The Last Bass Outpost

23 negatives is indeed not to be taken lightly. He's offered zero back-up, that is true.

Well, now he's reunited with his original unit and I'm sure he'll have a story or two to tell!

When you die at 110 for natural causes after having survived two World Wars there is really no reason to complain.

You can't rule it out that they did something like that in the mid-seventies, sparkle green being a disco color and the Grabber being a bass you could slap.

If they did this



then why not something in sparkle green? To be sure you would need much better pics or look at the bass in person.

Goes to show how you can really mess up a TBird look. 

I would expect that a string-thru set up gives more sustain as there is greater saddle pressure while non-string thru with less saddle pressure will let the bass breathe more and sound more resonant. As such the set-up in the above pics (which I have seen before on other bridges too) does make sense as more than just a demonstration of what can be done. Deep sounding E and A with lively D and G is a preference of many bassists.

I remember seeing Police at a German TV show in the late seventies, their debut had just come out. They played I can't stand losing you. I was stunned and immediately thought: Those guys will be huge. And they were. Unlike AC/DC and U2 which I also saw in their flegling days and was utterly convinced they would go nowhere.  

In those very early days the Police also supported Whitesnake (Coverdale thought they would be huge too) and at a rock festival in Germany Barclay James Harvest (who then ruled the earth in Germany) and Dire Straits. At that festival they were bottled off the stage and had to cut their set short, the Barclay and Dire Strait fans didn't want no "punk band".

I've always thought that Gordon Summer's bass playing is unique in its counterpunctual placing of notes. And he sang to that stuff too. Copeland (I even have some of his work with Curved Air) and Andy S. were extremely original, breath-of-fresh air instrumentalists (Andy Summers played guitar on Jon Lord's Sarabande), but it was Sting's songwriting that propelled them forward and made them more than just a clever New Wave band. My liking for them diffused as their arrangements became more and more orchestral and left the trio sound behind. The magic of Police is encapsulated in those first two albums for me, Zenyatta Mondatta already floundered and the next two still had their moments but not the urgency and commitment of the first two. By then they were multi-millionaires carefully crafting their output and it was all a little safe.  

Sting's solo career has left me totally cold. His music epitomizes the kind of "rock" people hear who don't really like rock. Off their Bang & Olufson stereos which are not supposed to clutter up the interior design of their apartments. Yuck.

I've had pranks played on me and I just don't take myself serious enough to ever be offended. As long as a prank doesn't endanger anybody - this one certainly didn't, at least none of the golfers - I'm fine with it. Schadenfreude is great as long nobody gets hurt.