335 Bass

[mc2NY]

Yup - as do the Midtown basses. Everybody likes bound necks on semis, except that little punk Canuck. 

Actually, I don't. My Les Paul Sigs and EB-2 are all binding-less on the necks. None of the Gibson Basses I prefer have bindings (LP Sigs, TBirds, EB's)  which is why I asked if a 335 could be had without it.

HEY....Great Max Webster live clip above. I used to see them live back in the day when they played Rochester/Buffalo. Never caught them while Billy Sheehan was briefly in the band though. That was probably interesting. Good band.

[Highlander]

Max fan here too... they rarely played here but got to see them three times in close order... twice supporting Rush and they also played a short notice gig at the Marquee, which coincided with my 22nd...

[Dave W]

Do any Thunderbirds have bound necks...? Just thinking that re mine having it...

Anyway, we should define Hoser's Canadians...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-ZvAVcBIrQ

....

Since you brought up the McKenzies, might as well include a certain well-known Canadian bassist on vocal.

[Highlander]

I thought we were talking Canadians, not Rush-ians...

[mc2NY]

I NEVER thought I would be defending Canadians, after years on the radio along the New York/CANADIAN border and having Canadians always call to request bands from their country.

It was such fun taunting them over the airwaves

BUT.....Canada HAS actually had the last laugh on America. At this point, Canadian radio is SOOOOO much better than its U.S. counterpart. you can hear amazing music up in Canada, especially classic rock and obscure-to-Americans tracks.

IMO, it is because Canada lacks the Black and Hispanic demographics, due to the cold, that have taken over the U.S. music industry and ruined it. Rock is pretty much dead. If it wasn't on American Idol or some othe TV "make a star" show, or rap/HipHop or in Spanish.....there is NO NEW ROCK MUSIC being aired. A good argument for another ice age, no?

And American "music television" is even worse. MTV and the others have decided to ram either "global/world music" or rap/HipHop down our throats.  I ised to laugh at how bad "Euro Pop" was when I was over there a lot in the 90s...horrid pop or dance pop. Now MTV's idiotic vision has forced the U.S. To "catch up" to the rest of the world's music.

AMERICA STARTED ROCK 'N' ROLL, JAZZ...HELL, EVEN RAP AND HIP HOP.
WHY....would we want to become the "rest of the world" in music?

That is as stupid as if Hollywood deciding to imitate Euro or Baliwood/Indian filmmaking.

But Pandora's Box has been opened. it cannot be reversed. Just like the Internet completely changing what had been the record industry. Now no one wants to pay for music. Crazy that all musicians should become buskers with disposable wares, like video games that are thrown away every six months.

[uwe]

"IMO, it is because Canada lacks the Black and Hispanic demographics, due to the cold, that have taken over the U.S. music industry and ruined it. Rock is pretty much dead. If it wasn't on American Idol or some othe TV "make a star" show, or rap/HipHop or in Spanish.....there is NO NEW ROCK MUSIC being aired. A good argument for another ice age, no?"

Ouch, Jon, you can't be serious about this. Roberto Agustín Miguel Santiago Samuel Trujillo Veracruz must then be the secret Hispanic weapon to undermine WASP (the ethnicity, not the band) heayy metal, I am holding my breath until he has finally turned Metallica into a Latino Samba band, it can't be long!!!

Black music, Latin music and white man's rock co-existed for decades (and sometimes even mingled) without getting much in each other's way. I don't think that Gloria Estefan killed all those hair bands in the 80ies nor that Curzo Cubano (or whatever his name was)



looked overtly South American, yet he killed more rock bands than Shakira.



And black people have always been the death of rock'n'roll, I know:







Your comparison with the Canadian music scene is inherently flawed because that has always had different preferences to the US market: Off-the-wallish (Max Webster, Gowan), simplistic (BTO, Loverboy) or seriously proggish (Rush), the Canadian music scene has always been less trend-conscious than the US. Some people called it backwards and laughed about April Wine and Triumph, others loved it. Not a new thing. I think your "invisible climate borders keep Canada free from unwanted de-rockifying interferences from migrating warm temperature folk" needs to be re-explored! 

Now don't look at me, I'm trying to save rock'n'icicle'roll!!! Remember the Alamo!!!

And how those darn Spics just can't rock or prog ...

[Pilgrim]

I'm not a big fan of current radio, but I think the answer to negative music trends in the US is simple: Clear Channel.

Where we used to be a country full of locally programmed stations with local and regional preferences, the "Clear-Channelization" of the US has turned most markets into remotely programmed stations with little more in the way of equipment than a satellite downlink (or fiber optic line) and a booth to record local IDs and spots - unless those are also produced remotely.

Clear Channel (aka: IHeartMedia, Inc.) programs much of what we hear. It runs more than 850 radio stations in 150 US markets, operates more than one million outdoor advertising sites, and runs live concerts and events. Their digital music service connects to more than 1500 stations.

Some may say that terrestrial radio is irrelevant today, but these guys also own much of the commercial digital market.  And if you don't like what they program, tough toenails.  They're programming to youth markets with trendy music, much of which does not appeal to me - and I think, not to many here.

[mc2NY]

UWE.....

I think you mistook my disdain of rap/HipHop and a third of the NYC area radio stations no longer in English, with Black and Hispanic musicians playing rock/funk/salsa/whatever. I have no problem with that at all and that is what makes music great.

My gripe is with rap/HipHop and the wave of Spanish language/music radio/TV that has squeezed American rock/pop off the air and underground.

Personally, I have always felt that rap should have not be classified as music but, instead, under the "Spoken Word" category. Like old 60s Beat poets reading poetry over bongo drums were.

HipHop with musicians and actual singers is OK...but guys who cannot sing a note and only rap...Spoken Word.

But I guess you can't argue with sales numbers or else that stuff would not have taken over 90 percent of music TV and radio. But it's the vicious cycle....if it wasn't getting the AirPlay and exposure, it wouldn't be selling. So, it's what the labels are making money on and what the Music TV stations are making money on.

Just sad when you hear kids blasting that stuff and then comment that " no one plays guitars anymore."

The only point that is missed is that rap, as a song form, has a short shelf life. I cannot see it as songs that will likely be "covered" by future artists. It seems like an art form that survives largely on one-offs.  That is quite the opposite of what popular music has lived on over the past 50 years, when great songs are covered and recycled by each new generation of artists.

I AM surprised that rap/HipHop has lasted as long as it has. I figured it would be like disco and die out within a decade. When they started with the vocoders and the pitch shifter Chipmonk high voices, I thought it had run its course and become a parody of itself....but nope, still here.  I though it had gotten to the point that goofy hair metal had reached in the late 80s, where all the bands started to look and sound the same and the genre became a parody of itself and died.


Regarding CLEAR CHANNEL and the other radio chains that now program vast chains of  sound alike radio.....I fully agree that is also a major problem.

As a former FM radio DJ, that nightmare began back in the mid-1970s when "Affirmative Action" was put into law. Before that, when you wanted to be a radio DJ in America, you were hired based on your voice talent and knowledge of music...and you had to pass a fairly difficult FCC written test to get your radio broadcast license. You had to know how to read and adjust the radio transmitter, basic electronics and other crazy stuff. It was NOT and easy test and you really needed to pass it to get on-air.

So....enter "Affirmative Action" and it's attack on American broadcasting, to get more minorities on-air. Even if they had a decent radio voice and knew music....many could not pass the required FCC test. Hell, many did not know the music either.

So....as the FCC/U.S. government was forcing radio and TV stations to hired more minorities as on-air talent and they realized they could not pass the requirements....the FCC did away with the test to get your license. That was the first nail in the coffin of American radios. THEN, as stations hired these new radio DJs and they did not know the music, programming tightened up. Stations stopped letting all the great radio DJs choose their own music to air and started posting playlists. That led to the Program Directors who were getting the better ratings to be deemed "geniuses" and their formats getting licensed out to other stations to clone them for similar ratings to cash in on advertising...and after decades of this bullshit, we now have massive chains of the same radio formats, like CLEAR CHANNEL.

And it all started with the well intentioned concept of "Affirmative Action."  Ironically, the Black guy my station hired was really good and knew the music too. His first day on-air was following me after my midnight to six a.m. slot. I buzzed him in when he rang the doorbell and the light had lit up, while I was on mic doing a commercial. When I was done, I turned around and got startled because I was not told he was Black and the radio station was in the middle of the 'hood. He laughed and said, "wasn't expectin' a nig*er, was ya?"  I always remembered that opening line. He was a funny guy and we became good friends. He ended up holding the record in America for the DJ who was at the same station the longest...something like 25 years, I think. He ended up getting shot to death while collecting rent from a tenant of his in another part of the 'hood in town. Sad ending.

I actually left that station and went to its competition in town, when I got offered the Program Director job...They hired me as a "Hispanic Female" on the books and told me to "hide if anyone comes in who looks like they are from the FCC."  I'm sure I was one of the only white guys who got hired because of "Affirmative Action." 

[patman]

I've spent my life playing soul music and hillbilly music.  I hate the homogenized crap happening now.

[Pilgrim]

I'm an old DJ myself - worked both local and regional stations in the 60's and 70's.  I still have my 3rd phone (Third Class Radiotelephone Operator) licenses in a frame somewhere.

I can't agree about the affirmative action assertions. The 3rd phone was never really needed to monitor the transmitter at a station, at least by the time I got into radio in 1968. It was a held-over artifact of days gone by, and clearly could have been dispensed with much earlier.  I can't swear why the requirement for that license on the part of board ops was eliminated, but it was past due in any case.

Affirmative action is something people argue about.  Myself, I think it's much more of a plus than a minus, but like most laws, there are times when its pursuit or enforcement results in stupid and illogical outcomes.  The world just doesn't operates in black and white, there's a lot of grey in real life.

If individual stations felt a need to shift their staffing patterns, that was only appropriate given the way the rest of the US was changing; they needed to wake up to the fact that their staff tended to be monocultural, not representing the breadth of listeners they had even if their music format was pretty tight.  It wasn't something that the FCC forced them to do; Big Brother wasn't taking attendance and checking faces at radio stations.

I do think that cultural shifts have taken place in the US.  As a result, I have two grown daughters whose tastes include Hip-Hop as well as classic rock, country and pop.  Let's face it, music and the US population have gone far past Bob's Country Bunker, where they have both kinds of music - country AND western.

[uwe]

I don't like most rap or hip-hop either, but I think it is a valid cultural form of music. No, it's mostly not melodic, but it is rhythmic, macho, disillusioned, violent, sexist, provocative, urban and black. Sort of what the MC5 might have been to white Detroit youths in the late sixties.

But I think it has nothing to do with the retreat of rock music. In fact it has had some influence, some of the jagged rhythms of today's harder rock music owe perhaps more to Grandmaster Flash & Furious Five than to, say, Foghat. Just like the much derided Disco influenced rock to turn up the drums in volume and have the kick drum become more simplistic, hypnotic and accessible.

I've only recently bought CDs by KC & The sunshine Band, O'Jays, George McCrae and The Three Degrees. I'm a rocker, but if your butt doesn't move when you hear Love Train, then you're probably dead.

[Dave W]

I don't believe affirmative action ever changed anyone's taste in music.

[uwe]

  Naw, Im sure that incessant TV barrage of Soul Train corrupted American white youth in the 70ies and led to the demise of rock as we know it.



Mark Twain would probably say that the one slight problem with people criticizing affirmative action (be it for race or gender background) is that they are themselves usually part of an ethnnicity or a gender that profitted for centuries from the reverse, i.e. negative action against minorities. And that they were not quite as vocal about the injustice that prevailed then as they are regarding the one that they deem to be existing now. 

[mc2NY]

I don't like most rap or hip-hop either, but I think it is a valid cultural form of music. No, it's mostly not melodic, but it is rhythmic, macho, disillusioned, violent, sexist, provocative, urban and black. Sort of what the MC5 might have been to white Detroit youths in the late sixties.

But I think it has nothing to do with the retreat of rock music. In fact it has had some influence, some of the jagged rhythms of today's harder rock music owe perhaps more to Grandmaster Flash & Furious Five than to, say, Foghat. Just like the much derided Disco influenced rock to turn up the drums in volume and have the kick drum become more simplistic, hypnotic and accessible.

I've only recently bought CDs by KC & The sunshine Band, O'Jays, George McCrae and The Three Degrees. I'm a rocker, but if your butt doesn't move when you hear Love Train, then you're probably dead.

Most of that is old school funk and Motown R&B.

I saw Grandmaster Flash, Curtis Blow and Bad Brains in clubs all back before they were famous.

My one drummer who I played with for awhile is Black and produced the Rap to Rock TV series. He's done studio work with lots of name rap/HipHop artists, as well as Billy Joel, Weather Report, Fathead Newman...spanning HipHop, jazz, rock.

My late guitarist and GF who I played with for 20 years was white but played blacker than most black folks. She played seven nights a week in Harlem as the sole white member of a funk/jazz band with black session players, some of who were in the band Stuff. The Family Stand called her to come sit in and jam when the played the Meadowlands arena in NJ. She played on a number of funk/jazz releases.

My keyboard player toured as Larry Mitchell's keyboardist before us, when he was on Buitar Player Magazine's label...although he was more an upcoming HENDRIX/Living Color black guitarist at that time.

So...I do know more than just white boy music

I also managed an all-girl rockabilly band who went to HS with the Stray Cats. They doubled as the backup band for the 50s/60s R&B/DooWop band The Jive Five. If I could hang with those old school cats, drinking Thunderbird backstage...I think I can hang with any Black artists.

Besides, I also live and play in New Orleans part of  the time. You can't not know Black music and do that

Despite THAT.....I still think it is complete sacrilege that Little Wayne, form New Orleans, broke Elvis Presley's record for most Billboard #1 records!!

I STILL contend that rap records will go largely uncovered by future artists, which greatly destroys a songs future royalties value....which reinforces my point that rap should be classified as "Spoken Word" and not music. It IS a valid art form and social/political phenomenon but I contend, not music.
HipHop with melody and instruments is: rap over just beats, no.

And Affirative Action WAS the root of the decline of American radio. Stations WERE forced to hired unqualified persons by the FCC or face losing their broadcast licenses. I don't argue that mandatory 3rd Class Radiotelephone Operators Licenses  seemed excessive and maybe antiquated back in the mid-70s...but that was still the law, until the FCC killed that to enable Affirmative Action hirings.
Yeah...I still have mine in a folder too. had to drive a couple hours in a blizzard, from rochester to Buffalo, to take the test. I HAD to have one because I "combo'd" on my midnight to 6 a.m. shift, meaning there was no separate engineer who ran the turntables or pressed the buttons while I spoke. A lot of radio stations used to have separate engineers and separate voice DJs. The FCC required a radio station to always have an licensed engineer on duty, so if you combo'd, you had to have the FCC license because you were required to do hourly transmitter readings. In my case, at certain times during the night, I also had to change the transmitter power and broadcast direction. I would imagine all that sort of stuff is automated now but back then it was done manually in a roomful of huge rack electronics that looked like a SCi-fi movie from the '50s.

BTW I was also one of the first U.S. radio DJ regularly playing reggae on the radio and also produced some early reggae acts recordings.


NOW.....in a valiant attempt to segue this back onto the topic of the OP.....I don't think the Gibson 335 Bass would be my first choice, if I were playing in a funk, sisco or HipHop band.  I would probably go with a solid body bass. 

[Pilgrim]

Yeah...I still have mine in a folder too. had to drive a couple hours in a blizzard, from rochester to Buffalo, to take the test. I HAD to have one because I "combo'd" on my midnight to 6 a.m. shift, meaning there was no separate engineer who ran the turntables or pressed the buttons while I spoke. A lot of radio stations used to have separate engineers and separate voice DJs. The FCC required a radio station to always have an licensed engineer on duty, so if you combo'd, you had to have the FCC license because you were required to do hourly transmitter readings. In my case, at certain times during the night, I also had to change the transmitter power and broadcast direction. I would imagine all that sort of stuff is automated now but back then it was done manually in a roomful of huge rack electronics that looked like a SCi-fi movie from the '50s.

Maintaining our diversion (in the grand traditions here...), every station I worked at was a one-man operation when on the air.  Never had an "engineer" even if that was just a board op with a 1st phone so he fit the FCC requirements. I ran the board, pulled the music and spots, took the transmitter readings...and in many cases emptied the trash, was on-air at remotes and sold advertising as well.

Small market radio, most of it.  A TON of fun, and one of the things that has been almost entirely lost. I have never, ever done any work that's more fun than live radio with no safety net. Absolutely a blast!

Yup, I made those 30-minute transmitter readings, changed power, etc.  Many of the transmitters I worked with were probably 50's vintage. Loved those big bakelite buttons and analog dials and meters. I remember punching the buttons and throwing the switches at sign-on and watching the dials crawl up into the operating range.  Analog everything!