Not sure where to put this: OT, bassists, recordings, bieber, volume? So, new thread.
Had to take my monthly flight out to Bennettsville, SC yesterday and returned today. I have a good customer there. It takes 7 hours to drive and 2 1/2 to fly in the little puddle jumper, so it can save a day, costs about the same and it’s just more fun. Sometimes the weather is an issue (hot, bumpy, thunderstorms, ice, etc.) but other times, like today, it’s pure joy. Autumn is the best time to soar over the N. GA hills.
So what does this have to do with bass? In order to pass the time, I plug an ipod into my headset. I don’t update my ipod often and I end up listening to the same stuff over and over. So I was trying to find something different and found Three Dog Night’s greatest hits.
I was really digging it, singing along (some people sing in the shower, I sing in the plane). I was noticing the bass and started wondering who it was. Very tasty stuff. While the vocals are probably what everyone thinks of when thinking TDN, the bass really drives the songs. Many of the songs used a similar variation of a walk down from the root in the major scale. If the bass wasn’t walking down, the keyboard was while the bass walked up. Kind of like a classical/Beethoven thing?
The original bass player was Joe Schermie. He played on most of their many hits. He died in 2002.
The current bassist is Paul Kingery. They played in my little town a few years ago. Yes, Three Dog Night played in downtown Dalton in the street along with The Lovin Spoonful and the Association. Probably our cultural apogee. He did a great job, not just playing but a good showman. This was in his biography:
88 - 91 Two World Tours with Tiffany and New Kids on the Block. Guitarist and principal backing vocalist. Appeared in numerous television shows, MTV video for "I Saw Him Standing There", two Japanese television commercials and an Ad in Guitar Player Magazine.
Maybe those preteenie-band-of-the-month gigs aren’t so worthless after all.
And, in another allusion to a recent TB thread, I flew over Helen, GA. You can’t miss it with all the red roofs.
edit: Removed illness description. Illness unrelated to music.
Course, that goes for all you guys. If there's one thing you can get in Dalton it's a taco.
