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Please Introduce Me To: Anthony Jackson

#63
Magnus Scott said:
BTW, i placed the smiley there so you knew it was a joke.
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Take care. If AJ doesn't impress you, so be it. Many of us think he is a genius, and incredibly accomplished, but it is no crime to disagree.

That said, if you keep playing, I think you will eventually come to appreciate him even if you never like him. I feel that way about many great players myself.:)

BTW, I can take a joke too!:p
 
#65
kegbarnacle said:
Well, because youtube has audio in addition to video, which facilitates the listening part. And it's an easy way to do an introduction to an artist, as opposed to buying a bunch of stuff he may find out he doesn't like.
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Well, because Mr. Jackson is famously anal about his sound, and the sound on Youtube varies horribly, I don’t think it’s a good example of anyone’s playing. In addition, it helps reinforce the damage music videos in general have foisted upon the world of music. It’s first an aural experience, not visual. And AJ’s large body of work is well documented in audio recordings; I’d send people there first.

John
 
#66
As for the 4-string remark/joke/whatever made earlier I'd like quote the man himself:

“Why is four [strings] the standard and not six? As the lowest-pitched member of the guitar family, the instrument should have had six strings from the beginning. The only reason it had four was because Leo Fender was thinking in application terms of an upright bass, but he built it along guitar lines because that was his training. The logical conception for the bass guitar encompasses six strings.”
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#68
JTE said:
Well, because Mr. Jackson is famously anal about his sound, and the sound on Youtube varies horribly, I don’t think it’s a good example of anyone’s playing. In addition, it helps reinforce the damage music videos in general have foisted upon the world of music. It’s first an aural experience, not visual. And AJ’s large body of work is well documented in audio recordings; I’d send people there first.
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While I agree about the abyssmal sound of many YouTube clips -- that Michel Camillo Big Band clip sounded like the cymbals were run through a ring modulator! -- the quality is still adequate enough to convey a baseline (no pun intended) skill level that AJ's playing clearly exceeds.

iow, *if* one can tolerate substandard sound quality -- and in a world where MP3-laden iPods are the rule rather than the exception, this probably means 99% of listeners out there -- one can easily hear that AJ is an exceptional musician. Whether or not you can discern why he is maybe in the top 0.0000001% of bass players in the world is immaterial if you've never heard his playing before; any of the YouTube clips posted in this thread seem more than adequate at conveying that he is indeed in the top 1%, and maybe that will encourage interested listeners to pursue his music via more high resolution sources.
 
#69
After reading the initial post and some of the answers, I was prompted to go and check out AJ again.

WOW!

He truly is an amazing bassist. his note choices are daring yet right on. his knowledge of both the instrument and theory are astounding. and, in certain clips, you can hear that beautiful Fodera's true tone.

again, WOW! I will be starting an AJ collection soon!
 
#70
His note choices and his timing for those notes are what makes him such a great player to me. There are some albums/songs where I don't even like his tone, but I completely ignore it for his playing. He fits fast, busy runs all the time, but you never hear anyone saying he's overplaying or flashy because they're so perfectly timed and the notes fit so well.
 
#71
Bryan R. Tyler said:
He fits fast, busy runs all the time, but you never hear anyone saying he's overplaying or flashy because they're so perfectly timed and the notes fit so well.
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There was an quote from some famous producer -- I forget who, might've been Arif Marden? -- who, despite regularly working with the creme de la creme of New York and LA studio musicians, said "There are only two bassists in the world that I will give carte blanch to: Doug Wimbish and Anthony Jackson."

Anyone remember who said that?
 
#72
Hoover said:
There was an quote from some famous producer -- I forget who, might've been Arif Marden? -- who, despite regularly working with the creme de la creme of New York and LA studio musicians, said "There are only two bassists in the world that I will give carte blanch to: Doug Wimbish and Anthony Jackson."

Anyone remember who said that?
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That was actually from an interview of Doug Wimbish in Guitar Player back in the 1980s.
 
#73
Hoover said:
There was an quote from some famous producer -- I forget who, might've been Arif Marden? -- who, despite regularly working with the creme de la creme of New York and LA studio musicians, said "There are only two bassists in the world that I will give carte blanch to: Doug Wimbish and Anthony Jackson."

Anyone remember who said that?
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Mighta been Reggie Lucas - I have that Guitar Player issue somewhere...
 

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