After reading all these LA stories, I am quite convinced I am doing pretty good by not living there! I'm waaayy too laid back to deal with that stuff on a regular basis.
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.
Interviewing bassist stories
- Thread starter Arthritic_Tom
- Start date
- Status
Nice coda Tom. May your next movement be as enthralling.
TinIndian, LA isn't all a cesspool . . . you've just got to figure out where to dip your toe.
TinIndian, LA isn't all a cesspool . . . you've just got to figure out where to dip your toe.
I've only been to LA once and it was for the software industry, not as high flying as the music industry
I found people where generally very friendly. I have to admit to a bit of culture shock.I can no longer remember where we stayed. We where on the other side of the freeway from South Central where the riots stopped. The Rodney King riots happened a week or so after we where there.
If anybody knows the area, at that time it was a low end, but new hotel with one oil well and the freeway behind it. Across the road was a walled trailer park.
My most lasting impression of LA was the razor wire everywhere.
Thank you. And it's true: Not all of L.A. is a cesspool. But you have to be tough, lucky, and have a giant support network to make it here, or it'll eat you alive.
The next movement is coming up. I'm going to have to sign off here relatively soon, because I got a letter today from my publisher that my third and final military-history book is ready, and they want me to help promote it. I have to set up a Web site and Facebook account and Flckr stream, which will take up all my time for a while.
But I've got a few more stories to post.
A San Francisco story:
He checked the messages on the answering machine and found only one. As he listened to the cheery, metallic voice, he flipped through the pile of letters--the ones he'd written to her--that she'd left on his desk. He'd had the desk almost twenty years. It was an ancient piece of oaken office furniture, a monstrosity his father had given him when he was 13. The movers had to dismantle it to get it up the flight of stairs and through the narrow doorways of the apartment. Sweating, panting streams of profanity, the men wrestled it into the place where it had stood for three years.
Next to the desk, a trio of flattened dents in the carpet was all that was left to show where her MusicMan Sting Ray bass guitar had sat cradled on its metal stand. It had been connected by a long black cord to a small practice amplifier that had perched on the filing cabinet; the amplifier, too, was gone, along with the glass coffee jar that had held dozens of plastic guitar picks.
The pile of lesson books, titles such as Teach Yourself How To Play the Bass, had been removed from where it had lain next to the amplifier. Beside the desk was an empty bookshelf, once full of instructional videos he'd bought her.
He looked at the dents in the carpet for a few seconds and left the den, making sure to turn off the light before he closed the door.
I'd rather mend than break, so a funnier San Francisco story for you:
I hooked up with a former high-school chum who lived in the Bay Area. I invited her to a show to see a band with an amazing jazz electric bassist who'd developed a technique of playing by putting his thumb and forefinger together, as though he were holding a pick, but it was just his fingers.
We arrived at the club, my friend and I, and she was all hyped up. She was another amazing natural-born musician who played all instruments and sang. I met the bassist before the show and told him I was interested in seeing him in action. He was excited about possibly being in the magazine.
The lights went, the music started, and zowie! This was a genius! He was a blistering soloist but had Thunesian taste. I couldn't wait to pitch him to Bass Player. He had CDs available, so I figured they couldn't say no.
After the first five or six minutes of music, my friend started playing the drums on the table with her hands and scat-singing along with the band. This was a quiet club; everyone around us turned and stared.
"What are you doing?" I said to my friend.
"Just getting into it. Chill out!"
After each song, my friend would whoop and scream and applaud at 500 beats per minute. She'd be the last person to stop clapping. I realized she was tripping on something.
After the fourth song, the inevitable happened: We were asked to leave. As we got up and were escorted out, the entire club broke into applause. Outside, she grinned and skipped along ahead of me.
"Wasn't that a great band?" she asked. "I loved the vocalist's technique. You know how you project like that? You have to squeeze your butt cheeks together. Listen."
And she let out this piercing, operatic, pitch-perfect note that she held for about twenty seconds.
When she stopped, a homeless man with a full shopping cart across the street yelled at us, "Jesus Christ, shut the f*ck up! What's wrong with you people?"
It was perfect. I couldn't have scripted it any better.
Thank you, Tom.
You've got me bracing myself for the great resolve. What you've composed here is symphonic.
You've got me bracing myself for the great resolve. What you've composed here is symphonic.
I didnt know it was a proper technique, Instead of playing with a pick, which I cant do, thats what Ive been doing for years. I call it pickless picking.
been reading every post since the beginning, enjoyed all of it. thanks
Dang Tom! Please keep these coming. I've enjoyed your writing more than anything I've read on the World Wide Web! Your writing style can place people at the scene (of almost crimes).
This has been a true unadulterated guilty pleasure. I can't thank you enough for sharing.
This has been a true unadulterated guilty pleasure. I can't thank you enough for sharing.
A San Francisco story:
When I first moved to San Francisco from Japan in 1991, I couldn't find any work. In desperation I signed up at a temp agency. They made you fill out a test:
1. 25 + 18 = ?
2. What do you call a large body of salt water?
a. Ocean
b. Car
c. Potato
3. A man married to a woman is called her _________.
And so on. People would come in, look at the single sheet of paper, say, "Nobody told me there'd be a test," and walk out.
I got hired to help clean out an office building; I mean, toss all the furniture, filing cabinets, carpets--everything--out the windows and into dumpsters. One of the guys working with me was young and articulate. We chatted, and it turned out he was a bassist. I told him I played the bass, too, and we had lunch together.
It was a one-day job, but he and I kept in touch. He eventually invited me to see his band. They were great. I really hoped he'd make it.
He's now teaching at a prestigious music college, and he's a studio bassist who's played with everyone. I'd love to identify him because his is a story of perseverance and triumph, but he might not want people to know that at one time he was doing work that would bore a chimp.
Even so, bless him for never giving up.
When I first moved to San Francisco from Japan in 1991, I couldn't find any work. In desperation I signed up at a temp agency. They made you fill out a test:
1. 25 + 18 = ?
2. What do you call a large body of salt water?
a. Ocean
b. Car
c. Potato
3. A man married to a woman is called her _________.
And so on. People would come in, look at the single sheet of paper, say, "Nobody told me there'd be a test," and walk out.
I got hired to help clean out an office building; I mean, toss all the furniture, filing cabinets, carpets--everything--out the windows and into dumpsters. One of the guys working with me was young and articulate. We chatted, and it turned out he was a bassist. I told him I played the bass, too, and we had lunch together.
It was a one-day job, but he and I kept in touch. He eventually invited me to see his band. They were great. I really hoped he'd make it.
He's now teaching at a prestigious music college, and he's a studio bassist who's played with everyone. I'd love to identify him because his is a story of perseverance and triumph, but he might not want people to know that at one time he was doing work that would bore a chimp.
Even so, bless him for never giving up.
Holy crap. Were you playing in a jazz band in San Francisco in 1996? If so, I'm really sorry about the spectacle and the fact that I never got to interview you.
And thanks for the compliments.
I'll serve up a catastrophe, a total waste of time, one about all the really great material I was forced to delete from one story because the bassist was "yesterday's news," my surreal experience at the Hollywood Bowl, how not to sign a book contract about bass players, the toughest moments I ever faced as an interviewer, and then we'll end on a high note with some thoughts from the bassist who deserves to close out this chapter.
That's the plan, anyway. Things can change. Maybe if you e-mail this thread to everyone in the music world, some agent will PM me saying, "Good God, man! I must represent you and land you a book contract!"
Incredible laugh by Tom Hanks - YouTube
What I'm really trying to say here, Tom, is that your stories and your coda make me feel like a very lucky person, like I'm really the only one reading them. There's a word for it... actually 2 words:
pretty bitchin.
pretty bitchin.
I was taught by a brilliant editor how to do that. You're exactly right: I'm writing directly to you. There are many "yous" reading this, but each of you is vital to how I write.
If it weren't for you, I wouldn't be doing this, so thanks right back at you.
I've read this entire thread, great stuff!
My favorite author is Phillip K. Dick; I find his subject matter fascinating but mostly i love the writing itself... The elegance of his phrasing and his word choice. I have to say, I'm getting that same vibe from your writing
I'm a fan!
My favorite author is Phillip K. Dick; I find his subject matter fascinating but mostly i love the writing itself... The elegance of his phrasing and his word choice. I have to say, I'm getting that same vibe from your writing
I'm a fan!
- Status
