Cliff Edge

If you had been the session bassist during recording of a well known song. Would you have played it differently? This question often occurs to me when I hear distinctive and sometimes complex bass lines on pop and rock songs and wonder “how did they come up with that?”

Now you’re being silly.

The Excitable Boy album is an absolute gem full of great songs. I was given a copy shortly after release and could not believe I had never heard of this guy before. His songs have been covered dozens of times .

Word on the street is it was bare floorboards. The vibration through his back was how he got ‘The Tone”.

There is a Spotify playlist “Originals that are less famous than the cover versions” Makes interesting listening.

I saw The Animals perform House of the Rising Sun just as their single was released to become a hit. Keen to hear the original I bought the Dylan album on a trip to New York shortly after. Only to lose the album shortly after returning. Around that time many English groups were covering obscure US artists songs. The Bobby Fuller Four version of I Fought The Law is almost identical to the original Crickets release recorded in 1959 when Sonny Curtis joined the band, shortly after the death of Buddy Holly.

Well that’s better. Just installed a pair of Nordstrand Big Singles into my SR900, still using the original preamp. Made a big difference to the sound. Much cleaner, punchy and responsive using LaBella Deep Talkin Flats. It’s now a joy to play. Very happy about that

Boom Radio just played Applejack by Jet Harris and Tony Meehan. Pretty good station for those of us of a certain age. Oh now we have Cleo Lane and Let’s Slip Away.

I would add the original pop version by Ritchie Valence. The song is real ear worm and a blast to play and sing.

One safeguard used by sellers is “will only ship to PayPal verified addresses”. So how does that work now?

I could be wrong, but it’s only sellers who are now obliged to supply bank details. I can’t see any reason why a buyer would need to. Unless eBay is not going to allow card payments.

Not SkyArts but on BBC4 early last evening Singer Songwriters, the caption writer made an interesting error. Calling Carol King, Carol Klein. Klein is her birth name of course, but it’s very unusual to see it used and I’d guess not many people would know. Carol Klein is a regular on the BBC’s Gardeners World. Maybe the caption writer is a gardener.

You don’t want bass heavy as that will not give you the real sound of the instrument. Buy the best studio quality full range monitoring headphones you can afford. There are some good suggestions in this thread. Avoid Beats.

I caught their fairwell/revival/final, whatever you want to call it tour show in London. Very embarrassing..It was like a shambolic un rehearsed jam session. Levon was obviously ill and looked to be on the point of collapsing. So bad we walked out before the interval. They really shouldn’t have bothered.

His predecessor in the 60’s realised this. A 90% top rate persuaded many high earners, including pop stars, to move overseas. It didn’t last long. George Harrison’s Tax Man for reference.

The Cream Doc. was entertaining. Ginger Baker had a lot to say and didn’t pull any punches about the excessive volume of the bass player 🙂

Haysead Dixie obviously comes to mind. And Luther Wright & the Wrongs' Rebuild the Wall is an entire bluegrass version of Pink Floyd's The Wall that's worth checking out.

Porridge and the Hubcaps. They were great until the wheels came off. Poor old Porridge later succumbed to serious injuries while playing heavy metal versions of bluegrass classics on an electric gas stove. Their only vinyl album is no longer available as all copies were turned into weirdly shaped fruit dishes by the application of heat.

Duh. Never thought of that, thanks, found the ideal stuff.

Has anyone here made their own case, or undertaken repairs? I’m looking for a source of the black fluffy material that lines most of the hard cases. I need to create some padding in a case that is slightly too large for the bass.

We had a gig with a couple of other bands, one of which turned up with a couple PA speakers in tatty cardboard boxes. Quite obviously not used in a long time. When they removed one of the speakers from its box a large family of mice ran out. Do you have any pets?

My band was on the same bill as Flash Harry. A very fine Queen tribute. And I knew The Beagles. Slightly off topic a solo act I saw one evening singing to backing tracks, was being Neil Diamond quite well. And in the second half, with a different wig, he was being Tom Jones.

Steve Earle is too up himself these days. The other two are thankfully still entertaining.

Most of the bands mentioned on TB and BC as well as Reddit that apparently have the worlds best bass player in residence. A brief listen and I never went back.

Is that Dance, by Little Sister, or Little Sister, by Dance?