Author Topic: Songs you dislike with great bass lines  (Read 4945 times)

bobyoung

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Re: Songs you dislike with great bass lines
« Reply #15 on: July 19, 2009, 03:55:18 PM »
Just to keep up the tradition of changing the direction of a thread, I'd like to bring up some good songs with bad bass lines. I was driving home from a jam session last Saturday night and on the radio they were playing some  tapes of old BBC live broacasts, all of which I had never heard before. They played a couple of tunes of what was possibly the first Rolling Stones gig , in any event very early stuff. It was announced that the name Rolling Stones was only a couple weeks old at that time and Mick Jaeger was quoted as saying he thought his band was "about ready to do a gig " .
The only tune that I was familiar with was Reelin' and Rockin' , but they played a few others too. Mick Jaegers' voice sounded  as good or better than anything I've ever heard him do, the guitar was very raw, as was just about anything rock and roll of that era, but it was good. Bill Wymans' bass playing was abso -freakin-lutely pathetic :o. He had no idea of what he was doing. Nothing even close to a walking bass line, most of the time he could find the root note(but not always), once in a while he would find another note or two in the proper scale(but not always) and part of the time he would hit a note on the beat(but not always).
I find it hard to believe this guys musical career didn't end that night or at least end with the Stones. But as luck would have it, he goes on to have one of the most successful careers that any musician could dream of, and acheives godlike status......WTF ???

Has anyone else heard any of this stuff??   Was Bill Wyman really that bad??  Am I just growing into a bitter old sourpuss??    Will Lassie find a way to get Timmy out of the well??.....................  So many questions :P

Rick



I'm not sure what stuff you're talking about either, but I bought a 4 CD set called "More stoned Than You'll Ever Be" (I think, my brother in law has it) a few months ago and lived with these 4 CD's in may car for about two months. I got it on ebay but think it's a very high quality bootleg, anyway there's some live stuff from the BBC and other venues from their very early days and I think Wyman is great on it, always had a great sound. It starts with their first studio demos, but has a lot of early live stuff. I thought he did great on Chuck Berry's stuff. This stuff puts to rest the story that they weren't a good band live, I think that just like The Beatles They couldn't hear themselves later on when they got famous because they are excellent on the live stuff on this set. They were opening for Georgie Fame and The Blue Flames which shows how early it is. It ends with Exile on Main St era stuff.
I highly recommend it if you can find it.

rahock

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Re: Songs you dislike with great bass lines
« Reply #16 on: July 20, 2009, 05:28:05 AM »
The stuff that I heard was stuff that I had never heard before. It's hard to believe that there are Stones tapes out there that never made it to vinyl or CD, but I guess anything is possible. Many elements of that tape sounded much better than they did when I caught them live several years later. Mick Jaegers voice was probably better and cleaner than just about anything I've heard him do in the studio. The band was in general, pretty darn tight. Bill Wyman, if it was in fact Bill Wyman at that early point, really was out there in space.
I didn't post this to rip Wyman,  because  basiclly I've always liked his work , but on this early performance I thought the bass was just pathetic :o
Rick