Weather Report

Along the same lines of Jaco and kind of encouraging my friend who has recently gotten into recording thinking GarageBand bass app will do magic for him (and in a way it can sound really good) and my counterpoint that bass as an instrument is a deep rabbit hole, I was driving for 3 hours today and decided on The Monkees on the way down (something fresh and I love the tunes that weren’t written by them but many actually recorded with Davy Jones doing vox), and The Who on the way back up from the 1.5 hr drive south. John Entwistle is one of the underrated bass players in the rock era. Keith Moon overplayed but it worked with Townsend’s songs. Entwistle walked and played all over the place but it never came off as overplaying. That’s a good bassist right there.
 
I still am sensitive when I call bass players that, or bassists, maybe because of the rock n roll pisgeonhole took it. Bass I believe was a deep stringed orchestral classical instrument. I wouldn’t call a cello or violin player a violin guitarist. Bass has its own unique place and purpose and even though it’s stringed, I think calling it a ‘bass guitar’ shortchanges what it is, was, can be or should be. No wrong answer, but when I was re-listening to John Entwistle, THAT is a bass player and doing everything that instrument can be doing in a group situation. He was truly an artistic musician
 
I’ve played with some rock solid bass guitarists in rock bands and had the pleasure to play with a few what I would call bassists…those that play not just with a guitar line with flashy fills between pauses, but that almost solo (not constantly but consistently) in technique but always rounding about to the key places to hit, and usually with percussion and or major song chords. It’s just an art, and jamming to The Who reminded me of how good John Entwistle was at doing that. Of course, hit had the rock world’s most over-playing drummer so he could venture on percussive playing without a fear of overplaying, but even in quiet acoustic guitar passages he just did everything right. Townsend riffs without the band behind him…a lot of them would sound empty and too much space. But that wasn’t the case with them. John Paul Jones (organist) had that same talent in his playing. Maybe I should change the thread title to Great Bassist Appreciation Thread. Jaco was bolder and more aggressive and in jazz fusion and it just worked. But bass as an instrument is soooooo underappreciated imo.
 
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