OK, dumb yourself down for a minute to indulge my observation (e.g. sniff glue, self-inflicted 2X4 to the head, tap the rockies, etc.) Just wanted to share this with everybody...

I heard "Head Over Heels" by Tears for Fears on the radio the other day, and what a cool bass line! I know--the song is straight 80's pop--but I was really suprised by how much song is carried by the simple, yet dynamic bass line. Even the outro fretboard slides are cool. If I was in an 80's cover band, it would probably be fun to play.

Any similar experiences?

KK

How about Sourgirl by Stone Temple Pilots. When I first heard it, I loved the bassline, even though it's a pretty cheesey song.

Dave

How about 98% of the stuff from the disco era? A lot of those songs were completely cheesy, but the bass playing on most of them was funky as hell. Check this month's BP for a good example.. the article on Janice-Marie Johnson.. "Boogie Oogie Oogie."

How about Paul McCartney's Silley little love songs Great bass line cheesy song.
Dave I have been a Janice Marie fan forever she's a talented bassplayer I love cheesy disco:D

Originally posted by Funkster
I have been a Janice Marie fan forever she's a talented bassplayer I love cheesy disco:D

Me too, I always wondered why I liked that stuff back then, and as soon as I started playing bass, I figured it out! :)

"Rio" - Duran Duran

Originally posted by Funkster
How about Paul McCartney's Silly little love songs Great bass line cheesy song.
Dave I have been a Janice Marie fan forever she's a talented bassplayer I love cheesy disco:D


No kidding! The song even pokes fun at itself, but that bass line is excellent. I play along with that sometimes when I need a pick-me-up.

my idea of cheesy song cool bass line is Queen's Crazy little thing called love. I use it as a warm up for practice all the time.

Let's see here:

*ANYTHING by Chic (Bernard Edwards was incredible, but
those LYRICS!)

*Loverboy's "Turn Me Loose" (a simple octave thing,
but it WAS the first bassline I picked up in '81) and
"Take Me to the Top"

*Duran Duran - "Rio"'s been mentioned, but how 'bout
"Girls on Film"(very Bernard Edwards-ish) and "Save a Prayer"?

*Kajagoogoo - "Too Shy" (OK, OK, guys, I know I'm pushing
it! HAHA)

*Most of McCartney's post-Beatle work (Hey, but Macca's
STILL my main man!)

Originally posted by Christopher
"Rio" - Duran Duran

I was going to say the same thing.

-GM

Here's one for you:

The Four Seasons- December, '63 (Oh What a Night)

I'm not sure who the bassist is but he does some killer grooving in that song!

Here's another one: "Come and Get Your Love" by
Redbone. It's got some cool 16th-note finger-funk.
Almost Rocco-esque (well, maybe I wouldn't go THAT
far).

Originally posted by Bassin'
Here's one for you:

The Four Seasons- December, '63 (Oh What a Night)

I'm not sure who the bassist is but he does some killer grooving in that song!


Agreed. Except that's not a cheezy song! It's got a great horn arrangement and a great hook.

Originally posted by Stingray5
Originally posted by Bassin'
Here's one for you:

The Four Seasons- December, '63 (Oh What a Night)

I'm not sure who the bassist is but he does some killer grooving in that song!


Agreed. Except that's not a cheezy song! It's got a great horn arrangement and a great hook.


Well, the lyrics are a bit cheesey...:)

I love 80s music.
Anything Duran Duran and you're going to laugh at me but Wham had some cool bass lines too.

(Pause, waiting for laughter to die down)

I love the 70s too, check out Earth,Wind and Fire, Al Jerreau and anything Stevie Wonder.
And for disco/funk try a band called Pleasure their songs are cheesy but the bass is funky as hell!

Originally posted by sgraham
*Kajagoogoo - "Too Shy" (OK, OK, guys, I know I'm pushing
it! HAHA)

*

I just heard this song again for the first time in about 20 years, and yeah, the bassline is killer! Kinda Jaco-esque melodic stuff. (song is VERY cheesy though!)

Here's the bass player, Nick Beggs, armed with Chapman Stick, looking very gay ;). Says he recently toured with Howard Jones:

http://www.kajagoogoo.com/bandmembers/nick1.jpg

This is like true confession time, but as much as I hated The Village People, I always dug the hell out of the bass line (and tone - WOW!) from "YMCA". If I could ever pick a definitive vintage P-bass sound, that would be it.

okay, i know its not a real bassline, but that dub/bass/synth part of the chemical brothers "block rockin beats" is cool TO ME.

btw the way stingray5, if i put a cuecat on your signature line, is it going to take me somewhere?

I love the 70s too, check out Earth,Wind and Fire, Al Jerreau and anything Stevie Wonder.
And for disco/funk try a band called Pleasure their songs are cheesy but the bass is funky as hell! [/B][/QUOTE]

MAN!!! The 70's were it! Back home in Portland Oregon, I used to go hear Pleasure
play in the clubs! WHEW!!!! FUNKY!!!! Nate Phillips and Bruce Carter! That
was a rhythm section! EWF, Chic, Brother Johnson all that late 70's early 80's
funk/disco had some cool bass stuff on it!

hey cornbread! I luv that Stone Temple Pilots song too! that really is an awesome bass line!

this summer at a jazz camp on the campus of Eastern Illinois University (I was there for trombone), we were forced to watch a showchoir performance, because there was a show choir camp there at the same time as the jazz camp. However, the bass player was great, he flew up and down the neck the whole time. Wish I could have heard the bass amidst all the stupid singing :mad: .

Almost anything by the aforementioned Duran Duran.

Growing up in the late 70's early 80's, all of my metalhead friends always trashed them like the boy bands get trashed today. I had to hide my enjoyment of their music in general and John Taylor' bass playing in particular.

Of course, the best are Rio and Girls on Film.

Remember the Rolling Stone's bow to disco? I was so surprised to hear Miss You but I loved the bass. And for that matter, I liked the disco bass riff it breaks into midway through Steve Martin's King Tut.

"My Sharona"

This is an old thread but I'll jump in here anyway.

Yeah there's a lot of cool basslines in all that 80's pop.

Thumbs up on "December 1963"- has a neat little lick in it too(although I think that came out in the 70's

The Fixx-"Saved By Zero"-nice melodic fretless, "One Thing Leads to Another"-cool pops in the verse, neat moving part in the choruses.

U2- Hey say what you want about Adam Clayton but "Gloria" is an awesome tunes with a cool driving bass part and (what!)a bass solo!(well I guess you could call it a bass "interlude")

Joan Armatrading- "I Love It When You Call Me Names"- A completely cool overlooked Tony Levin stick line.

Duran Duran- Agreed on "Rio" also "Hungry Like the Wolf"-some tasteful pops during the choruses.

Even "In A Big Country" has a cool thing going on.

Ha ha ha. I sound like I just got a "Best of the 80's" CD.

Oh! 2 more! Both of those JGeils tunes-"Freeze Frame" and "Centerfold" with Danny Klein, a Boston dude like me, doing some neat slap and pop amidst the cheese.

How about the Cure and the Psychadelic Furs?Both bands had great bassists;I'm not suggesting that these groups adhere to the thread's original question.Oh yeah,what about Crowded House?

Ricky James
super freak

and of course Duran Duran, rio

Originally posted by jimmysquid
::snip::
Ha ha ha. I sound like I just got a "Best of the 80's" CD.

::snip::


Believe it or not, I ordered the Time Life series :rolleyes:!

Originally posted by embellisher
Originally posted by jimmysquid
::snip::
Ha ha ha. I sound like I just got a "Best of the 80's" CD.

::snip::


Believe it or not, I ordered the Time Life series :rolleyes:!
I don't suppose Yanni is in your collection? I'm a big Carpenters fan myself!!!

Originally posted by Willie Dizon
Originally posted by embellisher
Originally posted by jimmysquid
::snip::
Ha ha ha. I sound like I just got a "Best of the 80's" CD.

::snip::


Believe it or not, I ordered the Time Life series :rolleyes:!
I don't suppose Yanni is in your collection? I'm a big Carpenters fan myself!!!

While my musical tastes are wide, they are not THAT wide. :)

But I DO like the Carpenters, don't own any of their recordings, though.

(for all the flames that may ensue) but I love bill wyman's playing on the rolling stones album "emotional rescue".

most critics say this album is the nadir of their career, but what do i know, anyway?

"she's so cold, she's like an ice cream cone"

Originally posted by embellisher
Originally posted by Willie Dizon
Originally posted by embellisher
Originally posted by jimmysquid
::snip::
Ha ha ha. I sound like I just got a "Best of the 80's" CD.

::snip::


Believe it or not, I ordered the Time Life series :rolleyes:!
I don't suppose Yanni is in your collection? I'm a big Carpenters fan myself!!!

While my musical tastes are wide, they are not THAT wide. :)

But I DO like the Carpenters, don't own any of their recordings, though.
I used to own them on vinyl,said the old fart.

Yeah, Carpenters tunes were VERY cheesy but they
had good arrangements and very cool melodic bass-
lines by the great Joe Osborn.

Joe Osborne? Cool,no wonder.Thanks for the info!

Originally posted by CROZ
"My Sharona"

You took mine. No fair!

I just thought of a new one: fits the title of the thread perfectly; Any Primus song.
C'mon they're cheesy...you know it.

wow! I don't belive it!

at last someone shares the idea that Duran Duran stuff got great basslines (view to a kill, save a prayer, is there something I should know, wild boys and of course RIO)!

I got their "best of" CD half a year ago, they simbolize the sound of the 80's for me, and hell, how can you compare them to todays boy bands...they played by themselves, they wrote by themselves, real musicians...or at least in comparison to Backstreet boys :-)

also cheesy but got great basslines are Level 42 but they are jazz musicians who wanted to do money so I don't blame them for writing pathetic lyrics.

check out for Spandau Ballet, brian ferry songs, UB40.

80's were the time for innovative musical stuff. metal in the 80's was great, today it's just some punks weilding 7 string guitars and pumping out ugly garbage truck sounds with no real musical knowledge.
good thing there is a metal scene in Germany today to supply real good metal (and also there are Dream Theater in their very own niche').

When warming up for a club gig or trying out a bass I usually play Allen Wentz's line from "Play That Funky Music White Boy," (Wild Cherry), and/or Hamish Stuart's line from "Pickin' Up the Pieces," (Average White Band). The club gigs' lead guitarist gets on me about it because he is a "serious artiste" and considers those cheesy songs. More often than not, some of the women who arrive early at the clubs and some of the waitresses start shakin some earnest bootay when they hear the warm up. What the hell, I play for them, not him.

Digital Underground: The Humpty Dance

"Ahhh Yeah! Let me let that bass groove for a little bit... {imitates bass with voice}"

All ya gotta do is give Humpty a chance, and I'm gonna do my dance :D

tis the season.....

the waitresses - christmas wrappings

How about John Lennon and Elton John:
Whatever gets you through the night

Killer bass line, extremely hard to play, trust me.

But the song, well... not sooo good ;)

I will survive by cake. not the other version, the cake version.

Originally posted by 5156246
How about John Lennon and Elton John:
Whatever gets you through the night

Killer bass line, extremely hard to play, trust me.

But the song, well... not sooo good ;)


Musically I would agree that song is pretty cheesey, but some of the lyrics are good. "Don't need a gun to grow a flower"...cool :D

"If I lived back in the Wild West days, instead of carrying a six-gun in my holster, I'd carry a soldering iron. That way, if some smart-aleck cowboy said something like "Hey, look. He's carrying a soldering iron!" and started laughing, and everybody else started laughing, I could just say, "That's right, it's a soldering iron. The soldering iron of justice." Then everybody would get real quiet and ashamed, because they had made fun of the soldering iron of justice, and I could probably hit them up for a free drink."


Bill Brasky, don't you mean . . . . . "souldering iron"?

I copy and pasted that and that's how it was spelled. I always thought is was soldering though, but I could be wrong I guess.

Bill Brasky? It's a pun! ! ! Maybe it's just English humour, or maybe you Yanks just aren't into "word play". Soldering Iron of Justice is a "soulful" idea - yeah? . . . . . . . . . . . No?

A lot of what you guys are mentioning I don't consider "cheesey"; I thought there was a lot of cool stuff going on in the 80's...certainly cooler than today's pop music. Duran Duran's musicanship was excellent, and bands like the Smiths, the Cure, and Loverboy were great! And Adam Clayton from U2 is one of my top 5 bassists; I love his simplicity and his lower than low sound. Besides, what else you gonna do with a drummer like Mullen and the Edge, Mr. Arpeggio? He fits perfectly.

I would also like to toss in INXS for some excellent bass lines, from almost anywhere in their catalogue, but I especially like the album, "The Swing." Outstanding. Modern English' "After the Snow" album had some great stuff, too, and is an excellent album: "Life In the Gladhouse" is a good example of delay on a picked-P-bass, sounds cool :) There is some very melodic yet simple bass playing on that album.

I also liked some of the Go-Go's lines...Valentine played some sweet lines that really propelled the music.

One I'm a little reluctant to admit I like is "Primal Scream" by Motley Crue. I don't care for them, but I do like that one song alot, and the bassline rocks.

I still like to play along occasionally with "Suddenly Last Summer" by the Motels, or some Missing Persons, too.

"Atomic" and "Dreaming" by Blondie will both keep your hands busy, too. Great tunes.

I could go on, but my point is that I liked a lot of 80's music, and the bands' seemed to be more diverse then than they are now. Too many soundalikes in the 90's. There were some soundalikes in the 80's but not nearly as bad.

Oh, don't get me started on the this...Anyway, those are some pop tunes from the 80's that I thought had some cool lines :)

what about that Aaliyah song that was on the radio all summer. You know, "dust yourself off and try again..." or whatever she says. It's got this super cool synth bass line. I think Timbaland did the beat and music. There are some really tight basslines on the "Makavelli" cd by tupac, although some of the songs kind of suck, the basslines are almost always good.

Kim Mitchell ~ "Go for Soda"
I think Geddy had a hand in this one...gurgle => gurgle => gurgle ...