Name your favorite Bass players and why.

[Hyfi]

OH, and anyone who plays a bass with more than 4 strings, or a fretless instrument, should have the damned thing shoved up their rectum.

Not sure why you say that^^^^^^^up there. Have you ever tried to play a fretless bass? Do you think you could play a regular guitar if it were fretless? Putting your fingers in exactly the right spot for the proper, in key note, is harder than you may think. I tought myself how to play a fretless bass as a teen. I can't read music but could listen to a line and play it.

I also know a guy who builds custom exotic bass guitars. He made a 9 string bass for someone covering all the notes on a piano. Try playin that monster. If anyone cares, I can point you to his site and beautiful works of art being played by alot of top performers.

Oh and before I forget. This post was not intended to be a pissing match about who overplays and underplays. It was just something to get folks talking about music, myself included. Nobody cares who's the best or better, just who you like and why. I still do enjoy your essays anyway.

Hyfi
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[JSE]

Les Claypool of Primus, of course!

[richmon]

Great choices above, just one of my favorites has been omitted.............Jack Cassidy of Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna.

[Swish]

Great choices above, just one of my favorites has been omitted.............Jack Cassidy of Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna.

It was an 'all acoustic" show, with Jack and Jorma in fine form. Their music brings back some memories.

[Hyfi]

It was an 'all acoustic" show, with Jack and Jorma in fine form. Their music brings back some memories.

They do thier all acoustic show every year down here at the Keswick. Where did you see them? Jorma lives right here in Solebury...near New Hope.

[Swish]

They do thier all acoustic show every year down here at the Keswick. Where did you see them? Jorma lives right here in Solebury...near New Hope.

It's a really beatiful and modern facility that was built for sound. I've seen a bunch of shows there, most recently Los Lobos and Jonatha Brooke. It fairly small (800 or so capacity) and not a bad seat in the house. Oh, I forgot to mention that they also had Barry Mitterhoff with them too. He does a fine job on mandolin, and he also played something that looked like a lute and also a four string guitar (had 2 f-holes like my '59 Gibson L50, but a very narrow neck and, like I said, only 4 strings).

[richmon]

It was an 'all acoustic" show, with Jack and Jorma in fine form. Their music brings back some memories.

Last year they played the an old movie theatre in Pitman NJ, I was 10 feet away!. Jorma is a talented guitarist with none of the guitar hero attitude for someone with his pedigree, real down to earth. Every year I think about making the drive to the Keswick but it's 90 minutes or so for me. Plus I saw acoustic Strawbs this past Saturday @ the Tin Angel in Philly, terrific show with a 3 guitar lineup doing all their good stuff, so I got my concert fix a little closer to home. Anyone for a Hot Tuna comp? I've got a two disc best of Tuna and could cherry pick the goodies offa that.

[jack70]

I played bass too. I (generally) agree that the best bassists are ones that aren't THAT noticeable (overplaying). Playing "less" is a difficult thing, because it takes more smarts and control. Same with most good "art"... the best writers, painters, poets, composers etc know what "to leave out". Many players like to play too much (simply because they can)... it's akin to people who always have their mouth open, yacking it up.... and never listen. It's one thing when you're soloing (goes for any instrument), but the best BANDS are great because they meld together to the point it's hard to hear/see the edges of the individual parts.

I'm not going to get into the fretless debate... doesn't really matter to me. Same as using a pick vs not using one... I think both ways are fine, and a lot depends on one's natural feel. However...

If you think fretless bass is more difficult than a fretted one (it is of course), pick up a violin. Not only doesn't it have frets, it's a small % the size of a bass. Nevermind just stringing the bow precisely the right way to get a (non-squeaking) sound, the fingering of the left hand is unbelievably difficult, especially if you have big hands and fingers (like I do). No frets to rely on for the proper note, but also no frets means you have to "hit" the string with your finger with a more exact "touch" without the fret there so the string vibrates properly. It's something every kid should be exposed to when they're 10-15 (just for fun in school), so they will always appreciate classical artists as adults, even if they don't like the music.

[MindGoneHaywire]

>Have you ever tried to play a fretless bass?

Sure.

>Do you think you could play a regular guitar if it were fretless?

With practice, sure. It might be challenging, especially at first, but it has more to do with skills that aren't exactly musical. Perhaps quasi-musical, but it certainly has nothing to do with music, and everything to do with applications that don't necessarily have all that much to do with music in general.

>Putting your fingers in exactly the right spot for the proper, in key note, is harder than you may think.

No, I do know how hard it is. I never said it was easy. But the frets are there for a reason. I have nothing against skill. But my feeling is that a performer should be focused on what it is that they're playing, not the hoops they have to jump through to play it. What's the point? It's an unnecessary multitasking exercise that only players are going to truly appreciate in the first place. I noticed a long time ago that people who play such things never seem to make music that I think is any damn good. It's like seeing drummers loading roto-toms onto a stage, I know I won't like the band. After you see 500 bands with certain types of equipment, and you think they're all terrible, you retain biases. I'm sorry that it goes against the idea of being open-minded, but the next fretless player I see in a band that I actually think is good will be the first...at best, the second or third.

>I tought myself how to play a fretless bass as a teen. I can't read music but could listen to a line and play it.

That's nothing to sneeze at; it's just that for me personally, the fretless is generally used only to create stuff I have no use for. By the way, having the ear to pick up parts is very important. I was reading music at a young age but haven't spent but a few hours looking at charts in the past 20 years. My ear has always been what I use to learn music on guitar & bass.

>I also know a guy who builds custom exotic bass guitars. He made a 9 string bass for someone covering all the notes on a piano. Try playin that monster. If anyone cares, I can point you to his site and beautiful works of art being played by alot of top performers.

Well, that's great, and some of these things are beautiful works of art. My issue is with them musically, as they're generally used by people who make music I just don't like. Which is not to say that I care whether or not they spend their time creating art I don't like, as I'm fully aware they're going to do it whether I approve or not. Go, play, create, wank, whatever, to yr heart's content. But I don't think it's a coincidence that I've never found myself playing with people who use those sorts of instruments. There's a philosophical/musical divide & I take the time to call attention to it because I have nothing better to do, so I don't see the problem in illustrating the difference to those who otherwise might not realize.

I realize that I'm setting myself up as the musical equivalent of some stick-up-the-ass paint-and-brush artist who has all this disdain for people who use unconventional methods to paint--such as rolling around naked in the stuff, using yr pecker, whatever. Such people didn't look too kindly on Jackson Pollock for his drip technique. But I'm more interested in the final result, so in truth I don't care if a player uses a fretless or a 5-string or whatever. But I know that precious few non-traditional basses have been used to create music that I enjoy, which is all that I care about. If a band uses all this fancy nonsense & comes up with something that I think is good, then I'll know it can be done & not care about what I see as the ridiculous nature of these instruments & how they appeal to players who make music I think is horrible, self-indulgent garbage. But I'm still waiting.

>Oh and before I forget. This post was not intended to be a pissing match about who overplays and underplays. It was just something to get folks talking about music, myself included. Nobody cares who's the best or better, just who you like and why. I still do enjoy your essays anyway.

Oh, hell, I'm sorry if I turned this into a pissing match. That wasn't my intent. It's just that, you know, there's a best bassists or best guitarists or best drummers thread once a year or so. Yeah, a 'favorite' thread is & should be a little different. Maybe I shouldn't have opened up my big mouth but I did kinda want to make the point that even 'favorite' (as opposed to 'best'--for instance, Neil Peart is 'best' to a lot of people when it comes to drummers, and he may be, but it hardly matters if I think his band is the worst, which they're threatening for the title of for the past 30 years) doesn't have all that much to do with what I like about music. In other words, I certainly have no problem with the admiration of individual ability, but I never bought a Beatles or Who or Elvis Costello record thinking how much I'd like it because I liked the bass players in those bands so much. So I just felt I'd go ahead & make the point that the admiration of an individual player that's supposed to be part of a whole is something that's taking into account individual ability over music, which is not what music's about to me. I certainly didn't mean to be pissy about it. If overplayers would take the time to do some work in a non-overplaying idiom (as Flea has done), I'd have a lot more respect for their understanding of music outside the realm of what it is that their abilities allow them to exploit.