What do you play to show off on stage?

[cnl83]

Whats your solo basically? When you are introduced on stage as the bass player. What is your show off piece?

[M0ses]

Like....three notes......

Keep it simple. REAL simple. It's not exactly all the important, just make sure that there's not a big silent gap.

[SmittyG]

Something simple with a DEEP groove. My band gigs call for simple grooves all night so it makes no sense for me to suddenly bust out the slap/pop, two-handed tapping, whiz-bang, look-at-me, weedle-weedle for the couple of seconds after my name has been called. On my solo gigs, I've been the only one playing all night long; if they ain't impressed by then, nothing I can play at that moment will help change a thing.

[cnl83]

If you dont play anything, or think that its retarded to play anything when the spotlight is on you then there is no need to reply to this post.

[Dave Vader]

Originally Posted by cnl83

What do you play to show off on stage?

A guitar
Just a wee joke, no offense meant, I tend to go up to the top of the neck and throw out some nasty blues scales, or hit some Jaco harmonics back by the nut.

[Steve!]

I just do a bass slide.

[babaseen]

America by Jaco Pastorius (harmonics and all)

[M0ses]

Originally Posted by cnl83

If you dont play anything, or think that its retarded to play anything when the spotlight is on you then there is no need to reply to this post.

No one HAS said that.......
Perhaps I misunderstood the OP, I thought you were asking for some advice on what you should do in that situation. Sorry about that. So a more appropriate reply by me would be something like...

"I like to keep it really simple, I play three or four low notes, just to fill the gap when no one is talking (but hopefully someone IS clapping.)"

[cnl83]

Yeah I hear that. Well we get awkward moments when the guitarist are changing up tunings, and they came up with the idea that the bassist bust an awesome solo to fill in.

[phatbass]

I usually play a TV theme - Inspector Gadget or similar...

[JukeBoxHero]

I just play a little melodic part I come up with in my head at the time. Usually something that will compliment the low E groove I'm playing when we're doing the introduction. I don't really solo, I play my fun bits in the songs.

[tfmbass]

I arranged parts of Vic's solo stuff that I was working on like Classical Thump and Amazing Grace. I use to play that so everybody else in the band could take a break. It is about 5 min long, all FLash double thumb, two hand tapping, harmonics solo.
I didnt mind playing because I knew the amount of work that went in to it, but it really flew over most people heads.

[sobie18]

Joy to the World is an easy melody to recognize and it usually guarantees some smiles from people.

[Getaway Driver]

the imperial march

[anthowl]

my band has a song with a kinda neat bass intro. the deal is when I get introduced I lead us into that song.

stylistically I play with a fair amount of fills and counter melodies so one could count most of what I play as show off stuff if one is used to hearing/playing root note lines.

[TheHegemon]

Bassically by Sabbath, its pretty easy and doesnt need effects(unless you want to turn on the wah pedal, but generally its sounds fine without it) Usually my guitarist asks me to play Anesthesia by Burton, which is cool but alot of people are kind of "Meh" till the drums kick in.

[Jonny B]

Being in a cover band, we don't do solo's unless they are in the song. People come to dance and listen to songs. They don't want a wank fest.

Which actually brings up an interesting corollary; I stopped in at one of our venues today and the bartender was telling me about the band that played last weekend, the bass player and guitard were trading licks for well over five minutes and half the crowd literally left. The venue pulled the plug... Two hours early.

[Mikio]

I don't show off at all... unless the piece is hard, but still it's just music.. I don't care if it's hard or "easy"

[Dr_Funkdamental]

The intro to my avatar .