Wrasslin' The Bastard

Aaaarrrgh!!!!!

Yep...Gil must have been doing bass tracks today..but I may have a decent track down, on my new song We Are Love. I'm not sure, though..I need to clear out my ears and head and try to listen to it without my usual "optimistic ears".(I once cracked up Kenny, the Loud Family's bass player by admitting that when we were in the studio I would get into my "defensive drumming" mode, which meant that I would play a bit more conservatively than I would like to, but I thought it would be best just to get through the song without any FU's. Sad but true!)

"Optimistic ears" is the recording mode I get into when I've played a part more times than I can stand and think I may have it down with just minimal FU's and tuning problems. I make my ears gloss over any little thing that would stop a real musician in his/her tracks. I'm neither that good or that patient, and since I've just spent the better part of my Saturday writing and recording this confounded bass part, my ears were primed to do their thing. Bottom line - it'll just have to do.

It wasn't an easy part to play. I seem to frequently steal ideas from the Rolling Stones (!) of all bands. They love sliding bass and/or guitar lines, and so do I. Not just little wimpy whole step slides - we're talking whole dang length-of-the-neck slides. Not easy on the fingers, especially if you're playing bass. And especially x 10 if you're playing my bass: The Bastard.

It's a Charvette, by Charvel. Sounds like some fancy French perfume, but it's a cheap bass that was preferred by heavy metal hair bands in the early 90's. I was looking for a bass and a co-worker told me that his bass player was looking to sell his for cheap ($100), and that I should come out to their rehearsal studio in Oakland and check it out.

Cool. No problem. Until I started to drive there.

It was dark and I was in my little silver Honda Civic. I have never in my life been that deep in ghetto-land. The directions took me to a "main" street that I had to follow for about 20 blocks. There were stop lights at every intersection. On every corner there were 10-25 of Oakland's finest home-boize giving me the big stare-down. Honda, don't fail me now! It didn't, and in spite of my fearful white-knuckle drive, nothing happened at all.

I finally found the rehearsal space. More like a compound, actually. There was a fence with razor wire around the whole building. I buzzed the buzzer, my buddy came out to let me in ("thank you!") and the dude with the bass came out and showed me The Bastard.

Apparently, he had a crazy girlfriend that went nutso on it with a pair of scissors. There were gouges and slash marks covering just about every inch of it. Oddly, this was now the 2nd guitar or bass that I knew that had a history of a crazy girlfriend carving out a little bit of rock and roll angst on some poor little instrument!

Anyway, it played ok. Way better than any of the several bass guitars I had been borrowing from friends to get through my recording projects. I bought it, covered it with stickers, and still have it, still use it, still curse it at every intonation problem that it has (which are many, but oddly, today I noticed that if I took out the drum track, the tuning sounded better (!) between the guitars and the bass. Must be some weird overtone from the reverb on the kick drum...). Swear to God, next lottery fantasy is a new bass. I hate The Bastard.