Who Loves Thick, Meaty (Syncopated) Basslines?

frogkopffrogkopf
edited January 2011 in General
I DO!

To me, they are the closest musical equivalent to food.


Here are some of my all-time favs. What are yours?

(YouTube links where possible)

If You want Me to Stay - Sly and the Family Stone . This song not only contains one of the best bass lines ever, it's the song that taught Prince about half of the vocal tricks he's used over his career.

Get on the Good Foot - James Brown. Without a doubt, James Brown could have about 100 entries on this list (Sex Machine, anyone?), but this is the first song that usually comes to mind when I thing Funky James Brown.

Rock the Casbah - The Clash - amazing bass line that makes the song, from the greatest secret dance band of the early 80s (cf. London Calling, Guns of Brixton, Armageddon Time).

The Real Me - The Who - I don't know what's more amazing on this song, the Ox's bass playing or Moonie's drumming. I present to you the Who at their very peak!


Lipstick Vogue - Elvis Costello and the Attractions - before he decided to become a Renaissance man, E.C. was capable of putting out some convincing rockers.The bass on the here really drives the song, and is in every way equal to the work on it's sister song Pump it Up.


Brick House - Commodores - one of the best 7 note bass lines of all time!

Word Up - Cameo - one of the best 3 note bass lines of all time!
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Comments

  • MuggsyMuggsy
    edited July 2012
    This is a thread I can get behind. I started playing bass around ten years ago, in my 30s, and one of the great things about that was going back to songs I've heard a million times and just focusing on the bass lines.

    The Real Me is one of my favorites. In their last few tours before Ox died, he used to do a solo during 5:15 that was just mind-blowing. There's video footage from a Royal Albert Hall gig where they mounted a camera on the headstock of his bass and you get that angle during the solo.

    The Lemon Song - Led Zeppelin: JPJ's walking line on this song grooves so hard. You could pick Zep songs out of a hat and find great bass work, but this one stands out.

    What's Going On - Marvin Gaye: James Jamerson! You could just run through the Motown catalog and come up with dozens of amazing Jamerson bass lines, but this one is a personal favorite because my bass teacher actually made me learn it once, note for note. Took me about two months. Bernadette, I Was Made to Love Her, For Once in My Life are a few others that spring to mind.

    Voices Inside (Everything is Everything) - Donny Hathaway: Willie Weeks, y'all! On the Donny Hathaway Live record, I give you one of the greatest bass solos ever recorded.

    I'll be coming back to this thread after I give it some more thought.

    Here's another one.

    For the Love of Money - O'Jays: Anthony Jackson on bass.

    [edited to fix links]
  • DoofyDoofy
    Muggsy, when I read this thread title, "For the Love of Money" was the song that clicked on in my head.
  • GermanprofGermanprof
    edited January 2011
    Possibly reinforced by Mick Karn's passing this week, what popped into my mind was Visions of China by Japan. The bassline of that song gripped me when it came out, and still fascinates me. It's so distinctive that I enjoyed finding it demonstrated by some guy on youtube to prove that it's actually being played on a bass... several other songs on the same album (Tin Drum) also have great basslines.
  • BigD-BluezBigD-Bluez
    Second The Lemon Song - it is the s**t.
    Off the beaten trail I love the bass from Victoria by The Kinks, and the weird bassline from Starman by David Bowie.
  • amclark2amclark2
    bump
  • BrighternowBrighternow
    edited January 2011
    I, love, Jaco. . .
  • MuggsyMuggsy
    edited July 2012
    Memphis Soul Stew - King Curtis: Jerry Jemmott rules.

    And who could forget Just Kissed My Baby - The Meters: George Porter, Jr. and Ziggy Modeliste are the funkiest rhythm section in the known universe.

    [edited to fix links]
  • frogkopffrogkopf
    edited January 2011
    I meant to put ujst Kissed my Baby, and even had the YouTube page opened, but forgot. And of course James Jamerson could have scads of songs here too (I Was Made to Love Her being a particular favorite).


    I agree with y'all on John Paul Jones - the inventor of many an excellent bass line. I think he suffered from the Ringo Starr syndrome - a solid, inventive, not-so-flashy band member whose work hasn't been given the credit it deserves because he was upstaged by the over-sized personalities of his band mates. You have a drummer who is unquestionably the most influential and most imitated hard rock drummer of all time; a guitar god who, with the exception of maybe Hendrix has expanded rock guitar's basic vocabulary more than anyone , and who is possibly rock's greatest riff-master; a sexy, strutting drama queen who is the object of lust and imitation by ball grabbing crotch-rockers everywhere, including many who weren't even born when the band broke up. And like Ringo, we has the perfect guy


    More meaty favorites:

    I Wish - Stevie Wonder

    Tell Me Something Good - Rufus (written Stevie Wonder)

    Flashlight - Parliament

    Ball of Confusion - Temptations

    Freddie's Dead - Curtis Mayfield

    Theme From Shaft - Chef Salty Balls

    Sometimes the simplest bass lines are the best.
  • MuggsyMuggsy
    All American Alien Boy - Ian Hunter with some guy named Jaco on bass.
  • BigD-BluezBigD-Bluez
    Ah, Jaco, the bane of many a bass player, who in their quest to be him ignore the basic bump that gets the booty oscillating.
  • MuggsyMuggsy
    Ah, Jaco, the bane of many a bass player, who in their quest to be him ignore the basic bump that gets the booty oscillating.

    True, but Jaco was a freak. He never lost that bump.

    Pow - Larry Graham and Graham Central Station. Pow indeed.
  • BigD-BluezBigD-Bluez
    Jaco was a freak. He never lost that bump.

    Agree completely. It's only wanabees who lose their way I have an issue with.
  • frogkopffrogkopf
    edited January 2011
    Although Jaco is often considered the Hendrix of the bass, I think Eddie Van Halen is a more apt analogy in many ways - a creative, inventive player with amazing chops who redefined his instrument for a generation of players, and while he himself often played with taste and flair, has a lot to answer for his inducing an army of wankers to make bad music.

    As anyone who has walked into guitar store anytime over the last 30 years can attest to, Eruption is show-off song of choice for the poseur brigade (although it's being edged out by that trebly, hyper-distorted chuck-chuck-chuck chuck-chuck-chuck deedle-dee deedle-dee deedle-dee deedle-dee deedle-dee deedle-dee favored by speed metal, much of whose vocabulary is based the the Van Halen lickbook).

    I used to teach bass once upon a time, and the number of guy who were beguiled the Jaco's technique and who could play most the notes but had zero feel for music was astonishing. I used to tell them to slow things down, learn as many bass lines as they could from the Motown and the Star Time box sets, listen how McCartney would make his bass sing, or how the Ox could build a series of riffs for the other band members to glide on, and then listen to Miles and Monk to learn how more could be less. Then go for the technical pyro-gymnastics if still moved to do so.
  • elwoodiciouselwoodicious
    @frogkopf, when I was taking lessons as a teen I was a wanker who wanted to play like a blend of Cliff Burton and Chris Squire. I was awful but I loved to play. Man, did I ever love to play. ::sigh::
  • MuggsyMuggsy
    Good quote from Duck Dunn: "You listen to one playback [in the studio] and think, that's not it, I'll play half of what I'm doing and it'll be right. Cut it in half and I'm there." That idea is lost on some, but just because you can shred doesn't mean you should.
  • BrighternowBrighternow
    edited January 2011
    squarepusher-n-bass_small.jpg - Coopers World
    Squarepusher session
    Squarepusher Tom Jenkinson Live Bass Show in Paris sept 2007
    Squarepusher - 'Solo Electric Bass 1' Live Video - seb-1.03

    Edit:
    Besides beeing a brilliant bass player he's also a top innovator of electronic music:
    Theme From Ernest Borgnine
  • frogkopffrogkopf
    How the hell could I have forgotten this and this?
  • frogkopffrogkopf
    How could I forget this meaty bass line by Slave?
  • MuggsyMuggsy
    It's been about a month, so I wanted to bump this thread back up. Here's one that's kinda obscure, from a lost 90s power pop classic album (Bingham's Hole by the Mommyheads). Jeff Palmer on bass:

    Broken and Glazed
  • Dr. MutexDr. Mutex
    Chameleon
  • BigD-BluezBigD-Bluez
    Finally, I remembered who went through my head one night while I had the old iPod on - the one with more classic material, and it is Felix Pappalardi. I love his bass lines, especially on the more melodic ballads like Taunta/Nantucket Sleighride, Tired Angels, or Theme For An Imaginary Western, a song which btw features for my money not one but two of the greatest guitar solos of classic rock (which one is better, the middle or the outro, I don't know).
  • DoofyDoofy
    How's this for a resurrected thread?

    Laura Love - "If You Leave Me Now" I know nothing about her, got the song off my wife's Lilith Fair disc, yet. But great song with a downright gymnastic "lead" bass - She really tears it up at the end.
  • kezkez
    @Doofy - that "If You Leave Me Now" by Laura Love sounds great. I've never heard of her, but she's got a really interesting bio here.

    Her diversity is pretty impressive. Here's what Allmusic says:

    51JXF1ZW72L._SL500_AA300_.jpg
    Laura Love was just another bass player on the Seattle grunge scene until a critic chastised her for wasting her talents in an "annoyingly pointless" band called Boom Boom G.I. Smacked with a midlife crisis before her time, she began writing songs which abandoned grunge altogether in favor of a uniquely eclectic mix of influences from around the world. So far-flung are these influences, in fact, that the all-American girl signed her first record contract with a world music label, Putumayo. The sole product of that contract is this anthology, which features highlights from her first three albums (all of which were issued on her own Octoroon Biography label). The Collection is an excellent introduction to Love's distinctive style, which she calls "Afro-Celtic." That's as good a description as any, but it fails to capture the breadth of her eclecticism. Her funky bass-plucking draws on soul and R&B, but her raw-but-rangy vocals seem most influenced by the blues and bluegrass. The widely varied rhythms come chiefly from African percussion, while the fiddling, pennywhistling, reeling, and balladeering of the Irish are littered throughout the album. The songs lack pop polish, favoring the authentic roughness of low-income musical traditions, both urban and rural. There are also healthy doses of Native American spirit, rock & roll drive, European yodeling, Harlem-style street poetry, and jazz swing. But the most inventive element of her songcraft is the dynamic vocal arrangement she gives to her memorable melodies. It seems impossible not to become engaged by the hyper harmonies, which lend considerable sophistication to bouncy lines like "A Ha Me a Riddle I Day" and "I d'nuh I d'nuh I d'nuh I do not always think less is more." When it comes to these richly layered arrangements, more very often is more.

    I think her album NeGrass consisting of old Afro-American spirituals looks interesting, too, as well as some of her other stuff. Thanks for the introduction. I've got her on my list now.
  • MuggsyMuggsy
    In memory of the great Bob Babbitt, Scorpio. Killer solo starting around the 2 minute mark.

    He's also on Ball of Confusion, which was mentioned earlier in this thread.
  • Daniel, Esq.Daniel, Esq.
    edited July 2012
    in 2005, stylus magazine released its list of the best 50 basslines of all time.

    not feeling many of their choices. and while under pressure does have a killer bassline, i wouldn't make it no. 1.
  • Daniel, Esq.Daniel, Esq.
    stylus' no. 4, tho, oh yeah. feelin' that one.
  • Daniel, Esq.Daniel, Esq.
    edited July 2012
    best ever? not sure, but here's a bassline 'earworm'.

    lists like this need a heavy dose of disco, funk, house, 2-step and garage, and so forth.
  • Daniel, Esq.Daniel, Esq.
    super-strong bassline in this song, but i'm not sure it's a bass guitar? so maybe it doesn't meet the criteria for this thread.

    but anyway, the bug's angry has a bone-rattling low-end bass sound. turn it up on good subwoofers and this song will shake your fillings.
  • Daniel, Esq.Daniel, Esq.
    goth rock needs some love here, too. no better than the thumping, attention-grabbing bassline of the sisters of mercy's lucretia, my reflection.
  • MuggsyMuggsy
    That Stylus list is absurd. Most such lists are pretty stupid, and all are (obviously) completely subjective, but that one is just asinine. I like Under Pressure, too, but I'm sure I could think of 50 bass lines off the top of my head that kick the crap out of that one. And bass players? No JPJ, no Paul McCartney, one Jamerson track, no Ox? Absurd, I say.
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