Gibson Mona-Steel Strings

[Grog]

I was at a local music store about ten years ago or so, & they had three sets of Gibson NOS bass strings from the sixties, probably the sets made after the orange box. One set was normal, one flat wound and the other black vinyl coated flat wounds. All short scale of course! I'll post a picture if I can remember where I stuck them.

[eb2]

When I first started taking lessons, there was an old guy who ran the music shop and he told me how he had some old "bass" picks in the rack. Seeing as they were specifically for bass, I bought one of them and it was the giant 1/4" thick felt pick.  It looked cool, as it had different colored stuff mixed in, red, black gray, etc.  It did sound kind of like finger playing, but it covered the whole front of the bass under the strings with this layer of lint that was a freaking mess.  I didn't want to wear out my Guild polish cloth, so that was that.

[uwe]

I actually played with a felt pick in the late seventies for a while. On ballads, to emulate a finger sound.

[Stjofön Big]

Well, Uwe. Now you're talking. "Late 70's", "Ballads". Those words gets me stone cold sober. I just wanna go home. Let's hear it, from the horses own mouth. Which ones were them ballads?

[uwe]

In my first band we had two ballads, the Ramones' "I wanna be your boyfriend" and Rough Diamond's (short-lived David Byron-led supergroup with Clem Clempson and a Wings drummer)   "Scared" (basically a 12-bar blues with one extra-chord).

I also used the felt pick (on a Korean Jazz Bass copy by noted maker "Johnny Guitar"!) on Ted Nugent's "Stranglehold".

Eclectic, ain't it? I'm sure there was no other band in the world that covered all three. : - )

We were called Thunderbolt btw.

[Stjofön Big]

Thunderbolt, good name!
Concerning covers, I was thinking in the line of I wanna know what love is, and that area. Though that tune came along some years later, you know the style I'm thinking of. Horrible!
Just watched Ramones doing the Ronettes number Baby I love you, from BBC. Really cool. Though noone can top the original. That Ronnie Spector...(droooool)

[patman]

Hey...

We still do "Be my Baby" from the Ronettes...works for me.

[Stjofön Big]

Yeah, great tune that one also. What a bunch of beautiful music from Ronettes and Crystals: Be my baby, Baby I love you, Da doo ron ron, Then he kissed me. (at this point I prefer to leave out He hit me, and it felt like a kiss. If I remember right, that record was withdrawn from the market. No wonder!)
Hrrm, "felt like a kiss"? I prefer "I hit it, with the felt of my pick".

[Dave W]

I never liked Phil Spector or his productions.

[Hornisse]

I really like his productions.  All Things Must Pass is a favorite.  He also composed one of my all time favorite Dusty Springfield songs. 

[Stjofön Big]

Dave, didn't you even dig To know him is to love him with The Teddybears?

[Stjofön Big]

Just read that Al Pacino is gonna do the role of Spector in a HBO-movie about the producer.
Now, can somebody please get us back on track again?

[Dave W]

Dave, didn't you even dig To know him is to love him with The Teddybears?

That was a good pop song. I never liked the "wall of sound" he came up with as a producer.

And we are on topic, it's just a different topic than we started out with. 

[patman]

Gotta agree with Dave that most of the time the wall of sound thing is too busy...

[Stjofön Big]

But, on the other hand, when he got into stuff like River deep, mountain high, and You've lost that lovin' feelin', then I thought he was really on top of the game. Great tunes, great performing, and a HUGE wall. Did anyone listen to Sonny Charles and Checkmates Ltd when they worked with Spector? Here you have two great tunes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVk6yYMnqsk&feature=related