My Jazz bass is evaporating ... Now what?

Here is my problem:

h

ttp://www.talkbass.com/forum/attachment.php?s=&postid=1301905

I got this bass 4 weeks ago, a MIJ 87 Jazz.

Last night, when I came home from work at 8
o'clock and after I made dinner for everybody,
my son the Ivy rock star appeared from his room.
He keeps college student on vacation hours, 9PM
to whenever. So off I go to grill him a steak,
and while I'm working in the kitchen, I hear
weird noises coming from his room. I never go in
his room, as I am afraid what may crawl out. I
don't even open the door, because something
strange might fall into the hallway.

Anyway, the noise changes, and there's this
*thumping*. For a second, the noise sounds like
that Les Claypool song, David Markalay or
whatever the name is. Then there is this
squealing, so I realize he is screwing around
with a guitar, I think.

'Hey, is that my bass in there?!!?'

'Yeah dad'

'Whaddya doin' with my bass?'

'You said I could use it!'

'I never said that! When?'

'When I asked you last night!'

'You never asked me! When was that?'

'Oh, around 3 o'clock'

Apparently, I had fallen asleep in front of the
TV, and he woke me and asked me to use the bass.
Yeah, I remember that! He took my comatose
grunt and defined it as a 'Yes'. It then
disappeared into the Dark Hole.
His Room.

Much to my dismay, I realized he was now playing
it thru his multi-effect processor with a SLIDE.
What really pissed me off was that he sounded
good.

'Hey, that's MY bass!'

'Dad, YOU HAVE THREE BASSES!' Can't I use ONE!'

Oops. I lent the Bison to my best friend so his
son could take lessons. And there is NO WAY he
is using my 63 Eb3!

'Errrrrr, I guess so!'

continued ..... below

so I wake up this morning, and get ready for work.

Now he is playing 'It's No Secret' by the
Airplane. Dang kid sounds like Casady, too.
This really scares me.

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Something tells me it is evaporating when he
goes back to college next week ...

Well, he got 4 A's last semester... so the street
is not a problem.

Kids got a great ear, though his taste is
bizarre. The first song he learned on the
guitar was 'Peaches in Regalia' by FZ.
Nothing else would do.

Too old to spank, hair is his own thing, I promised myself after my father busted my @ss
for years about my long hair I would never
repeat that with my kids. Too smart to cook, though I have been working on him in case I drop dead, and he has worked for decent gear.

Cold on this side, brother bassman!

Boy is like the next FZ, I swear!

He going back to school today, I'll introduce you to him if you guys want to hack it up for the summer. He'll be around all summer.

PM me and I will send you his email add.
t

Here's another shot.

Got himself a haircut, no prompting from me,
though.

He looks uncannily like Jack Casady here.
Maybe it's the round shades. He's
sure diggin' on this bass.

Tomorrow, is J day. I have to pack the car to
take him back to school. Maybe the car will
be full !!!

Originally posted by Kaz
He looks VERY familiar, did he go to NKHS a couple-a-years ago?

I think I have seen him at a couple of shows in providence too, more lately though.

I might have actually known him for a minute or two...

Click to expand...

Uhh, yeah he graduated NKHS in '04. Class
Salutatorian. The only show I knew of in Prov he
was at this year was Project Object. It's very
likely you would have seen him around the new
school.

Yeah, '02, Sorry.

I don't know about the Frog Brigade show,
but I know he was at the last PO show at
the Met Cafe.

Yes.

He took piano lessons when he was little. He
stopped in about 5th grade. The teacher said
that technically he was very good, but somehow,
handwise, she felt he was not getting any better.

My daughter on the other hand, who is 2 years
older, plays beautifully with excellent reading
skills. She, however, is unable to understand the
concept of improvisation. And she cannot play by
ear, she needs to work within the framework of
musical notation.

My son continued with music in junior high school.
I got him a Conn Sax on the easy payment plan,
rent to own. He won't let me use it! I might get
spit on it. !!

My son can still play the piano and keyboards
passably. He can hear a Zappa song, and sit at
the Piano and puzzle it out. He took up my guitar
a couple of years ago. Wihin 6 weeks he had
taught himself to be a passable player. I then
got him a Fender SQ Strat to fiddle with.


He had only played the bass once or twice for a
couple of minutes, until the other night. I
finally weaseled out of him what was up, he said
he had recorded the beginning of a loop he he
been fiddling with on Acid Pro 2.0 since
November. Apparently, he needed to add a bass
line as opposed to a keyboard line to the loop.
He said he played along with it for an hour,
until he felt he could play it reasonably well on
my J bass.

I got him to play the unfinished loop for me, I
was shocked, it was quite good. He is supposed to
leave me a Mp3 of it. The song is titled
'Unibrow Jesus'. He listens to too much Zappa and
has developed a very bizarre sense of music and
time, as well as humor.

He has turned out to be a fairly accomplished
musician, both in terms of theory, composition
and the ability to translate the theory to
facility in picking up new instruments and
intuitively being able to play them.

Some people are just wired that way, and as a
parent, you find out that some things are truly
genetic as opposed to environmental.

We have always made musical instruments available
to our children. I found that the interest to
play music ultimately comes from within, if you
push too hard, they turn off to it.

I introduced snippets here and there. We never
had a constantly blaring TV going in the house.
After football or Lois and Clark was over, it got
turned OFF. The radio is usually on a public
station, which provides a mix of big band jazz,
modern jazz, classical, world music, and reggae,
etc. That is a kind of passive approach to
musical exposure I took.

I did force piano lessons originally, but let up
when it seemed right.

I made sure to play my guitars and basses a lot,
and left a nylon Yamaha 'beach' guitar lying
around they could play with and touch without
getting a hassle. A decent nylon that cost me $89
when I got it, and I wasn't worried if it fell
over. Bait, I suppose. But passive interest bait.
Your kids see you play and enjoy it, it leaves an
impression. 'Nuff said and done.

So in that same environment I nurtured 2 kids and
instilled in them a love for music, but the
results were unique in each case.

You should really enjoy the next 10 years, if
you haven't dropped your future the teenagers off
at the mall and gone to Tierra del Fuego for a 6
year hiatus. It can be that way some days ...

[/fatherly rant ]