Bass fishing & a bit of Jerk: The Metal Years

(this isn't me)

I'm thinking about selling 2 or 3 of my guitars and getting a bass. I notice that most of the time when I fiddle with my guitars (I know, I really should be guitaring with my guitars) I just wind up doing a bunch of freestyle scale stuff. Which is odd, because I've always been more of a rhythm guitar guy when I've actually jammed with people or when I was briefly the guitarist in a band.

Bass is weird. Bass is like those commercials used to say about the board game Othello "A minute to learn...a lifetime to master". Lots of people start playing bass because they think it's easier. In a way, it is. For the most part, unless you wanna show off, get technical or just plain hammer on it Lemmy style you don't play chords (although, half the time I'm not sure WHAT Lemmy's playing cuz it aint no chord I ever heard of. Meh, it's Motorhead, as long as it's loud baby!), just individual notes. What lotsa folks don't get is that the bass, along with the drums, help "keep time".

Ever wonder how all those jazz guys could just riff like crazy, knock out a drum solo or go get a drink at the bar and then BOOM everybody's all playing together again all perfect like? It's because they all take turns keeping the time, and by time I mean the "one...and a...two...and...a" of a song. It's the basic "speed" and beat of a song. If no one is "keeping" time, all hell can break loose, and if there's someone in the band who can't keep steady time to save their life, everybody'll sound like shit. It's like a rowing team. If one guy is off....oh man is it ugly.

So, the bass and drums are the main "Rhythm section" dig? If either of those guys suck at keeping time, your band is shit. Period. I know the singers and the guitar palyers get most of the attention, but those guys can be so-so or sometimes down right awful, but as long as your drummer and bass player kick ass, you've got a decent band. Decent, not great, but decent.

YEARS ago when I was in a band I played drums. The bass player in said band was my buddy "Dok" (like Doc, but with a K. Don't ask.). Dok, my buddy Joel (who was our rhythm guitar guy) and I practiced like crazy. Our singer? Not so much. The few guys we tried out at Lead guitar? Not so much. They all seemed to think all they had to do was show up. This especially seems to be a problem with singers. Don't get me started. Lead guitarists, have a different problem. They tend to turn themselves UP and everyone else down. Don't get me started, again.

Anyhoo....We practiced like madmen. If we were learning a song, or working on a song we wrote, we played it over & over & over & over & over again. We'd start the song in the middle. We'd try playing parts out of order. We'd play it as slow as possible or as fast as possible. We'd do funk versions, countrify the damn thing all twangy (Our country version of Metallica's Master of Puppets was awesome). We'd learn Dokken's "It's not Love" and do a Death Metal groowly version. We weren't the most technical band or the most learn-ed guys in the music world, but we could keep time and were "Tight" like a 13yr old nun pickle jar. I remember one time, as the drummer and havnig full control of the speed of a song, speeding up and slowing down Black Sabbath's Paranoid at will and the guys were right there! It was cool. We were all "Yeah, that kicked ASS!!". Nobody looked, questioned, paused, looked confused....we were a well oiled rock MACHINE baby, and it was cool.

.....our "singer" however BITCHED no end that we phuct the song up, we sucked, we all better get our shit together if we want to play anywhere. "It's started out good and then it was too fast, too fast, too slow, good, too fast....then you phuct up and went right back to the solo part TWICE...too slow...you guys SUCK!". We laughed at him and he stormed off like a whiney baby. Unfortunately for us, the "singers" house was the only place we could play. His parents had a band and would be out playing bars around town friday and saturday nights so we would take over their basement on the weekends and jam like teenage boys with unlimited electrical power and volume control. A cool thing about it, was that we would get technical and professinal input from his parents and their musician friends. All of which would tell us that they were impressed with how "tight" we were, when usually with young "garage" bands, playing TOGETHER was not a priority.

Anyhoo....

For awhile, we all decided it would be cool if we learned each others instrument, so that if someone couldn't make band pratice, the other guys could still jam and/or record stuff. Well, everybody but our "singer" of course. His job was to sing and be the "Face" of the band. He didn't need to learn anything. Eventually he did start to play the drums and wasn't half bad, but by that time I was done with the whole band thing. He and a few other people killed my enjoyment of it. I literally didn't play anything, drums or guitar, for about 3yrs after all that crap. That's another post for another time.

During the time when we switched off we recorded some stuff and apparently everybody who listened was all "Who's playing the bass on this one?" and every time they asked, it was me. I had 3 differnt bass players, guys getting paid to play, one who'd even done some session work telling me that I had "it" for bass. I shouldn't be playing the drums, bass was my thing. I ignored them cuz drums....drums were my girlfriend. I loved the drums. I ate, drank and breathed drums. I had dreams where I played drums all night. I was CONSTANTLY tapping, stomping, banging on things.....drums were my raison d'etre (Oooo French!). Bass....pfft....drums were WAY better than bass, man. I gotta admit though, "Season's in the Abyss". was fun to play on the bass. It WAS, one of the few songs that I could play all the parts too. All except the lead that is. I'm pretty sure I couldn't play any of it now. That was years ago.

I'm thinking about picking up the bass. I'm thinking I'll play it once I do pick it up rather than set it down again. For awhile anyway. We'll see.

I hope this post wasn't too boring.