Best and worst sounding bass songs/albums

[jaywa]

Criteria being not necessarily the performance or the song(s), but tone and being appropriately high in the mix. No particular order.

BEST SOUNDING

- David Bowie, Let's Dance (this album is over 20 years old and STILL sounds awesome)
- U2, Unforgettable Fire
- Metallica, "Black Album" (1st album of theirs you can actually hear the bass)
- Lisa Loeb "I Do" (leadoff track from her album Firecracker, bassist is Lee Sklar and the part and the tone both just KILL)
- RHCP, Blood Sugar Sex Magik (one of the best sounding albums in total of all time)
- Bryan Adams, Reckless

WORST SOUNDING

- Any Metallica album before the Black Album (And Justice for All being the worst offender and one of the worst mixed records of all time)
- Thin Lizzy, Jailbreak (another really bad overall mix)
- Van Halen, OU812 and 5150 (no bass, and truly awful drum sounds besides)

[JimK]

I always thought Niacin's High Bias was a good example of how NOT to record an EB.

IMO, anything produced by Gary Katz had a nice bass sound.

[Alan Vorse]

Originally Posted by jaywa

Criteria being not necessarily the performance or the song(s), but tone and being appropriately high in the mix. No particular order.

BEST SOUNDING

- David Bowie, Let's Dance (this album is over 20 years old and STILL sounds awesome)
- U2, Unforgettable Fire
- Metallica, "Black Album" (1st album of theirs you can actually hear the bass)
- Lisa Loeb "I Do" (leadoff track from her album Firecracker, bassist is Lee Sklar and the part and the tone both just KILL)
- RHCP, Blood Sugar Sex Magik (one of the best sounding albums in total of all time)
- Bryan Adams, Reckless

WORST SOUNDING

- Any Metallica album before the Black Album (And Justice for All being the worst offender and one of the worst mixed records of all time)
- Thin Lizzy, Jailbreak (another really bad overall mix)
- Van Halen, OU812 and 5150 (no bass, and truly awful drum sounds besides)

To this day, I just don't get this. I NEVER had a problem hearing Cliff Burton on those recordings.

[NOLA Bass]

One of the best recorded bass tones was Eddie Jackson of Queensryche on Operation Mindcrime and Empire. Just killer Spector tone!!! More killer bass tone on just about any King's X record (the new one is great).

One of the worst was Metallica's St. Anger, just awful tone on the bass and drums imo.

[stuonbass]

There's too many to note but here's some of my fav's and losers.

Favorite albums
"Preminintion" by Survivor (1981?) The P-Bass tone is awesome
"Brother" by Cry of Love (1989?) Awesome!
Anything by Iron Maiden (1980-) nuff said
Anything by Triumph (1978-1986) Cool Jazz bass tone
Anything by Yes Rick-o-matic!

Least favorites
I'll Second the early Metallica releases, horrible mix
Motorhead - yick

[Joe Nerve]

I think all Led Zeppelin bass lies perfectly in the mix. Always loved the punchy bass sound in all the Chic recordings too. First 2 that came to mind... there are so many more.

Only song where the bass ever completely annoyed the crap out of me was Live's "Pain Lies on the Riverside."

[Warpeg]

Best:
-RATM's Self-titled album: I think this album is one of the best and earliest examples of a "burpy" hard rock bass tone.
-Primus, Pork Soda: Love it or hate it, it had a wide variety of interesting tones that were balanced well with the drums.
-Rush, "Tom Sawyer": I just love the lightly overdriven bass tone and how well it stands on it's own in the mix, without standing out.

Worst:
-About half of the 1980's rock: Guitar was king and bass was just not as important. Bass tones were hard to hear on many album mixes.
-Nirvana: just...ugh...either the bass was too loud, too quiet, or had a nasty tone.

just my $.02

[phxlbrmpf]

Recently I noticed how great the bass on Sonic Youth's "Dirty" sounded, it's laced with a hefty dose of distortion/overdrive in pretty much every song and it sounds great in the context of the music. There must've been a bit of trickery involved to get that sound.

I also like the bass on sound on Faith No More's "Angel Dust", the album has a wide variety of bass tones and they're all great.

I used to be a pretty big REM fan and still like the bass tone on "Green" and "Automatic for the People", I really dig the "P bass with a pick and a decent dose of treble" sound Mike has going on most of the time.

I must admit that RHCP's "Californication" is a bit of a loser in my book, Flea sounds pretty strange in most of the songs, either he's too honky and middy or the notes he plays are hardly distinguishable. Looks like they hadn't really figured out how to mix the Flea Bass yet, it sounds a lot better on "By the Way". But then again, the overall mix of that record is pretty poor.

[Thunderthumbs73]

Originally Posted by jaywa

Criteria being not necessarily the performance or the song(s), but tone and being appropriately high in the mix. No particular order.

BEST SOUNDING

- David Bowie, Let's Dance (this album is over 20 years old and STILL sounds awesome)
- U2, Unforgettable Fire
- Metallica, "Black Album" (1st album of theirs you can actually hear the bass)
- Lisa Loeb "I Do" (leadoff track from her album Firecracker, bassist is Lee Sklar and the part and the tone both just KILL)
- RHCP, Blood Sugar Sex Magik (one of the best sounding albums in total of all time)
- Bryan Adams, Reckless

WORST SOUNDING

- Any Metallica album before the Black Album (And Justice for All being the worst offender and one of the worst mixed records of all time)
- Thin Lizzy, Jailbreak (another really bad overall mix)
- Van Halen, OU812 and 5150 (no bass, and truly awful drum sounds besides)

Great selections on the best sounding. Lisa Loeb's "I Do" also has fantastic drummer John J.R. Robinson on it. Between Leland and J.R, I agree, it kills. Reckless sounds great too.

[Thunderthumbs73]

Best Sounding Album:
Level 42 "Guaranteed"
James Taylor "October Road"
REM "Out of Time"
Bobo Stenson Trio "Serenity"
Sting "Ten Summoner's Tales"

Sorry- it is hard to disconnect the performance from the tone and mix, IMO. Sure there are probably albums which have more "present" bass, but these are some very different examples of what I think is good tone and mix. I think these are appropriate mixes. It is also hard for these to not be some of my favorite albums and look at this issue/question as subjectively as requested. Also compositionally songs with bass-centric lines tend, IMO, to need less differentiation than songs where the bass part is just playing the main guitar riff an octave lower. Again, IMO.

Worst:
Phil Collins "Both Sides"
I don't think I can find a bass guitar on that album. And whatever was considered "the bass part" is so low in the mix as to ruin the impact and feel of what actually aren't bad songs... ...if you like pop music. Lee Sklar or Darryl Sturmer, or really anyone would have added nice warmth and humanity to these rather antiseptical proceedings.

Steps Ahead "Modern Times" Eddie Gomez is great, and phenomenal talent. I think his recorded upright sound is sometimes quite brittle, and sometimes quite artificial sounding, despite the fact that the sound originated from a huge old piece of wood that probably sounds great minus any amplification. I'd say it occasionally sounds like an upright bass player mimicing an upright bass keyboard patch, which is itself mimicing an upright bass.

Ok, I will stop here. No reason to dump on someone's favorites...

[jgroh]

Best sound, to me, is either Rush's Power Windows or Hold Your Fire. Geddy with the Wal is just fantastic IMO. Yes this was during their less-than-hard-rock phase, but the songs are still great and the bass tone is my favorite bar none.

Dont really have a worst...although Im not fond of the Metallica bass on any of their records.

[Matt Till]

Originally Posted by phxlbrmpf

I also like the bass on sound on Faith No More's "Angel Dust", the album has a wide variety of bass tones and they're all great.

YEAH! Such an amazing (bass) album!


Best: John Entwistle - Live at Leeds

Worst: Fieldy... had to do it.

[torkelboy]

My favourite album bass-wise:
Crash test dummies - God shuffled his feet

[PluckyThump]

Good:

Sublime, 40oz to Freedom and self-titled
Cake, Comfort Eagle
Elvis Costello, This Year's Model
Joe Jackson, Look Sharp! and I'm The Man

Not Good:

The Cars' first record. This is full of great songs but the bass is buried in the mix, which is a shame because some of the lines are very interesting.

[pinkzepphish]

Just about all Tool albums are pristine for hearing bass, especially the ones with Justin Chancellor (Aenima and later). This is largely due to his unique Wal sound, but boy is it pretty.

[Toronto Bassist]

My all-time favourite fuzz tone bass is on, of all things, KISS's "Rock 'N' Roll Over". No seriously, give it a listen. Great fuzzy tone with a punchy bottom end, I love it.

[scourge]

Very Good:
Van Halen - Fair Warning and Women and Children first
Tool - Lateralus and 10,000 days
Black Sabbath - Heaven and Hell
Ozzy - No Rest for the Wicked

[JimK]

Originally Posted by Thunderthumbs73

Steps Ahead "Modern Times" Eddie Gomez is great, and phenomenal talent. I think his recorded upright sound is sometimes quite brittle, and sometimes quite artificial sounding...

I agree 100%.

[NS2A]

Originally Posted by Toronto Bassist

My all-time favourite fuzz tone bass is on, of all things, KISS's "Rock 'N' Roll Over". No seriously, give it a listen. Great fuzzy tone with a punchy bottom end, I love it.

That album probably has the best bass sound of any Kiss recording. I still think it sits a bit too back in the mix though. The worst is Crazy Nights circa 1987. The era of bass low in the mix and a producer who pulled the low end out of all the records he produced at the time to make them more commercial sounding.

To me the ultimate bass tone album Queensryche's Operation Mindcrime.

[RHFusillo]

A recording that has been bugging me all week is "Fascination" from David Bowie's Young Americans album. The bass player is probably Willie Weeks, so you would expect good things (he sounds good on the other songs), but they used some flange effect on the bass, which keeps pulling it out of tune. It's quite annoying.