The Last Bass Outpost

It's a lovely feel-good movie and I swear you won't miss any language at all. Captures the era so succinctly (as Dave will no doubt confirm!).



John Goodman was made for this movie.



The film took only thirty days to shoot, but the main actors took six months of tap dancing lessons (every day).

Even back in her Runaways daze, I always thought lovely Lita geetar maid a little corny, she didn't have Cherie's teenage hooker on drugs appeal and didn't look as mindlessly cool as Joan (Sandy already looked back then like boys weren't among her top priorities and Jackie with her TBird looked like she really didn't want to be there). She was very much the all-American cheerleader in too tight hotpants wielding an Explorer - not my type at all. This was slightly unfair, I admit, as Lita was probably the best musician and certainly the best instrumentalist in the band, Joan Jett for all her cool never progressed much over that one bar chord she once learned and has made a career of moving around on the first 12 frets during the last three decades without ever quite mastering Johnny Ramone's ingenuity with that particular chord! Also, Joan never dated Ritchie Blackmore, Lita did, so there.

I didn't follow what Frau Ford did in the eighties either, anybody managed by Sharon O I tended to stay away from, I guess I heard that duet with Sharon's hubby once or twice. Last I heard, leathür Lita was married to an SM-obsessed realtor and released an album lauding her kinked up love life with him.



She was hit hard in the reviews too for that - her penultimate - album (I still write "album", I know it gives away my age).

Fast forward to today, the kinky realtor is history, Frau Ford has had a divorce and a broken heart, the old girl probably needs the money I thought so I bought her new album CD  after it had a favorable review in Classic Rock. "Living like a Runaway" 'tis called.

And what can I say? I like what I hear, she still is a competent guitarist (very European by the way, you can still hear how Blackmore was one of her idols), more tasteful than shreddy today, not afraid to add twin leads in thirds for good measure, but not overdoing it. She has recorded a nicely melodic hard rock - not heavy metal - album which won't change the world but shows good craftsmanship and a sense for a hook or two. Me like. And she'll never be Janis Joplin or Karen Carpenter, but I prefer her voice to Ms Jett's which I still find grating after two or three tracks to this day (and my fave Cherie could never sing, she just sneered into the microphone at best, but that with great attitude). Does remind me of Heart sometimes.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v55BqMZm7f4&feature=relmfu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JV2ilEwQng&feature=relmfu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myZMKmNHtZo&feature=relmfu

I know. I really should be too old for this kind of music. To my credit, I no longer have that poster here hanging in bed room, ok, though it did good service for a while.  

Sure emulates the real thing:





http://www.epiphone.com/Products/Electrics/Bass/Thunderbird-Classic-IV-PRO.aspx

do this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw1RKsPJKiE&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR3u8uUNlkg&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEAlkZcZD1c&feature=related

Trevor Horn (inter alia Buggles, Yes, mastermind of Frankie goes to Hollywood and Yes mid-eighties success, Grace Jones), Lol Creme (10 cc) and two others I didn't yet consciously know, aka The Producers, have made an album of sophisticated English pop, prog pop (prop?), whatever you may wish to call it. Is it polished? You bet. Soulless? Nope.

Arguably, the guys aren't much to look at but they do have a hand selecting their chick singers when they revisit their legacy:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKT4Q8cJ_7c&feature=related


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=Ie9yycZ8iAo&NR=1


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cubkCsEpIrA&feature=related

I'll go first. Heard the new Stone Roses compilation yesterday in the car. They are a band I know pretty much nothing about (aided by the fact that I always confuse The Stone Roses, Queens of the Stone Age and The Stone Temple Pilots with one another, but I'm good at telling the Rolling Stones apart, thank you!), save for the fact that Doug Stryker likes them and their bassist Mani, but then what does he know, he's Dutch after all.

Anyway, I listen to the first track, find it pleasantly catchy and hum the perceived chorus "I wanna be your dog" (all Brits are into SM, so it comes naturally to them) along, wondering just a little bit that this sounds nothing like the Stooges track of the same name (see out little Greek's Stooges thread!), maybe they just ripped off the title? Later on I look at the cover, wot, no "I wanna be your dog" listed?  

There it was/is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTxhIaS9GKs&feature=related

Not all of the new album is as "in your face", almost abrasive, it has very melodic parts too:




I've outgrown that type of bass sound (I used to die for it in the eighties), but I find it comforting that in an age where everything is honed to death to sound "nice", someone still has the guts to play with a tone like that.


Oh, btw, another new track, I guess approaching AOR (Alex Lifeson has both The Byrds and U2 influences down pat!) in Rush's angular own little musical world.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bkt51J7VNo&feature=relmfu


I've only heard the new album once so far, my first impression is that the last one was more immediately accessible and that this one "progs out" more, but they are certainly alive and kicking Canucks on it.

... would painstakingly replicate an ugly duckling Gibson budget bass (regularly met with harsh derision here in certain quarters):

 http://www.ebay.de/itm/Vintage-Hofner-Hofner-Bass-190-Stile-Gibson-EB-SG-/300723965354?pt=Gitarren&hash=item46048b8daa








I had no idea that Höfner copied Gibson so slavishly, much less an exotic and less than high value model such as the SB-300 (I think the Höfner is short scale by the position of the bridge, i.e. an SB-300 and not an SB-400 copy, EDIT: IT'S ACTUALLY LONG SCALE, SEE POST BELOW). And then that lovely inlay work which at the top is slightly reminiscent of a blotted out swastika, most tasteful, jawohl.  

Of course this post - quiet, Dave! - gives me the chance to once again laud the qualities of the SBs. I only recently restrung my SB-450 (the long scale minibucker twin to the SB-300 which has Melody Maker guitar single coil pups) with roundwounds (I had kept flatwounds on it before) and look and behold it sounded like a Ric at the rehearsal.