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Interviewing bassist stories
- Thread starter Arthritic_Tom
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You're welcome. I am writing books. Just not about this. I'm writing all this because I want you to have it. It's a gift to you, because I can no longer play the bass, and I want you all to keep playing. If any of this inspires you, then that's my reward.
And yes, it's also benefiting me by allowing me to express several years of pent-up emotions without fear of reprisal or someone snarling "You'll never work in this town again, fatso!"
I know, I know.
I'm getting e-mails from someone correctly guessing names, which is a smidgeon disconcerting, but I think it's more a matter of the guesser's intelligence than my exposing too much.
At least I hope so! I'll stay here writing until the bitter end, like the telegraphist on the Titanic. When the lawyers show up with their baseball bats and handcuffs and drag me away, I'll still be typing madly.
JAUQO III-X
Inactive
With so much garbage and negativity published and praised today, here's a gift of uplift
Well, look: I just read a story about some alternative-history forum where some guy proposed a scenario in which a modern-day U.S. Marine Expeditionary Force was transported back in time to the Roman empire, the question being could those marines defeat the entire Legion?seems to me it's not commercialization so much as just getting these stories and parables out there for more people to see than just the few bassists who are on TB and have happened to catch this thread
You mentioned feeling uplifted inexplicably by these stories as have I and obviously a lot of others so there's something pretty special here. With so much garbage and negativity published and praised today, here's a gift of uplift
Peace
Supposedly some mogul or mogulette was reading the forum, looking for ideas, contacted the guy--who wasn't even a professional writer--and signed him to some six-figure deal to either buy the rights to the story or even have him write the screenplay. And now it's going to be a movie.
I spent years groveling to agents and every other gatekeeper imaginable. "And they said No, no, no!" I have plans for a way to make a living as a writer. This here is all for you. Someone with pull may see it and think I have a book in me. That would be excellent.
But for now, I'm just doing this for me and you.
JAUQO III-X
Inactive
that's cool and I get it, thanks, you've obviously touched a lot of nerves in a good way here
And the lessons are about as deep as:
Regarding the book reading. I wonder who actually takes the time to go out of their way to go read a book at someone's reading. Nothing better to do I guess. I've been following this thread from the start. Don't think I've looked at anything else on talkbass in a minute.
father of fires
Commercial User
Arthritic_Tom said:
Yeah that's Rome Sweet Rome. I was there when it was going down. It was fun to read while he was posting. He's actually a professional writer. He does text books and such. Some about war history too.
Excellent question. Who goes to book readings to insult the author? Scott Thunes volunteered to accompany me to a reading in the Bay Area, which was a massively generous, courageous thing for him to do. After the reading, we offered to take questions, and some fat bearded oaf immediately raised his hand and said very belligerently, "Yeah, I gotta question! Whadja do, just take the transcripts of your interviews and publish them? Pretty easy way to write a book if you ask me!"
I said, "Well, try it sometime." But what I actually wanted to do was take Scott's plugged-in bass and crown that loudmouth with it multiple times: BA-WAHNG, BA-WAHNG, BA-WAHNG. And then I'd ask Sean Connery's immortal question to the rest of them:
"So what do you think? Does he feel better now or worse?"
I've long since given up trying to figure out why people do things. Most of the time they can't even tell you themselves. But at every single reading, someone showed up with their own book and sat in the front row, a couple feet away from me, their nose ostentatiously buried in their deeply fascinating tome. It was another raised middle finger to me, someone they didn't even know and who wasn't causing them any harm whatsoever.
Which is why I'm telling you about the generosity and helpfulness of some of the people I met and worked with.
that's cool and I get it, thanks, you've obviously touched a lot of nerves in a good way here
And the lessons are about as deep as:
On a side note - how incredibly AWESOME would doing what James Cameron did be?
I'd be scared outta my mind, but then I could say I beat Jauqo in being the deepest bassist posting on TB
Edit: I'm referring to your contrabass, Jauqo, peace
I've also gathered some homework from all of this. There are definitely some bassist I need to check out.
Fascinating thread! Thank you for sharing these stories, sir. Just read the whole shebang and will read every post from here on out.
He said he wasn't afraid, because if anything went wrong, death would be instantaneous. Apparently what happens at that depth isn't that the vehicle gets crushed, but any puncture results in the vehicle being instantly filled with water that carries the mass of the billions of tons of fluid piled up above you into the craft, and you get crushed down to the size of a grapefruit in a millisecond.
I think I'd rather die that way than go back to the party at the Viper Room where the band was touted as similar to Frank Zappa but better, funnier, and more commercial; and the bassist--the guy I was supposed to interview--was about 50 and had had a facelift and I could see through his T-shirt that he'd had these horrifying scoops taken out of his midsection from bad liposuction, so he looked like he'd been gnawed on by a shark; and he'd worked hard to cultivate the appearance of a dead Brad Pitt; and he played the bass with two index fingers, one to pluck and one to fret; and every bass line went mum-mum-mum-mum-mum no matter what the other instruments were doing; and the publicist was shrieking "Whadda ya think? Whadda ya think? Whadda ya think?" in my ear for two solid hours.
Thank you. Another L.A. story for you:
I was invited to a show put on by a band that was big in the 70s and had experienced a significant revival in the 90s. I'd interviewed the bassist, and tickets to the show were my reward. I was told by the publicist to make sure to pick up my tickets and a special pass at the will-call window that would admit me to the after-party.
Although I'd appreciated the bassist's skill, I was never a fan of the band. At 40, I was the youngest person in the audience and onstage. Almost everyone in the audience had a giant beer gut, even the women, and they were all going, "Woooooooo! Wooooooooo!" the whole time.
The band played, and since I'm not a fan I can't judge if they were good or not, but I noticed that the singer, guitarist, and bassist were all hawking and spitting constantly onstage. They were all singing at the tops of their lungs, and I'd learned at the interview that all four band members were chain smokers, so they kept having to clear their pipes. The stage lights illuminated the hawked material, so it looked like they were spitting gold nuggets.
After the show, the hall cleared instantly, and the people with the special passes were herded into a room the size of a closet. There were about 12 of us: me, a six-foot, three-inch transvestite in fishnet stockings, a couple of elderly women, a 600-pound man, a 400-pound woman, a gaggle of nervous Japanese girls, a woman with two-inch-thick glasses and an LP of the band, and a couple of Goths of indeterminate gender. We stood there staring at each other for a while.
"Ekthkeeyooth me," the transvestite said to me. He had a giant silver tongue stud. "Do you know where I can find a tekthy?"
"I don't know what a tekthy is," I replied.
"A tekthy. Tekthy. TEE-AY-EKTH-EYE."
"Ah. No, I don't know where you can find a taxi. Sorry." After about 20 minutes I stepped out of the closet to get some air. A security guard immediately appeared and said, "Are you with these people?"
"Of course," I said. "Who else would I be with?"
"What?"
"Nothing. Sorry." I went back into the closet.
After half an hour the same security guard opened the closet door and told us we all had to go because the concert hall was closing.
"Where's the band?" somebody wailed.
"At the hotel. They left half an hour ago."
So we filed out of the closet, through the empty hall, onto the street, and went our separate ways. Someday we may have a reunion.
JAUQO III-X
Inactive
You're welcome.
Life is very interesting. Sometimes we never really know.
Just be prepared when it happens
Yep. Every 29 feet of seawater is another atmosphere's worth of pressure. He was what, 6 1/2 - 7 miles down...
I work for a naval shipyard, and one of the topics we had to discuss was the USS Thresher - which basically had that happen during sea trials...scary scary stuff.
Thank you.
Quickie: I went to Subway Guitars in Berkeley, California, to do an article on their amazing and dirt-cheap basses:
SUBWAY GUITARS: Bargain, Custom, Professional Quality, Retro and Vintage Guitars, Basses & Amps
I interviewed the owner, Fat Dog, who was gruff but extremely cooperative. After the interview, I told him that the magazine would send a photographer in a couple of days, but they'd contact him first.
Suddenly I was grabbed by the arm and yanked around to face a middle-aged guy with a gigantic mustache that looked like a whisk broom. "I'm a photographer!" he yelled in my face.
Fat Dog--who's extremely tall and powerful--pried the guy's hand off my arm and said, "Take it easy. What's wrong with you?"
The guy grabbed me again and pulled me toward him, as though he were trying to fold me into an embrace. Fat Dog grabbed my other arm and pulled me in his direction. "Let the f*ck go!" he shouted.
The grabby mustache guy screamed, "Hey, man, I'm just tryin' to get some work, man!"
Fat Dog yanked me out of the guy's hands and stashed me behind his bulk and said, "Yeah, well, that's not the way to do it. You can't assault people in my store!" He then marched forward and belly-blapped the mustache man, knocking him about 15 feet across the room.
"What the f*ck, man!" the would-be photographer shouted. He stomped out. Fat Dog shook my hand and said, "Sorry about that. Some people are hurting in this economy, so they do nutty things."
Outside, I looked at my upper arms. They were both red and blotchy, as though someone had given me Indian rope burns.
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