Archive for 2009 - Page 57

Wow, this video was really unexpected and pleasant surprise: legendary singer/songwriter Janis Ian performing “At Seventeen” with Richard Bona backing her up. The performance took place on a Dutch TV show a few years ago. More than once, Janis smiles at Bona’s playing (and harmonics).

The official biography of Metallica bassist Cliff Burton is now available. To Live Is to Die: The Life and Death of Metallica’s Cliff Burton highlights Cliff Burton’s career with Metallica and includes information on the making of the ground-breaking first three Metallica albums, Cliff’s short career and tragic death three and a half years after joining the band. The book...

Sara Wasserman, the daughter of legendary bassist Rob Wasserman debuts Solid Ground, an album seven years in the making. Solid Ground features Rob Wasserman as a guest musician, along with Aaron Neville, bassist Christian McBride, Lou Reed, turntablist DJ Logic, Jane’s Addiction drummer Stephen Perkins and Living Colour’s Vernon Reid. Preview the album: Amazon.com Widgets Sara’s had quite the musical...

We’ve been following John Goldsby on Twitter for a while now, and he’s one of the great friends to us and many others there. So as we were browsing for videos of John, I ran into this one. Four bass players, a vocalist and a drummer playing a phone book. I couldn’t resist. The four bassists include John, plus John...

Jazz bassist Christian McBride has released “Kind of Brown”, the debut album by his quintet Inside Straight. In addition to McBride, the quintet includes Eric Scott Reed on piano, Steve Wilson on sax, Carl Allen on drums and Warren Wolf on vibes. The album is an energetic acoustic jazz recording featuring seven original compositions, and includes renditions of “Where Are...

Alfred Publishing is releasing another bass tab book covering the work of prog-rock master bassist Geddy Lee. The Ultimate Bass Play-Along: Rush provides faithful transcriptions and play-along tracks on an included CD. As an added feature the CD contains a play-along version of each song (without the bass) as well as the complete track. It also includes software to slow...

This lesson is derived from Jon Burr’s The Untold Secret to Melodic Bass. Be sure to check out the complete method book in downloadable PDF or Kindle Book formats. We left off last week with an overview of the topics we’ll be covering in this series. The material this week is foundational; I doubt that you’ll be running to the...

If you read our previous post you know of the passing of bassist Hugh Hopper. Information about the details of his funeral have been released by his wife Christine: Hugh’s funeral will be on Thursday 25th June at 10am at Deerton Natural Burial Ground, which is situated close to the village of Teynham, in Kent (postcode: ME9 9LL). It will...

It seems I keep running into great double bassists on Youtube every day. Today, I discovered Al Cardillo for the first time. Al is a jazz bassist and teacher, born in Italy, graduated from Berklee and lives and performs in New York. Here he is, in a performance from a couple of years ago, performing John Clayton‘s Bach To Blues:...

Bassist and composer Arthur Kell has released a new album, Victoria / Live in Germany on Brooklyn Jazz Underground Records. The album features Loren Stillman (alto sax), Brad Shepik (guitar) and Joe Smith (drums) and was recorded live in Cologne and Karlsruhe (Germany) in May 2008. Kell has been around the New York jazz scene for over twenty years, playing...

July 17th 2009 will mark the second installment of The Low Show at this year’s Nashville NAMM show, at The Rutledge from 7:30 to 11:00pm. Bassists Bryan Beller (Steve Vai, Dethklok), Doug Johns (Buddy Miles), Sean O’Bryan Smith (Billy Ray Cyrus, Rebecca St. James) and Roy Vogt (Dickey Betts, Jerry Reed) will be performing with their bands in a bass-focused...

Our friend Sebastiano, aka monsterbazz, has just posted another multi-track video performance of Michael Land’s The Secret of Monkey Island. Sebastiano is playing bass and ukulele on the video. For the lead, he runs his bass through an effect to take the bass an octave higher. He shares: “This is simply a jam and I have never played this song...