I've been a huge Karn fan since the mid-1980's when Tom Dube turned me on to
Dali's Car and the Japan "best of" compilation
Exorcising Ghosts. Fanstastically unique voice on the bass, there really is no one else like him...although it once occurred to me that if you took Percy Jones, then subtracted everything about Percy that resembled Jaco Pastorius, then took what was left over & played it backwards, you'd have Mick Karn. Maybe.
Check out his first solo album
Titles...brilliant stuff.
Pretty inspirational for those non-reading musicians and those with no theory training.
Indeed...although, in his first Bass Player Magazine interview which came out right around the release of
The Tooth Mother he talked about working with David Torn and Bill Bruford (they toured as Torn's quartet after
Cloud About Mercury, and appear together on Torn's
Door X album), and Karn admitted his lack of formal training was an obstacle to smooth productivity. Karn would play a note and Bill or David would suggest he play a different note (eg. "a half step flatter") and Karn would look at them like they had three heads until David would physically grab Mick's finger and push it to the spot on the fingerboard where the note they wanted was.
he plays octaves with his first two fingers- on a fretless. just something I noticed.
I saw Mick on tour with Mark Isham around 1987 or '88 (in an awesome band that also included David Torn & Terry Bozzio) and it was almost uncomfortable for me to watch Mick's technique...or lack thereof. Both his left and right hands are
so not what "textbook" bass players are supposed to use that it was visually distracting!
But man, close your eyes and the schidt he plays is just so freakin' cool it wouldn't matter if he was an idiot savant who flails against the bass strings with his pecker.
