What are you listening to, right now................
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Fave bassists:<br />
<br />- James Jamerson<br />
- Jaco Pastorius<br />
- Peter Hook<br />
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(always a big Tony Levin fan, too, love his sound and really like the way he looks on stage, I saw him play several times with King Crimson and Peter Gabriel and spent most of those shows watching him.)
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[quote name='Crucial' timestamp='1342005808' post='297270']<br />
Going back to your earlier comments about Moon and Entwhistle, I agree that if you take them on their own they are up there but arguably not great (although I think Moon was brilliant). [/quote]<br />
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Controversial, Crucial! Entwistle was by quite some way the best bassist I ever saw live. I caught The Who at Hammersmith Odeon Christmas 1979 when I was just a kid and again in Chicago in 96 (I think, I'll have to find the ticket stub) and the guy just blew me away. The 96 gig in particular they played the entire Quadrophenia album start to finish then encored with lots of old faves including Behind Blue Eyes, which made my day. I particularly remember "I've had enough". Entwistle never moved but his hands were absolutely flying. If only Keith hadn't farked it up by dying, eh?<br />
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If anybody can tell me how to upload a small mp4 file I've got an extract from the Rising Low dvd (an absolute must for any bass fans out there btw) that shows his technique off to a T. -
[quote name='red terror' timestamp='1342023329' post='297282']<br />
(always a big Tony Levin fan, too, love his sound and really like the way he looks on stage, I saw him play several times with King Crimson and Peter Gabriel and spent most of those shows watching him.)<br />
[/quote]<br />
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He wasn't playing his Chapman Stick was he RT? I saw Myung playing one with Dream Theatre - pretty cool I thought. -
[quote name='JC' timestamp='1342034756' post='297288']<br />
Controversial, Crucial! Entwistle was by quite some way the best bassist I ever saw live.[/quote]<br />
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Yep, very poorly written by me. The Ox was awesome. What I was trying to get across was that the combo with Moon was even better than the individuals efforts simply added together.<br />
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As 'rock' bassists go then he's than man as far as I'm concerned. Funk bassists I go for Bootsy. There are plenty of accomplished funk bassists out there that can blow you away with overkill but Bootsy has the feel for the music. As for best bass player full stop then I'm voting with RT and going for Jamerson. -
I've got no problem with Bootsy or Jamerson either for that matter. My personal faves are Marcus Miller and Robbie Shakespeare who is probably the anti-Ox given how much energy he puts into his stage performance. For sheer skill I have to admire Les Claypool, although I personally find his solo stuff too "look at me" experimental. For rock-solid reliable rhythm though I don't think you can go past John McVie. And if I could nominate one underrated but awe inspiring performance, I'd like to put in a word for John Paul Jones on For Your Life off Presence (my favourite LZ album as it goes).<br />
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You're right about combos though. I don't think anyone would put Taylor and Deacon individually in the all time top 20, but as an engine room they'd have to be pretty pleased with their output. -
MN5, interesting that for all those blokes that you mention, that fuckwit Eddie Van Halen used to win a fuck ton of "Most Valuable Player" awards in reputable guitar magazines.<br />
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My favourite rhythm section is relatively recent in Danny Carey and Justin Chancellor from Tool. The shit they come up with is unreal, and able to create atmosphere in their songs as required (usually dark i admit). -
[quote name='JC' timestamp='1342035953' post='297289']<br />
He wasn't playing his Chapman Stick was he RT? I saw Myung playing one with Dream Theatre - pretty cool I thought.<br />
[/quote]<br />
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Yes, definitely played the stick with both KC and PG. I took some really cool photos of him circa 1994 where he is playing a bass, probably a Fender. -
[quote name='Crucial' timestamp='1342039403' post='297295']<br />
As for best bass player full stop then I'm voting with RT and going for Jamerson.<br />
[/quote]<br />
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He's my fave, not necessarily the "best." (I'm in no position to judge technicalities between these guys, I just know the sounds I like.).<br />
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Possibly the most talented bassist I ever saw play was Stanley Clarke - saw him several times, including w/ Return to Forever - but at the time (late 70s/early 80s) I was more impressed in the sheer musicality and otherworldly weirdness of Pastorius. -
Foreplay, tension, build-up, orgasm (3:42). Sparks. Genius.<br />
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[media]
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(The actual live sequence is from Woodstock (the concert and the movie), (as well as Kids Are Alright, where this clip is presumably from with the Townsend interview), and the live performance is the first (?) film directed by Martin Scorsese, (he wasn't responsible for the movie, just the Joan Baez and Who sequences). He might have been operating one of the cameras, too, but I'm not entirely sure about that.) -
Bryter Layter. Marvellous. [Warning: 70's nerd shit following]<br />
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I pulled it out because was listening to some String Band over the weekend and decided I'd listen to as many of Joe Boyd's albums as I've got as complete albums, rather than just picking the odd track. I'm glad I did, the guy was a genius, and he managed to tie together some fairly eclectic output from some difficult acts into coherent works. So much so that I'm kind of wondering what Pink Moon would have been like if he'd done that one too.<br />
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You know it struck me recently that much as I love all the tech around music, the experience of listening to it is diminished by the whole concept of shuffling, playlists, genres, tags and especially "smart" software that anticipates what it thinks you want to hear next. In the old days the whole process of looking through the big stacks of vinyl was an integral part of the process. I'd discover things I didn't remember having, or that I hadn't played for a while. And some of the best was when I couldn't decide what to put on, so I'd grab just anything and put it on an an "inbetweener" while I found something I really wanted. Progress, it's not always best. -
[quote name='red terror' timestamp='1342447395' post='298325']<br />
Foreplay, tension, build-up, orgasm (3:42). Sparks. Genius[/quote]<br />
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Love it RT. "Listen to Tommy with a candle burning and you'll see your entire future".<br />
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Things rock doesn't get any better than:<br />- The first minute of Pinball Wizard, through to when Moon comes in, with the volume so loud it hurts.<br />
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Funnily enough, I was surfing through youtube riffing on the Clapton vitriol above, and started scratching my head knowing that I'd seen him play live four times, and couldn't remember where, and then it dawned on me that two of those shows he was the guitarist for Roger Waters on the Pros & Cons of Hitchhiking, which was a very interesting tour, the first one for Waters post-The Wall. Waters claims he lost a million dollars on the tour. There isn't much good video from the tour, sadly. Shortly thereafter, David Gilmour was playing with Pete Townsend on the White City tour, and I was watching that li9ve performance with the big band, which is really fabulous, and saw the Sparks clip. I saw that on the big screen for Kids Are Alright when it was released circa '78/79 and that was my favourite part and pretty much sold me on the who as a teenager. It stands up really, really well.<br />
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RIP John Lord. Was lucky to see him play a couple times in the 1980s, but being mostly obliterated on both occasions I can't remember much. I can, however, vividly remember a very late Saturday night tv special on TVNZ in the early-to-mid 1970s, Deep Purple in Japan (or Made in Japan? -can't remember the name of the movie, but it seemed like a companion piece to the live double-album). I was about ten years old, I knew the Beatles, but by comparison this was awfully heavy (and scary and dangerous). I was mesmerized by "Smoke on the Water." It does seem fairly primitive nowadays, but that song along with the Rolling Stones "Brown Sugar" and Led Zeppelin's "Black Dog," was my formative introduction to "serious rock for grown-ups." -
Yeah Lord was such a huge part of their sound. Deep Purple were kind of a hybrid of Zep and Sabbath to some extent. I will stick my neck out and say I liked Blackmore as a guitarist better than Page, controversial call I know. A bit rough I should be talking bout the late Jon Lord !<br />
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Those three groups were just fucken light years from the afore mentioned Beatles, Obviously the Zeps were the biggest but the other two can rightly claim to have influenced countless Bogans down the years.<br />
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Red Terror the album is indeed Made in Japan and was on high rotate on my walkman ( the tape version which ran out of batteries quickly ) when I was at school in the early 90s and everyone listened to their old mans music ( those three, Hendrix, Doors etc ) alongside Rage, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple pilots, Chillis, Nirvana etc. Good times ! -
[quote name='Tim' timestamp='1342510095' post='298420']<br />
What were[i] Pros and Cons[/i] concerts like? I've never had much enthusiasm for the album.<br />
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They played Pros and Cons in it's entirety, then an intermission, and then a longish set of "classic" Floyd tunes, (Money, Welcome to the Machine, etc.) although now that I'm thinking, it might have been a Floyd set first, 'cos I seem to remember the show began with an epic rendition of "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun."<br />
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The production was very, very big, easily at the time the biggest I'd ever seen, so it doesn't surprise me Waters lost a ton of money on it. Lots of video projection, I think a triptych of images going, much of it the original visual material from Floyd tours. The Floyd material was naturally received much, much better, but the visual quality of the Pros/Cons was noticeably better than the Floyd effects, which appeared dated. I saw them two nights in a row (Maple Leaf Gardens, I stayed at the hotel next door) and the 2nd show I liked the Pros and Cons better than the Floyd set. It was an eye-opener to me that outside the Gardens before-and-after the 2nd show a small gang was selling cassette tape bootlegs of the previous nights' show. It might seem easy to do that now in the digital age, but I'd never seen that sort of diligence done before and it must've taken them a lot of work dubbing multiple copies overnight. Naturally, we bought a tape. According to several references I've read since, Waters offered both The Wall and Pros and Cons to Floyd and asked them to choose which one would be a PF album. -
[quote name='MN5' timestamp='1342513907' post='298429']<br />
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Red Terror the album is indeed Made in Japan...<br />
[/quote]<br />
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I know the record very well, it was a high school staple. What is less remembered by me is the name of the movie (or tv special) which I've never seen since. I can't remember the title, but I saw that before I discovered the album, and I've always associated them together. For all I know, the movie might not have been filmed in Japan at all. There is a dvd from that era ("MkII") recorded in Denmark, perhaps that's what TVNZ broadcast? Dunno, it's a mystery to me.<br />
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Check out the mullets (more like helmets) from MkI at the Playboy Mansion, Blackmore giving Hef guitar lessons, not easy to do smoking a pipe, and Hef interviewing Lord about poltergeists... they almost look like they're wearing wigs!<br />
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[quote]Obviously the Zeps were the biggest but the other two can rightly claim to have influenced countless Bogans down the years.[/quote]<br />
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[color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]I clearly recall the "Encyclopedia of Hard Rock and Heavy Metal" published about two decades ago repeatedly stressed as ex-cathedra truth that Metal had a Holy Trinity, and that trinity was Zeppelin + Sabbath + Purple, in no specific order. [/font][/color] -
Those haircuts are nothing short of fucken horrific ! none of them would ever need crash helmets.....<br />
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JC, totally agree, I've heard Blackmore is a Grade A fuckwit ( to quote Norm Hewitt ) but no denying the dude can play. Fucken awesome stage presence as well. YOu can see how he influenced all the shredders of the 80's and beyond ( although he was more subdued in the video above )
