Few observations:
- Except when singing, MT is a horizontal, not a vertical fretboard player, i.e. he moves from fret to fret, jumping quite a bit, when he plays those melodies of his, rather than staying in one position and moving from string to string. Most of his playing is either around the first five frets or 12 and higher, though he largely stays outside of the region where a TBird becomes uncomfortable, I only saw him play a note at the 19th fret once.
- He rests his pinky mostly underneath or on the lower edge of the treble pup and picks in the space between the two pups.
- He is not always that accurate!
To be fair, I was so close I could see and hear every little glitch.
- He plays a lot of octaves, power chords (on two or three strings) and open strings (downtunes E string to D often from song to song - someone give the man a Hipshot D-tuner!) and likes to hammer with his fist on the upper horn of the TB to let the E (or downtuned D as the case may be) ring on his bass.
- His playing is hardly ever in eights, mostly fours or less, straight or syncopated (which he does a lot), eights really only come into play when he plays his little melodies, but I did not once in the whole concert see him "throb" eights on a root note except during Living Proof.
Overall his bass playing is Chris Squire'rish upfront with a bony sound, but not as agressive and he was very loud in the mix though he plays with a lot of dynamics. He "stalks" through the music, rather than laying a foundation. A lot of melody bits which I used to think were played (overdubbed) by a guitar, are actually him playing up high with the E string ringing empty to keep the foundation. It works well.
So how do the two currently existing "Wishbone Ashes" compare? Even where the current bass player in the "other Wishbone Ash" (headed by Flying V-man Andy Powell, who is in legal strife with MT for all kinds of things) plays those Martin Turner riffs note-perfect (like the bass melody middle part in "Time Was"), it doesn't sound as upfront and "there" as Martin (even though Andy Powell's bass player - a five string Stingray finger player - has probably greater dexterity than Martin, he very much remains a backing bassist in his groove and attack). Similarly, the two guitarists MT has with him are good and replicate the twin harmony sound well, but don't have the edge Andy Powell and his current (very good) Norwegian sidekick has in the other Ash nor are they Ted Turner or Laurie Wisefield (technically the best and most versatile guitarist Ash ever had, it is no surprise that he is now making a good living as a session muso on Nokia Night of the Proms events or as the first choice guitarist in the Queen musical show in London's Westend). MT's drummer is very smooth and laid back, quite Steve Upton'ish, Andy Powell's drummer (barely a twen), in contrast, gives the music more of a kick up the butt. When Martin introduced his drummer to the audience, the latter lazily stroked his cymbals and toms a bit which had Martin cry out: "That wasn't even a drum solo ... you sound like Ginger ... Ginger Rodgers!" Martin's voice is still flexible and youthful, Andy Powell's vocals (who has adopted the lead singer role in the other Ash) strains in comparison when performing songs Martin originally sang, he's quite comfortable with the newer stuff though.
In any case, I was beaming thoughout the gig! And couldn't help find how much his playing is similar to mine though I never really analyzed his bass playing (or witness it) like I did last night.
