I Made a Move

I don’t think I made this move too soon— I played a show last night. Claudia’s friend Lynette’s husband Dan plays for a band. This band was playing a private party at a house and they needed a bass player to fill in. I agreed to do it. The band is basically a garage band, a bunch of middle aged guys who have a band that plays mostly Top 40 hits from 1972, plus a few extras from other eras in the same vein. I spent a good chunk of yesterday working up all of the songs for the show, and then played two sets with the band on my trusty Precision. This is the set list:

I knew most of the songs because they were all popular when I was young, but I don’t think I ever played any of them on stage ever. Most of them were very simple structures, and the couple that weren’t were pretty easy to pick up. I admit that I had the changes for Brandy by Looking Glass wrong in my mind for all these years, that one took a little neural re-wiring to get under my fingers.

We played Low Rider by WAR late in the evening and I pretty much had to drive the bus on that one. Keeping a highly syncopated one-chord/two-bar funk groove exciting for an extended period of time is a non-trivial task for the bass and drums. You have to play the same lick over and over and only ever vary it the slightest bit while staying totally locked in, so whatever is happening up front can go wherever they want to go.

And I’m still not sure if the link on the original WAR recording has a major 3rd in it or a minor 3rd. I hear it as a major 3rd but it seems opinions vary on the internet.

(Both the audio snippets this week have metronome. Sorry if that bums anyone out.)

On the jazz front, Joseph the piano player came back ill from his holiday vacation and we had to postpone our 3rd session. I’m disappointed but I surely do not want to get sick myself, nor to make anyone else sicker than they already are. Get vaccinated for COVID and flu if you have not already done so please!

I’ve been working on a couple of tunes in particular on the upright bass. My 1990s band used to attempt Jaco’s quadruple-time arrangement of Invitation every once in a while (which almost always turned into a train wreck) but I found a piano/bass version from Bill Evans and Eddie Gomez that I really like and I’ve been working on a minimalist Latin vibe for Invitation.

And Joseph mentioned wanting to play the Wayne Shorter tune Footprints. Footprints is usually a jazz waltz over a pretty normal 12-bar blues form, but Joseph mentioned playing it in 5/4 time rather 3/4, which sounds like fun. (My 1990s band used to play My Favorite Things in 5/4 which works for most of the tune, but the bridge would often be a train wreck. Speaking of train wrecks.)

There are two ways to approach left hand position for Footprints. I checked out some of the great bass players running down Footprints and every one of them moved effortlessly between the two approaches. I’m trying to get them both under my fingers before I go jam on the tune with someone who knows what they’re doing. I’m sure we’ll get a 3/4 version down first. Here’s a take with the two approaches one after the other, twice through the form of the song.

Until next time, don’t make your move too soon…