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Mark King

#21
XO-Bionic said:
...the first thing I learned when I finally got a bass was how to slap Level 42 lines!
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Hm. For me I think it was Gene Simmons. I was pretty dissapointed though when I went to see KISS live in '78, and his solo was obviously recorded, and he (poorly) finger-synched it! I lost some respect of my bass hero that day.. lost the rest of my respect for him sometime over the next twenty-five years.

Judas Priest opened for them, and Halfort and the boys were better. Hm - who played bass for Judas Priest?..

It's almost the weekend!

Joe
 
#24
hateater said:
Mark King is the best! You really can't argue with me about this. But I agree that he has inspired many to pick up the bass. Then again, so has FiElDy and Mark <3 Hoppus. Let's give them props too.
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I can argue, and I will argue. There's no such thing as 'the best'. Music isn't a race, its an art form. Mark King may be able to play sixty million notes a second, but I personally find him yawn-tastic.
 
#27
speaking of contests...

did any of you happen to hear level 42 vs casiopea, when they went on tour in japan?

Mark king and the bass player have a slap off... or whatever you want to call it, he plays some fingerstyle as well, so not entirly a slap off.

He absolutly smokes the guy from casiopea time and time again... pretty neat to listen to tho.
 
#28
The_major_Rajor said:
Mark King has the all time highest score in the game of machine gun slapping.
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I thought so too untill I first heard Victor Wooten slamming (slapping?) away on a Bela Fleck and the Flecktones live album.

Level 42 was a fusion band, no doubt about that and they never concealed it, they even had Allan Holdsworth playing guitar on a few tracks on "Guaranteed" which I think is their strongest album. But on that album King decided to expand his style much like Flea did on "BSSM" most of the tracks are played finger style and even fretless, which if you listen to the bridge parts in "Love games" King certainly isn't bad at.

The fun thing about seeing Level 42 (the bandname itself is a refference to King's ability to do 42 slaps in a minute) performing on shows like Top of the pops and they have to lipsync, that King made no attempt to even try and hide that they weren't really playing. They'd perform "Running in the family and he'd play the opening bars but when the first verse started he'd just tossed his bass behind his back never to touch it again during the song.

King's nickname in the eighties: "Thunderthumbs"
 
#30
Blazer said:
I thought so too untill I first heard Victor Wooten slamming (slapping?) away on a Bela Fleck and the Flecktones live album.

The fun thing about seeing Level 42 (the bandname itself is a refference to King's ability to do 42 slaps in a minute) performing on shows like Top of the pops and they have to lipsync, that King made no attempt to even try and hide that they weren't really playing. They'd perform "Running in the family and he'd play the opening bars but when the first verse started he'd just tossed his bass behind his back never to touch it again during the song.

King's nickname in the eighties: "Thunderthumbs"
Click to expand...

I think the band was originally called 42, the 42 coming from the answer to life, the universe, and everything, from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. They added the Level part to make the name more distinctive.
 
#31
Mark King may be able to play very very fast but it would be a mistake to pidgeonhole him into the category of wanker. He plays with alot of feeling and only plays very fasst stuff on solos. Try playing "Lessons in Love" off of "Running in the Family" and see how difficult that seemingly simple and mundane bass line is to play.
 
#32
Blazer said:
I thought so too untill I first heard Victor Wooten slamming (slapping?) away on a Bela Fleck and the Flecktones live album.

Level 42 was a fusion band, no doubt about that and they never concealed it, they even had Allan Holdsworth playing guitar on a few tracks on "Guaranteed" which I think is their strongest album. But on that album King decided to expand his style much like Flea did on "BSSM" most of the tracks are played finger style and even fretless, which if you listen to the bridge parts in "Love games" King certainly isn't bad at.

The fun thing about seeing Level 42 (the bandname itself is a refference to King's ability to do 42 slaps in a minute) performing on shows like Top of the pops and they have to lipsync, that King made no attempt to even try and hide that they weren't really playing. They'd perform "Running in the family and he'd play the opening bars but when the first verse started he'd just tossed his bass behind his back never to touch it again during the song.

King's nickname in the eighties: "Thunderthumbs"
Click to expand...

King doesn't double thump as Wooten does... it is cheating!
 
#34
42 thumps in a minute!

Listen to more Level 42, Mark King doesn't always do those "drum solos". He can really do a great fingerstyle funk groove or slap groove.

EDIT: Wait a sec, 42 thumps a minute is hardly anything! I can easily do 42 thumps in 30 seconds (I just did).

EDIT2: And using double-thumping I can do 14 notes per second. I can also do 14 notes per second without double-thumping, but also using hammer-ons.

I've heard Mark King do double that speed easily.
 
#36
Blazer said:
The fun thing about seeing Level 42 (the bandname itself is a refference to King's ability to do 42 slaps in a minute) performing on shows like Top of the pops and they have to lipsync, that King made no attempt to even try and hide that they weren't really playing. They'd perform "Running in the family and he'd play the opening bars but when the first verse started he'd just tossed his bass behind his back never to touch it again during the song.

King's nickname in the eighties: "Thunderthumbs"
Click to expand...

In the eighties everyone used to lipsync on Top of The Pops.They were using wireless microphones before wireless microphones had even been invented.

Saw Mark King several times during the eighties and yeah he put on an excellent display of slapping, but the fact that he could deliver some excellent bass lines and sing at the same time always impressed me.

Zip forward to two years ago and Level 42 appear at the Hard Rock here in Dubai and the show was good and it was great to see him in action again. A great slapper, a great bass player but for me not a great song writer. Would be interesting to hear him do some cover versions.

Actually met him later at the post gig party - nice nice guy though alcohol intake that night blurs the memory a little.
 

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