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Alex James?


stingrayPete1977

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30 minutes ago, Reggaebass said:

Is it this one Lozz 🙂

 

Yes, that's the one. I`ve loved that bassline since I first heard it back then, but for some reason never even got to thinking about learning til now.

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As some one mentioned in this thread a few decades ago, i think James is a qualified cheese farmer and has been for some time.

I've seen his guitars in the flesh at my pal Bob Pimm's house, ( RP GUITARS )  as Bob has worked on James' axes

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16 minutes ago, Lozz196 said:

Yes, that's the one. I`ve loved that bassline since I first heard it back then, but for some reason never even got to thinking about learning til now.

I really like that , I remember the song, I might have to give that a go , I like playing different things now and again.

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1 hour ago, bassace said:

One of his cheeses, Blue Monday, is as good as you’ll get.

Used to stock a variety of Alex's cheeses at work. Couldn't buy enough Blue Monday, simply flew out the door. Cool name helped too I reckon. 

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15 minutes ago, joeystrange said:

The bass sound on Song 2 was by far the best thing to come out of Britpop.

In my opinion, of course.

Think I remember reading it was a homemade distortion pedal based on a Proco Rat. Think I also read he doesn't know what happened to it sadly. 

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I like a lot of Blur’s stuff but Girls and Boys is a standout track for me. I can remember the first time I heard it was at Powerhaus on Liverpool Road in Islington shortly after it was released. The place went bonkers!

The bass and drums on the track really remind me of early Simple Minds - it’s the sort of thing Derek Forbes could have come up with.

There’s a video on YouTube (that I can’t locate) where Warren Huart interviews Graham Coxon (one of my favourite guitarists) and at one point they listen to/discuss Boys & Girls. Mr Coxon is genuinely blown away by the bass line.

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On 21/11/2015 at 13:23, cytania said:

One of Oasis's secrets is that the bass parts are often played by Noel Gallagher in the studio. This is clearly so he can stamp the simplistic no-frills basslines he wants onto the recording leaving the Oasis bass player of the moment to follow on.

This is a strange one; Owen Morris who engineered their first few albums said that NG re-recorded a lot of the bass parts due to poor playing in the studio by Guigs.

I wondered how bad it could be given that by his own admission Guigs only played root notes and never strayed from the bottom two strings.

Owen Morris said they ran the bass through a mini Moog and used it to remove all the top end. It's not as if it's very audible on the finished recording anyway.

Blur smashed the bass battle there hands down 

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11 hours ago, joeystrange said:

The bass sound on Song 2 was by far the best thing to come out of Britpop.

In my opinion, of course.

 

11 hours ago, MacDaddy said:

The bass line to Parklife is great fun to play.

When we were playing as a duo with a drum machine we used to play both of these. They went down a storm.

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  • 1 year later...
On 21/12/2014 at 19:07, EBS_freak said:

Remember seeing him whilst I was uni - he did have that too cool for school swagger. Whilst technically not brilliant a bass player I think I'm probably not alone in thinking that some of his bass lines were sublime and were exactly what the song needed - girls and boys example. Blur I thought were a brilliant lineup of people. Dave Rowntree behind the drums... He's the definition of bland. How did that ever work? But it did.

On another blur related note, I'm bumped into graham coxen in Camden once. "You're Graham Coxen are you?" I asked.

"Yeah"

"Ah. Ok"

end of conversation.

Agreed. I always thought Blur were very creative and out there. Just taking their singles as examples, I was always interested to hear what they would come up with next. They are, or were, difficult to categorise, whereas some other acts at the time had two songs, a slow one and a fast one. Mr James? I love most of his lines and would be happy with 10% of his cool.

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19 hours ago, Grimalkin said:

The line for Beetlebum is probably my favourite, McCartney-like melodicism.

I think Blur and Damon Albarn in particular were irritated by the constant Beatles comparisons made with Oasis, I think they might have set out to wilfully disprove the comparisons. Certainly he was quoted to have said of Beetlebum "I want Noel to acknowledge it is...closer". I think he's right.

 

There's definitely a Macca vibe on the bass too. All in all one of their standout tracks for me and a deserved no.1

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Been delving through Blur’s back catalogue lately, and not only loving AJ’s bass lines, but Graham Coxon’s unique approach to guitar ‘harmony’ 😄.

 

He’s light years ahead of anything Noel did with oasis. His solo on Country House in particular puts me in mind if Ler’s playing in Primus, who I also admire.

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