Bass Lessons from 1968

[Happy Face]

Yeah, so I bid for the rights to host a local radio show which a few folks may listen to. The theme will be the Mike Bloomfield family tree.  Including Electric Flag, of course.

I'll have to cull down my happy list to a few songs so I was listening to "A Long Time Coming" again for maybe the 10,235th time since the album came out.

But tonight, I really paid careful attention to all of Harvey Brooks awesome bass playing on that album. Namely the use of pauses, or what you guys what call lag or something.

Only now do I realize how much that album colored my playing since then. As a ninth grader I learned the bass part to Killing Floor note for note, but I never realized old Harvey had injected me with a but of groove and jazz and whatever when I worked on learning the other songs.*

Thanks Harvey!

Seriously.

* Except that useless Wine song which is the only song someone videoed at Monterey. 

[nofi]

i hate when i do this but i saw electric flag with bloomfield. mike provided the most spine chilling solo i have ever felt! i have pretty much seen all the guitar icons but bloomfield made them all look bad that night. imo he has been pretty much forgotten in the music world. most people know him from butterfield and electric flag and an uneven solo career. they should listen to the super sessions lp for a good dose of his playing, with harvey brooks. my 2 cents worth.

[Pilgrim]

Interesting comments.  I have the A Long Time Comin' album from my days as a disc jockey in the 60's, but I never could get into it.  Just wasn't what I was interested in listening to at the time.

Maybe I'll dig it out and give it another listen - after 40 years, that might be fair.

[Highlander]

i hate when i do this...

I presume this is what you meant by that... No need to... right time, right place... enjoy the memory, and it sounds like you did...

Someone I used to drink with "saw" the Beatles at the Hammersmith Odeon (iirc) with his family in '66 (they lived a 1/4 mile from there), but he was three and has no memory of it, so did he "see" them...? His brother was six and vaguely remembered it... I've met people that had the chance to see Duane and Berry play; one guy recalled the Fillmore shows... same guy recalled Hendrix at Woodstock, but his lasting memory of that event was the "smell"...

Every one of us here has probably seen something "special" that others would have liked to have the chance to have seen...

[mc2NY]

When I was editor of one of the big U.S. music equipment trade magazines, I had an assistant editor who I hired just out of college. He was good at English but they didn't teach him much else in college.
He was also a wannabe guitarist.

One weekend he went to the wedding of another of our publisher's magazines assistant editors, a girl he had gone to college with. It was a Jewish wedding and he came in MONDAY morning complaining about "some old, fat, bald Jewish guy" who was "drunk at the wedding" and "heard I worked at a music magazine, so he started telling me all sorts of bullshit....said he played with Dylan, the Doors, Steve Stills and with Mike Bloomfield on Super Session. The guys was SOOOO full of shit!"

I yelled over the cubicle wall..."His name wasn't Harvey, was it?"

The kid got real quiet and the said "Yeah. How'd you know that?"

I said "Harvey Brooks....one of the more famous bass players from the late 60s. Go ask for your college tuition money back cuz they didn't teach you much."

Funny.

[Rob]

When I was editor of one of the big U.S. music equipment trade magazines, I had an assistant editor who I hired just out of college. He was good at English but they didn't teach him much else in college.
He was also a wannabe guitarist.

One weekend he went to the wedding of another of our publisher's magazines assistant editors, a girl he had gone to college with. It was a Jewish wedding and he came in MONDAY morning complaining about "some old, fat, bald Jewish guy" who was "drunk at the wedding" and "heard I worked at a music magazine, so he started telling me all sorts of bullshit....said he played with Dylan, the Doors, Steve Stills and with Mike Bloomfield on Super Session. The guys was SOOOO full of shit!"

I yelled over the cubicle wall..."His name wasn't Harvey, was it?"

The kid got real quiet and the said "Yeah. How'd you know that?"

I said "Harvey Brooks....one of the more famous bass players from the late 60s. Go ask for your college tuition money back cuz they didn't teach you much."

Funny.