Bad basslines

#122
Phe said:
I'm kinda torn on this. As basslines they are quite bad, but he always meant them more as percussion parts, and in that sense they work. Also I'm not sure if they would've come as big as they are without their gimmick-y percussive bass player.
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Or, to reply to myself, are they even bad basslines? There are clips of Ryan Martinie subbing for Fieldy and IIRC the lines sound fine. So it might just be his tone that sucks. And his technique.
 
#126
Guitalia said:
The only semi-bad bass line I can think of is in this Kinks song. But it's not the bassist's fault. Sounds to me as if Ray Davies ran through the chords just once in the studio and Pete Quaife didn't get a chance to memorize them. He gets a little more comfortable as the song goes along, but there are plenty of clinkers along the way, including spots where he gets lost and stops playing for a couple of seconds.

Edit: just noticed while listening to it this time that he seems to be trying out different approaches, expecting that there would be another take where he'd play the riff he settled on, but the producer, Shel Talmy, probably said that it's fine as it is, because nobody listens to the bass anyway.

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Yes, a tad rough overall but the Kinks were so unique anyway that I'd probably like what they settled on until I heard a better a take... that 'roughness' or lack of polish is what made the Skiffle period so cool for what came after.
 
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#127
Guitalia said:
The only semi-bad bass line I can think of is in this Kinks song. But it's not the bassist's fault. Sounds to me as if Ray Davies ran through the chords just once in the studio and Pete Quaife didn't get a chance to memorize them. He gets a little more comfortable as the song goes along, but there are plenty of clinkers along the way, including spots where he gets lost and stops playing for a couple of seconds.

Edit: just noticed while listening to it this time that he seems to be trying out different approaches, expecting that there would be another take where he'd play the riff he settled on, but the producer, Shel Talmy, probably said that it's fine as it is, because nobody listens to the bass anyway.

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Brian Patterson said:
Yes, a tad rough overall but the Kinks were so unique anyway that I'd probably like what they settled on until I heard a better a take... that 'roughness' or lack of polish is what made the Skiffle period so cool for what came after.
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What song is it?

It says "Video unavailable" to me.
 
#128
Brian Patterson said:
Yes, a tad rough overall but the Kinks were so unique anyway that I'd probably like what they settled on until I heard a better a take... that 'roughness' or lack of polish is what made the Skiffle period so cool for what came after.
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I agree somewhat, but most of the songs in the Kinks' catalog, at least after their first couple of years of recording, are reasonably polished. Certainly by the time they did the double-A-side (IMO) single Dead End Street/Big Black Smoke.

That said, I just checked, and both singles were released in 1966. Also just learned (thanks to Wikipedia) that Ray Davies wrote I'm Not Like Everybody Else in the hope of selling it to the Animals, but they turned it down. So Davies might have put minimal effort into refining it, thinking of it as a B-side throwaway.
 
#129
Ritter667 said:
What song is it?

It says "Video unavailable" to me.
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Sometimes "Video unavailable" is followed by a link to click that then plays the song natively, on YouTube (rather than the version embedded in my earlier post). If that's not the case, just search for "I'm Not Like Everybody Else -- Kinks."

Look for the original 1966 version. A very different early-'80's live version comes up in searches, too.
 
#131
Ritter667 said:
Just heard it.

Yes, sounds very much like a first play through "figuring it out" impro bass.

Then again the whole production seems very haphazardly rough and somewhat lo-fi, so maybe that was what they were going for....
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Could be what they were going for, but given that the band that Ray Davies had written it for (the Animals) had just rejected it, maybe they just figured that they might as well get some use out of it and throw it on a B-side, where no one would hear it.

It's one of the very few songs that Ray wrote but his brother Dave sang, which might be another sign that they weren't taking it too seriously.

Amazing that just a year later, they were recording songs like this one:

 
#132
jbasedig said:
I think the bassline on "Moondance"..... well, it sounds like a player who's never played a walking bass line over changes before, but even worse is the feel. The drummer is swinging. The bass line just doesn't swing. It starts sloppy and then briefly comes to a complete stop as the vocal comes in. In this part it seems that the bassist was playing a rhythmic figure that the whole band would do, however no other instrument does it. It sounds very unintentional. Throughout the song the feel is sloppy, the range very limited and there are times when it seems like therer are better more obvious note choices that would compliment the song better. I like a a lot of Van Morrison's music. I know he had a jazz background before becoming a legendary singer-songwriter. Every time " Moondance" is played , I still can't believe he said "Ok, that's the take", or whatever one says. Moondance is a classic , beloved by millions. I cannot stand that bassline
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Having played it many times in cover bands over the years, I don't think the bass part is particularly egregious. While it does sound a bit stiff, the bass is way hot in the mix, louder even than the vocal, so we hear everything - the stutters, the wrong notes etc. If it had been mixed a bit more sympathetically, we wouldn't be hearing half of that. Anyway, I've always thought it was a quirky part. Far from perfect, but in the context of the time, perfectly acceptable for a pop record. P.S. Bass player was John Klingberg, 1945-85
 
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