guilty pleasure).

 

god bless american music ,,

thus my main mission was not to be a good bass player ,, but to learn how to be more of an american on bass ,,

not to use a variate of funk techniques on bass ,, but to become funk itself ,, to be an American funk bassist ,

youtube really helped , tho i am still at beginners levels after all these years ,

i would rather play 1 note of real raw funk / 1 pop of booty disco ,, than a million mile long bass solo cloned from a six string guitar  , thanks lowdown

[Bean9seventy]

15 hours ago, lojo said:

Not sure , ive not understood some of the replies , are we trying to figure out who was the first U.K. Born bassist to record slapping ?

 

 

 

 

no ,, i decided to open a thread on a comment posted on reddit ,, where a user said i said i was the 1st uk slapper , i did not say that , i was in the 1st Wave of players ,,

& the other comment also said i claim to have directly influenced MK ,,

yes i did go into his music shop,,  yes he wasn't into bass yet , yes buy seeing what we were trying to do on bass probably hastened MK to quit drums & get into slapping ,, but to be the direct main influence ? is out of context

there were other bass players MK saw much better than myself ,, but in those days there were only a handful ,, & i was one of them ,

thoughts & opinions ?

[drTStingray]

1 hour ago, Bean9seventy said:

 

known as " we want the funk"

When we played that song in clubs you could see people at the front saying to each other in a slightly outraged/shocked way "they're singing we want a f**k" 😂

A bit like "Get the f**k outa my face" - I'm sure they these guys wrote them to sound like this!!

Spookily we covered several of those you mentioned but also War and Brass Construction (Brass Construction were played a lot in clubs I went to (before playing in the band). 

Edited April 2, 2018 by drTStingray

[Bean9seventy]

3 hours ago, timhiggins said:

I always thought that Doug Rauch's superb playing with Santana must have had a big impact on the full on more rhythmically busy slap approach to playing ,and this is from 72 

 

the problem with back cataloging is that it can help others to side step air brush out what they don't want to hear ,,

this happened a lot in the 1990s with DJs who were digging out stuff no one had herd ,,to them, the rarer it was the better ,, now it sounds good , compared to stuff like Chic that we have all herd millions of times ,

yes  we have already been through that ,, you cannot just visualize bass slapping until you actually see it 1st ,, people who brought the above LP in 1972 would have had no idea what the bass player was doing unless they actually Saw what he was doing ,

if the above bassist / circle of associates  went on to record dance music , then you might expect his tread to be located somewhere by the funk movement , the rest is in hindsight , thanks

[Bean9seventy]

1 minute ago, drTStingray said:

When we played that song in clubs you could see people at the front saying to each other in a slightly outraged/shocked way "they're singing we want a f**k"

A bit like "Get the f**k outa my face" - I'm sure they these guys wrote them to sound like this!!

Spookily we covered several of those you mentioned but also War and Brass Construction (Brass Construction were played a lot in clubs I went to (before playing in the band). 

good point

[lojo]

It all started for me when I heard "Cool Jerk" in the mid 80s whilst at school , I then got deeper into northern soul , and into the funk stuff , think my first funk record was a Headhunters album , and for Disco introduction I brought Saturday Night Fever and got almost bullied for it 😀

 

[Misdee]

I forgot to say in my earlier post that Bean9seventy, I really like your bass playing in the  YT videos.

 And like a lot of other folks, I'm enjoying the music posted on this thread. It really was a golden era for this style of music. It seem like in the age of computers some of the soul has been lost.

Unfortunately, my memories of nightclubs and discos during this time was that they always ended with a big fight at the end of the night. Worse still, where I grew up we didn't even have a late night kebab shop until the mid-1980's. 

[SpondonBassed]

44 minutes ago, Misdee said:

I forgot to say in my earlier post that Bean9seventy, I really like your bass playing in the  YT videos.

 And like a lot of other folks, I'm enjoying the music posted on this thread. It really was a golden era for this style of music. It seem like in the age of computers some of the soul has been lost.

Unfortunately, my memories of nightclubs and discos during this time was that they always ended with a big fight at the end of the night. Worse still, where I grew up we didn't even have a late night kebab shop until the mid-1980's. 

Paging @Les

Some counselling might be required here Les.

Sorry, Misdee.  We had the showband thing going on.  I was going to dances in the seventies and eighties.  I lived in the countryside and I had to put up with the rural stuff until I left home.  The showbands were the only thing to draw crowds in from the sticks.  They'd cover tunes with a sort of wannabe American twang that sounded shyte to me.  They never played soul.  It's doubtful that it would be tolerated by the older ones in the community.

When I got to Dublin I went to discos and live events.  I saw Clapton at the RDS.  Slane Castle was another good venue that I went to for the first few years.  I saw Bowie's Spiders from Mars show there.  We heard Simple Minds playing at Croke Park three miles from where we lived just by opening the window of our kitchen.  Happy days.

Yeah, fights, lots of those in the rural dance halls.  We'd line up usually in two factions and I think it was just excess energy fuelled by drink because I never knew why we were always scrapping.  No-one got maimed usually though.  I was always able to avoid getting caught in fights in the city.  It's not the same now.  You seem to need a stab vest wherever you go.

Like Bean9seventy says, it takes a bit of hindsight to understand some of the origins of what we take for granted now.  I am only today catching up on a lot of stuff that went on right under my nose.

Edited April 2, 2018 by SpondonBassed

[Bean9seventy]

1 hour ago, SpondonBassed said:

Paging @Les

Some counselling might be required here Les.

Sorry, Misdee.  We had the showband thing going on.  I was going to dances in the seventies and eighties.  I lived in the countryside and I had to put up with the rural stuff until I left home.  The showbands were the only thing to draw crowds in from the sticks.  They'd cover tunes with a sort of wannabe American twang that sounded shyte to me.  They never played soul.  It's doubtful that it would be tolerated by the older ones in the community.

When I got to Dublin I went to discos and live events.  I saw Clapton at the RDS.  Slane Castle was another good venue that I went to for the first few years.  I saw Bowie's Spiders from Mars show there.  We heard Simple Minds playing at Croke Park three miles from where we lived just by opening the window of our kitchen.  Happy days.

Yeah, fights, lots of those in the rural dance halls.  We'd line up usually in two factions and I think it was just excess energy fuelled by drink because I never knew why we were always scrapping.  No-one got maimed usually though.  I was always able to avoid getting caught in fights in the city.  It's not the same now.  You seem to need a stab vest wherever you go.

Like Bean9seventy says, it takes a bit of hindsight to understand some of the origins of what we take for granted now.  I am only today catching up on a lot of stuff that went on right under my nose.

the core of the UK soul movement throughout was 100 % not into fighting ,, tho sometimes things happened ,,

disco was studio 54 ,, after disco sucks ,, it was  eg 2 step nightclub music ,, i guess nightclubs were all about who you were & how much money , who has the biggest car ,

nightclubs could be seedy places ,, sometimes in london you would get a real good vibe tho ,

this is not the kensington roof gardens ,,  the however clip captures the moment

 

[Bean9seventy]

2 hours ago, lojo said:

It all started for me when I heard "Cool Jerk" in the mid 80s whilst at school , I then got deeper into northern soul , and into the funk stuff , think my first funk record was a Headhunters album , and for Disco introduction I brought Saturday Night Fever and got almost bullied for it 😀

 

there are very very very strong claims saturday night fever was based on the wigan casino ,, tho some of us prefer to dispute the claim ,,,

we say it was based on the global village , or The Lyceum Ballroom  music wise dance wise &  story wise ,,

the Bee Gees were slightly bias ,, lol ,, never mind ,, good point , thanks

[timhiggins]

17 hours ago, Bean9seventy said:

the problem with back cataloging is that it can help others to side step air brush out what they don't want to hear ,,

this happened a lot in the 1990s with DJs who were digging out stuff no one had herd ,,to them, the rarer it was the better ,, now it sounds good , compared to stuff like Chic that we have all herd millions of times ,

yes  we have already been through that ,, you cannot just visualize bass slapping until you actually see it 1st ,, people who brought the above LP in 1972 would have had no idea what the bass player was doing unless they actually Saw what he was doing ,

if the above bassist / circle of associates  went on to record dance music , then you might expect his tread to be located somewhere by the funk movement , the rest is in hindsight , thanks

Well i guess if your looking at funk within a fairly narrow field of references but i have always thought of [Santana ,Billy Cobham ,Lenny White] all of which Doug played for, to be very funky and pioneering in the jazz funk/fusion field ...  

[SpondonBassed]

Mezzoforte have their moments too.

Maybe being in Ireland helped but it was a great find because it was outside of the US/Anglo monopoly on commercial music.  It's an instrumental band which helps.

The band formed in 1977.

Edited April 3, 2018 by SpondonBassed

[drTStingray]

19 minutes ago, timhiggins said:

Well i guess if your looking at funk within a fairly narrow field of references but i have always thought of [Santana ,Billy Cobham ,Lenny White] all of which Doug played for, to be very funky and pioneering in the jazz funk/fusion field ...  

I agree with you - not only were those bands a reference point if you were into jazz/funk in the early 70s, I well recall trying to learn a particularly funky Santana from one of their early 70s albums, an instrumental, for a band back then - and the bass part was extremely difficult (actually I never mastered it properly) - it was similar to the synthesiser bass part on StarCycle by Jeff Beck (there is superb version of this with Pino playing the sequencer style line on MM Fretless). 

However none of this stuff was played in clubs and was not club music, so I can see where Bean9seventy is coming from. It's also earlier than the big crossover with jazz/funk things like Birdland. 

Edited April 3, 2018 by drTStingray

[lowdown]

56 minutes ago, SpondonBassed said:

Mezzoforte have their moments too.

Maybe being in Ireland helped but it was a great find because it was outside of the US/Anglo monopoly on commercial music.  It's an instrumental band which helps.

The band formed in 1977.

Glad you mentioned this lot. When they released 'Garden Party', I found it more melodic compared to most of the UK 'Brit Funk' offerings at that time.

Maybe a bit 'smooth' for some, but terrific musicians with a great feel. My opinion of course. 

 

This concert was just over ten years ago, but still a good listen.

 

Edited April 3, 2018 by lowdown

[lojo]

Mozzoforte were from Iceland , maybe the Icelanders slapped before anyone in the U.K. Did ?

[Steve Browning]

1 minute ago, lojo said:

Mozzoforte were from Iceland , maybe the Icelanders slapped before anyone in the U.K. Did ?

To keep warm maybe?

[lowdown]

10 minutes ago, lojo said:

Mozzoforte were from Iceland , maybe the Icelanders slapped before anyone in the U.K. Did ?

Maybe, but as far as I know, Fish Slapping started in London.

 

[SpondonBassed]

22 minutes ago, lojo said:

Mozzoforte were from Iceland , maybe the Icelanders slapped before anyone in the U.K. Did ?

 

20 minutes ago, Steve Browning said:

To keep warm maybe?

You beat me to it.  Dang

[Bean9seventy]

8 hours ago, lowdown said:

Maybe, but as far as I know, Fish Slapping started in London.

 

icelandic funk started hearing it post 1980  ,, guys ? its best to stay on the beat ,

tho it was great to know people in iceland were right into the music ,, meezoforte were part of the satellite circle of brit / euro & Scandinavian funk & were herd on London only soul station radio invicta at that time ,,

its hard too think of comedy being part of brit funk ,, but alas true , when one thinks to put to the thread there is a very strong link between dads army & brit funk band central line ,, puts all kinds of slapping slappers & followers in too context thanks lowdown

[lowdown]

23 minutes ago, Bean9seventy said:

icelandic funk started hearing it post 1980  ,, guys ? its best to stay on the beat ,

tho it was great to know people in iceland were right into the music ,, meezoforte were part of the satellite circle of brit / euro & Scandinavian funk & were herd on London only soul station radio invicta at that time ,,

its hard too think of comedy being part of brit funk ,, but alas true , when one thinks to put to the thread there is a very strong link between dads army & brit funk band central line ,, puts all kinds of slapping slappers & followers in too context thanks lowdown

I saw Jeff Lorber a couple of times back then. I really liked all the syncopation in his tunes.

When this album came out (Wizard Island), he had a Bassist called Danny Wilson playing with him (who was rather a cool, funky, groovy player).

 

 

 

[lowdown]

33 minutes ago, Bean9seventy said:

 brit funk band central line ,, puts all kinds of slapping slappers & followers in too context thanks lowdown

Do you remember their track 'Walking Into Sunshine'?. I thought it sounded like it was heavily influenced by Gene Chandler and his track 'Get Down'....

 

 

Central Line - Walking Into Sunshine.

 

[Bean9seventy]

7 minutes ago, lowdown said:

Do you remember their track 'Walking Into Sunshine'?. I thought it sounded like it was heavily influenced by Gene Chandler and his track 'Get Down'....

 

 

Central Line - Walking Into Sunshine.

 

Lober had some underground dance hits on his early LPs thus Jazz Funk was here ,, tho early on some called it Funk Jazz ,,  a great chicken v egg thread ,,

yeah the Lober bass player was tight ,, slightly dry ,, with his own logic in transition points ,,

gene chandeler was a big disco track very well known ,, 

central line was part of the dawn of the 80s ,, as disco sucked a new era was already in place ,, & no one on line talks about its significance , its absolutely key in the history of the bass & music 

a different story  & thread lowdown thanks ,,