Load Blast From Past

I found an old VHS tape in the basement today. Back when I was in Diatribe, we appeared on a local access cable show called "Eat At Joe's." So here is some 22-year old bass playing, i'm-not-drunk-seriously-i'm-not, dancing Steve.

In this first clip, you can see that I spent more energy dancing than trying to be a good bass player. I remember being a better player than this... but my playing is very aerobic, don't you think??





In this second clip, we cover "The Weight" by The Band. This song always went over well. Mike had recently picked up the accordian.





"Eat At Joe's" was kind of a rite of passage for local bands in East Lansing. The volunteer tech crew would do things like shrink the heads of performers, project odd movies on the blue screen during the performance, etc.

This video reminds me of what a "gear head" I am. It's important for me to tell you about some of the equipment we were using.

• Souldaddy has a National-inspired Charvel/Jackson that he built while working at the Jackson custom shop. Goofy looking, heavy, and flawlessly-crafted, that thing was his main guitar (his backup axe was a Fender Tele). On this gig he is playing through a Semour/Duncan combo amp that I hated but he loved. I much preferred his Hi-Watt half stack.
• Tom plays Tama drums here, and all the mics and sound gear was his. He was a great sound guy. He and I never really got along very well, and in retrospect, this was my fault mostly.
• Mike has a cool keyboard setup here. One box is the classic Yamaha DX-7, which was the #1 go-to snyth in the 80s/90s. The other box is a Firstman organ running through a single-rotor Leslie speaker; Mike used a variety of amps to drive the Leslie--on this track he's using a Fender Bassman, which was my favorite. Mike got a much richer organ sound out of this rig than most people could have. Only occasionally did we drag a real Hammond to one of our shows.
• I am playing an 80s Japanese Fender J-Bass with many, many mods. It had EMG active pickups, Shaller tuners, a Leo Quann Badass II bridge, and a vintage J-bass neck position pickup cover (this was before they started re-issuing that early 60s hardware). A couple of years later I would trade this in for a 1964 J-Bass. The rig in the video was perfect for me: the Peavey MegaBass head was the best working bass amp I ever owned. I ran it bi-amped with two cabs: the high end went to a Hartke 2x10 and the low end went to a Messa/Boogie 1x15, which is the best sounding bass box I have ever heard.

Okay, now that I am done talking about gear, check out this video of The Band doing the song 20 years earlier in 1970. Man, were those guys fantastic!

UPDATE: The following came to me in a dream (seriously,
sometimes that happens--not in a shamanistic way, but in a CPU usage efficiency way).

The 40 Year Old Steve Critiques the 22 Year Old Steve's Bass
Playing

Let it be known that the young Steve in these videos not only wouldn't have listened to this advice, he would have disagreed with it 100%. With age comes experience. The funny thing is that versions of the advice were actually communicated to me back then. I didn't hear any of it.

• Tone down the dancing. You don't have to just stand there, but control your movements and focus more on the making the music than enjoying it. We can tell you're feeling it, we really can.
• That fret-crunch thing isn't as cool as you think it is. You have a decent tone, and I know lots of your favorite players mash their roundwounds against the frets and pickups. Here in 2008, though, it sounds like crunching tin foil. Knock it off.
• Use a P-Bass or at least have Souldaddy drop a P-style pickup in the neck position of that J. We know you love the tone of the J. We know all your heroes (Jaco, Marcus, John Paul Jones) play the J. But in a few years you will re-discover Motown and really appreciate James Jamerson. You need to fatten your sound.
• Lose the Hartke cabinet. Trust me dude, the last thing your sound needs is high end speakers made of METAL! Sell that thing and get another Boogie 1x15. Don't bi-amp the rig. Run it in full range and turn up the bottom end. Just so you know, that's what the sound guy does to your signal from the DI box anyway.
• Make room for some space. You're still playing too many notes (and I know what Amadeus said about that, but you ain't no Mozart, so listen to me). These videos are evidence that you can let a tune breathe and inject the all-important rest into your lines. Just do it more often. Go back and listen to your at-the-time heroes Sly & Robbie. While you're at it, re-read the bullet points above and try to get closer to Robbie Shakespeare's shake-out-your-fillings bottom end.
  
  

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