The Last Bass Outpost

I'm going to have to agree with one of the comments below the article which says, in effect, if a bass isn't holding the bottom, if it's losing the groove, it isn't bass.  It's just telling people you can play lead guitar on big strings. 

With a few exceptions (such as Hendrix,) lead guitar solos bore me out of my mind.  Why should I want to listen to someone trying to do the same thing for bass?  Something which a bass really isn't designed for, I might add.

http://www.notreble.com/buzz/2011/12/18/all-bass-no-treble-when-is-a-bass-not-bass/

I accidentally discovered this and was pleasantly surprised. 

Recently, I got into a discussion with two people who like the Dave Matthews Band a lot.  One of them is a good friend.  So our discussion was polite, interesting and civil.  We had already established that our tastes in music were very different.  So, it was no surprise when I asked her about Dave Matthews and she said she liked him.  The other person isn't a friend, and in fact, got really offended, lashed out at me, said he hated bands that I liked, etc. 

I realize that people do have different tastes.  Nothing could be more obvious.  Yet, I am baffled that the DMB is so incredibly successful.  I've tried listening to the music several times and it's always the same result.  With the possible exception of Modest Mouse, this may be the worst music I've ever heard.  It sounds like a drunk person mumbling.  Earlier today, mostly out of curiosity, I made one last attempt to listen to Dave Matthew songs on YouTube.  The result is that it actually physically drained me.  It was kind of like recovering from the flu.  You're trying to be okay, but feel so weak and drained anyway.  Yet according to Wikipedia, the DMB made more money and sold more tickets from 2000 to 2010 than anybody else.  I guess I must be living in the wrong country.  I honestly don't understand what's going on.  Also, what kind of music is this anyway?  One person described it as "mood music."  I have no idea what that is even supposed to mean.   Dave Matthews has been around for quite a while.  I had assumed that sooner or later I would figure out what the appeal is supposed to be with this music, but that simply has never happened. 

A friend asked me if I had heard of this guy.  I hadn't.  I looked him up and he is Australian.  It looks like most of the time he has a solo act, literally doing everything himself.  But here is a video of him performing with a bassist and drummer.  It's too bad they don't get together as a real band.  They're better than a lot of people who are supposedly real bands, IMO.  Evidently, this is from a private party.  As for the artist Claude Hay himself, all I know is what I just looked up on Wikipedia.

Edit:  Based on the caption on this video, maybe this is already a real band.  Looking at all the other videos on this on YouTube, it doesn't look like it.  But I just don't know for sure.  Regardless, it's good music to wake up to on a Sunday morning. 

It seems like somebody has been listening to "Manic Depression."

There is a new movie about Jimi Hendrix which has been around for a while.  It has already played in Canada and will be playing at SXSW in Austin, Texas soon.  I've known about this movie for quite a while.  I assumed it wouldn't get much attention because it's pretty much a low-budget indie film.  However, now that the director (John Ridley) has just received an academy award for another movie recently, it appears that the Hendrix movie itself will also receive more attention than it might have.  It's called "All Is By My Side."  All the reviews I've read are mostly positive.  Personally, though, I'm very skeptical about the movie.  There isn't any of Hendrix's own music (because the estate refused to cooperate.)  Also, John Ridley appears to be really focused on Linda Keith--at the apparent expense of Kathy Etchingham who was Hendrix's girlfriend in London.

Although Kathy's remarks aren't getting a great deal of attention, I think maybe they should.  According to her, Hendrix is shown as being violent toward her when, in fact, she says he was never violent at all.  I've read about one scene already in the movie in which Hendrix gets angry and both he and Kathy end up in the hospital.  According to Kathy, this never happened.  Nothing violent ever happened.  Kathy also says that the movie shows Jimi as being neurotic, indecisive, and needing way more guidance than he ever needed in real life. 

In Kathy Etchingham's opinion, John Ridley has taken her book about Hendrix and "twisted the facts to fit his own warped agenda."  She says "Mr Ridley has taken the story and turned it into a dull as ditchwater work of fiction while claiming it is a 'true story.'"

Of course, there is no guarantee that everything Kathy Etchingham says is completely accurate, either.  That's obvious.  But her objections should be noted.  I'm certainly noting them.  I haven't even seen the movie, obviously, and there is only so much I can know about it.  But especially considering all these objections I'm seeing by Kathy Etchingham, I do have some doubts about it.  This is what she says in a Huffington Post article:

"A lot of people will go and see it who have never read any of the biographies and they will think it's gospel truth," Etchingham warned. "I don't want it to fundamentally change history."

She has other complaints, but I'm only trying to focus on the basics.  For one thing the actor playing Hendrix is 38 at a time period when Hendrix himself was in his early 20s.  Also, Kathy says the clothes worn by the characters look like something from an Austin Powers movie, etc.  I doubt very seriously if I'll see the movie.  I applaud the effort of the actor portraying Hendrix.  I can see he did pour his heart into this.  But I've already read about too many inaccuracies to be interested in this movie.  The movie critics may love it.  But to me it would be like a Lincoln aficionado going to see "Abraham Lincoln:  Vampire Hunter."

http://io9.com/a-squirrel-attempts-to-hide-a-nut-in-the-fur-of-a-berne-1518859468

Although I was familiar with the artists themselves, I'm just now discovering that there is a genre called heartland rock which, frankly, I was unaware of.  The main artists in it seem to be Bob Seger, John Mellencamp, Bruce Springsteen, and Tom Petty.  As I've noted in another thread, I'm not really very fond of Bruce Springsteen anyway, but I honestly didn't know, either, that he is supposedly the most successful artist in this genre.  Certainly, I've listened to Bob Seger and Tom Petty and enjoyed their music, although never really considering myself a fan.  But when it comes to the other two, I've found myself usually passing over their music.  My research is very fragmentary, but it seems one artist which might be a pioneer of this genre was Mitch Ryder.  I suppose his success was limited, but I did like very much his mid-60s hit with the Detroit Wheels, "Devil With A Blue Dress/Good Golly Miss Molly."  A current band associated with the heartland genre is the Killers.  In general, I haven't liked most of their songs, but I do like "Somebody Told Me."  Maybe it's because my experience in America has been so far away from the heartland, the rust belt areas, and other areas associated with heartland rock, but I really do kind of feel I've been left in the dark on all this.  Probably, though, because of my own negligence.  According to the article, heartland rock reached its peak in the mid-80s or so.  My attention was mostly on other music at that time.  I suppose there is only so much music a person can keep up with. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartland_rock


As far as I'm concerned, this song kicks ass--