Enjoy the benefits of a premium membership!
Upgrade Account
-
TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
Join free Log in
Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.
Usually sitting down, but I still can't stand to have it that high standing up.
Mine hasn't moved much, but it's definitely higher now. It's also moved out further, due to the beer/wing belly
teddybear, dick, gun: a tough decision to be made at any age. Funniest part was when after punk, after Paul Simenon, Sid Vicious etc. people started to "really play" again and wanted to be taken serious like Paul Danman and some early 80s slappers and wore their instruments nearly under the chin...
I remembered something from a quite a while ago reading something by anthropologist Desmond Morris whose most famous work was, The Naked Ape. As sex is inextricably linked to rock music, I recalled the social observers, head shrinkers and the like seeing the electric guitar symbolically. Consider the references in Morris's, The Human Zoo.
"In the rise of rock music during the 1960s, the anthropologist Desmond Morris identified the electric guitar as a new phallic symbol. The traditional acoustic guitar, he noted in The Human Zoo, with its curvaceous, waisted form, was essentially feminine; the electric guitar, however, had affected a sex change: the body (now its symbolic testicles) has become smaller, less waisted and more brightly coloured, making it possible for the neck (its new symbolic penis) to become longer. The players themselves have helped by wearing the guitars lower and lower until they are now centered on the genital region. And, of course, where the acoustic guitar is usually caressed at chest height, the electric guitar, manipulated at an erective angle, is repeatedly stroked violently in a manner that can be described as masturbatory."
Nothing cooler than sexiness. Nothing is sexier than cool.
"In the rise of rock music during the 1960s, the anthropologist Desmond Morris identified the electric guitar as a new phallic symbol. The traditional acoustic guitar, he noted in The Human Zoo, with its curvaceous, waisted form, was essentially feminine; the electric guitar, however, had affected a sex change: the body (now its symbolic testicles) has become smaller, less waisted and more brightly coloured, making it possible for the neck (its new symbolic penis) to become longer. The players themselves have helped by wearing the guitars lower and lower until they are now centered on the genital region. And, of course, where the acoustic guitar is usually caressed at chest height, the electric guitar, manipulated at an erective angle, is repeatedly stroked violently in a manner that can be described as masturbatory."
Nothing cooler than sexiness. Nothing is sexier than cool.
Finally, an explanation for why most guitarists are wankers.
After giving in to my own curiosity and thinking Morris may have been on to something I googled ( phallic guitar images), so on the other hand... If he's projecting, so are a few others. By the way, the best one, which I couldn't copy was one of Madonna, which somehow struck me as fitting.
Attachments
Last edited:
The older I get the bigger my belly gets, so the more my bass starts looking like a dobro.
Wait until you hit lap steel territory!The older I get the bigger my belly gets, so the more my bass starts looking like a dobro.
But compared to a guitar, a bass is still very feminine. Larger than a guitar and curvy. We - most of us -don't use our basses as a phallic symbol, we make love with them. As Hendrix did with his guitar, but he is exceptional in any way.
Le Violon d'Ingres - Man Ray (1924)
That's what the traditional explanation is for the form of the guitar resembling a woman's figure. It is rooted in Greek mythology. Apollo who was among other things , god of music, was chasing the nymph, Daphne. You can guess why. Not wanting to be caught she cried out to her divine father who instantly changed her to a Laurel tree from which Apollo carved the supposedly first guitar, giving it feminine contours. And that's what I always thought. But the thread was about where do you position your bass. And no doubt about it, it's gone at least in fashion terms, lower and lower. The bassist in the Getty images of Martyn Goodacre above is a classic example of the excesses. He actually is drooping his shoulders to reach his instrument it's so far down. I still think the whole differentiation of the feminine acoustic instruments and the now masculine electric ones holds some water. I mean the images are undeniable. It still amazes me how much fashion can dictate human behavior.
If there's any talk about makin love to anything around my house, that bass will be firewood very soon!!! LOL 
Is that why there's a lock on the case?If there's any talk about makin love to anything around my house, that bass will be firewood very soon!!! LOL
Ummm, you think a lock is going to stop her????
All kidding aside, my wife met me as a musician and she knows of my love of music and the equipment that comes with my obsessive behavior. God bless her for putting up with me!
Well I'll leave the two cases I have unlocked. And maybe just maybe I'll find a short scale someday!Ummm, you think a lock is going to stop her????
All kidding aside, my wife met me as a musician and she knows of my love of music and the equipment that comes with my obsessive behavior. God bless her for putting up with me!
