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Why should every Bass Player worship Status Quo?


TJ1

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8 hours ago, TJ1 said:

... if you can bear it have a look at the attached video. Which band member is hardly in camera, but when he is: who cares, we're listening to the whole..?

 

Compare and contrast ...

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Now we're into personal taste; and as usual, for every person that likes something, there's lots of people who don't. I managed about a minute of that.

It's about serving the song in the genre it's played, and AL and CW are doing just as good a job artistically as anything more complicated. Everything else is, as I say, personal taste.

 

LS Lowry is a reasonable comparison; a lot of people don't like his famous artwork, but anyone who's seen his earlier pencil work would know he was a very very good artist in more conventional terms. The 'matchstick men' was an artistic choice which illustrates his Salford brilliantly, and the simplicity of line and form is a choice, not a necessity from a limited skill set.

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18 minutes ago, Dad3353 said:

Compare and contrast ...

What's that vid doing in a thread about SQ? I'm confused. I looked at it for a couple of mins and that was 1 minute 58 seconds too long. Back to Quo, seems with the original line-up they were more interesting live while I've heard several of their studio efforts but to my ears the sound is limp. The Live album's pretty good with tracks like 45 Hundred Times, Roll Over Lay Down, Backwater/Just Take Me and Big Fat Mama being well superior to the studio versions. Dunno how they managed to morph into a Butlins cabaret act after the original rhythm section left. As for worshipping them, ermm!

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4 minutes ago, Barking Spiders said:

What's that vid doing in a thread about SQ?...

Well I was defied ("if you can bear it have a look at the attached video..."), which I accepted, and thought it reasonable to lance my own. Never mind; I'm still at 37' in and counting (not for the first time, naturally...). It just illustrates that stuff like 'endurance', or 'worship' are not applicable; one likes it or not. Tastes evolve, too. One becomes (sometimes...) a bit more 'tuned in' to different genres. 'Whatever floats your boat', as they say, but don't try to put SQ up there with the 'greats'. They do what they do, that's all. Peace. :friends:

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So.. this post has just awoken my 1980's when being 12, and having If Ya Can't Stand The Heat, and 12 Gold Bars on cassette, and a cheap mono cassette player on my lap when out in the car... 

Just bought 12 Gold Bars on CD via Music Magpie / eBay... £3... some great tunes on there... later stuff not so much.

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4 minutes ago, linear said:

I hope they're all paying for their drinks, because once you get that lot set up in the Dog and Duck there won't be any room for the punters.

You would be amazed by the amount of punters when Magma is playing somewhere. Most of the time it's even sold out.

Some people can recognise art when it's there.

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11 hours ago, TJ1 said:

It is obviously highly opinionated question and I realize that not everyone has a shared interest for MOR rock.

But seriously, I think it relates their overwhelming consistency, which any of us who either are, or are aspiring to be, bass anchors, should admire.

Any confirmatory and/or contrary views may be appreciated, but be warned: I know I am right.

I respect that they've had a good career. I just can't fathom why, I wouldn't buy anything of theirs and I certainly wouldn't want to listen to their endless three chord chugging nonsense. But I understand lots of people like them and that's their choice, if it makes them happy, fine. 

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20 minutes ago, Dad3353 said:

 but don't try to put SQ up there with the 'greats'. They do what they do, that's all.

Mmm, not sure that’s a helpful statement young daddio.
Neither you or are I are the arbiters of other people’s taste and preferences in music. 
We should defend people’s right to put whichever artist they want among the “greats” (whoever they are). It’s a bit snobbish otherwise. 



 

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8 minutes ago, oldslapper said:

...We should defend people’s right to put whichever artist they want among the “greats” (whoever they are). It’s a bit snobbish otherwise...

Their own 'greats', fine. Everyone has theirs; I have mine. It's futile, though, to suggest that there's any that deserve 'worship' from a whole bass player community, no..? -_-

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And then it's all for, as they say, a given value of 'great'.

I will say, tho, that when it came to opening the biggest live performance ever broadcast (there's a figure touted as 40% of the world's population), the choice made was a certain band as a banker. And it worked. Anyone can sniff as much as they want about populism and musicality, but that fact remains.

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They sold loads of records and played live to hundreds of thousands of people. All of us would love to do that. Were they not the hippest thing at the end of their career? Which of us is?

Dance music can be extraordinarily repetative and yet people seem to like it. Perhaps people who do not care if it is a J, a P or a Status just want to jump up and down to something familiar which they enjoy. 

To answer the OP, SQ have always had a strong rhythm section who always laid it down. 

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And what about inventive walking bass lines of bebop players. Don't you think they deserve a lot more than worshipping, then ?

Great is overused for some more than common "things". For exemple, Juan Miró was great, but not for his art (that was bland), only because he could explain what he was doing and turning it into a very lucrative vision of art. But he was not a great artist (refer to André Breton's opinion about him), only a great business man with a clear vision of how stupid people can be (fooled). He even invented a name for his lack of art : regressive art. For that, he was great, even a genius.

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45 minutes ago, Dad3353 said:

Their own 'greats', fine. Everyone has theirs; I have mine. It's futile, though, to suggest that there's any that deserve 'worship' from a whole bass player community, no..? -_-

To use an analogy, for whatever reason the entire literary community does 'worship' William Shakespeare. That's a fact, partly because he altered the English language in a Game-Changing way..

So I do not believe it necessarily futile to put forward a bassist that is deserving of common and enduring worship from the entire bass community. My vote goes with SQ's guy but it would be interesting for me to learn of any possible competitors.😰

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5 minutes ago, TJ1 said:

To use an analogy, for whatever reason the entire literary community does 'worship' William Shakespeare. That's a fact, partly because he altered the English language in a Game-Changing way..

So I do not believe it necessarily futile to put forward a bassist that is deserving of common and enduring worship from the entire bass community. My vote goes with SQ's guy but it would be interesting for me to learn of any possible competitors.😰

He's alright, but he's no Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

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12 hours ago, TJ1 said:

It is obviously highly opinionated question and I realize that not everyone has a shared interest for MOR rock.

But seriously, I think it relates their overwhelming consistency, which any of us who either are, or are aspiring to be, bass anchors, should admire.

Any confirmatory and/or contrary views may be appreciated, but be warned: I know I am right.

For a start I would hardly class them, at least their first decade, as MOR rock.

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1 hour ago, linear said:

I hope they're all paying for their drinks, because once you get that lot set up in the Dog and Duck there won't be any room for the punters.

Have you seen the Status Quo backline..? Not much room left for anyone with that in the corner by the toilets..! xD

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11 hours ago, Dad3353 said:

** snip **

It's basic, it's primitive, it works,

**snip **

Therein lies the problem for cover bands that have that opinion, which is is why there are so many terrible cover band performances of Quo songs.

There are often interesting things going on, which are missed, things like use of octaves, inversions, chordal voicings, etc. It's the same with other bands thought of as 'basic' like AC/DC.

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