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The "real" punk bass....

TRichardsbass

TRichardsbass

Inactive
Commercial User
Jun 3, 2009
3,330
398
Between Muscle Shoals and Nashville
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Disclosures
Bassgearu, Music Industry Consulting and Sales. Tech 21, NBE Corp, Sonosphere.
#1
I have been doing some serious research into my punk roots again. Was looking through a whole bunch of books, album sleeves, and even a ton of my old pictures from back in the day.


After noting a few things, this one stands out for all. The majority of all the pictures I have or saw had one bass standing out:

Fender Precision, Olympic White, Black pickguard, white pickups.

Dee Dee, Sid, yada yada. Just a whole lot of pics of tons of bands with this particular bass. I'm guessing they were readily available and cheap back in the day, although I never owned one....
 
#4
You are right. I remember back in the 80's when I was in punk and hardcore bands, just about every Punk bassist had a P bass. I thought P stood for Punk - LOL - I had (well still have) a Aria Pro II that is PJ but I always used the Neck pickup and didn't use the Jazz bridge pick up. This one dude had a Fender P-Bass cream color beat to death with bruises, chips, scratches, and stickers all over this thing. Even had rusty strings. He used to shred that thing. I thought it was the quintessential looking punk Bass.
 
#11
Depends how you define Punk. Do you mean the wanky homoerotic New York arthaus stuff like the New York Dolls and Patti Smith banging on about horses? The cartoon Phil Spector lame brain bludgeonings of The Ramones? The Clash spent a little bit too much time hanging around artschool smoking weed, Sandista?!?! The Sex Pistols were another cartoon band made up by Malcolm Mclaren to suit his closetted sexual and monetary desires.... errr.... The Buzzcocks were limp-wristed tunesmiths... The Stranglers were old men hacking away... Sham 69 were a pub rock band chancing it... The Damned were a goth band in disguise (though Rat Scabies used some sort of Violin bass back in the day). The Velvet Underground are again a blugeoning Phil Spector style band who were the play-things of Andy Warhol. Everything after 1980 is not punk but some subset of punk resulting in horrific punk pop. Ah so we must look at those obscure bands on the Nuggets compilation albums, they are punk right? Or maybe The Monks from Germany....


So... you must mean the uber principled bands of all sorts of styles on SST? Those dudes who lived in vans for ten years and made $2 a week from selling merch... Bad Brains? Sorry but they dug up roots reggae and dub influences half the time... errr....What was Mike Watt using in the Minutemen prior to the SG basses? Is that a P bass on Meat Puppets I? :help::help::help:



Basically see what "punk" bassists were using and don't do that. Don't play Ricks, the market has driven right up since Kim Gordon was uselessly hacking away at one in the 1980s (with a screwdriver probably). Don't buy those apparently no longer inferior 1970s P basses (because the market has driven those right up because in this economic climate and if you drink enough before playing them you might not notice the worse workmanship). Errrrr, even those lucite Ampeg Dan Armstrong basses are expensive. You are doomed.
 
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#12
the highway one p seems to take the hard/fast playing a little better with the badass, while the jazz jb62 gets knocked out of set up, because i play so aggressively

i always played a grabber for my main bass and a vox musicmaster for the backup
 
#13
As far as basses for punk, really any bass can be used. That was the beauty of punk!

I was really just commenting on the bass style and color combo. There are tons of pix of Dee Dee and Sid playing the white/black/white combo p, I have seen many pixs of Simonon with the same, Foxton had one (but used the black/maple more), the guy from the Dictators (sorry, my mind is failing at this very moment), I have a picture I took at CB's from way back that has some band I don't remember the name but yes, has a white/black/white P, I have a clipping that is about to die from a paper from then and the band was playing the same color combo. Very, very interesting.

It has made me stop for a minute to reconsider my color choice for my next bass. I was thinking of getting a Brubaker Brute in black and having a custom fiery spalted pickguard put on it, but now I'm thinking I'll go for the Siberian white with the black pickguard.

Whoa!

Also, the interesting thing about the Rics is that most of the bands I saw do the punk thing that had them had the fireglos. Foxton had all the colors, but it wasn't until the '90s and the Boston scene that the jetglo sort of became punk standard.

So, again, the "punk" bass, as defined by the most famous and the most players of the day (ah I miss the late '70s in so many ways) is the Olympic white with a black pickguard and white pickups.

Keep posting peeps!
 
#14
OkkultistBass said:
While we're on this topic.
What about Tele basses? Can those be used for Hardcore/Punk?
Click to expand...

Yes-
l_813f53109ada34fe92db672ce98959ef.jpg
 
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#15
I agree that P's are the standard, just because they are what punk likes: simple, heavy-sounding and they let the tone of the player come through nicely. There are many deviations from this, however. The Jazz is an obvious example and tons of punk bands play StingRays.

Ultimately, nothing is more punk rock than simply not caring. We're less punk just for having this conversation.
 
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#16
I really think anything you can dig up out of a trash can, plug in and just rage with your friends can be considered "punk". I get what you're talking about though, with the Punk Bass look. I can't really consider Sid a punk bassist though. He was in the band for a year and his amp wasn't even plugged in during live shows.

Though I do like the look of the white body, black pick guard, white pickup covers, look. I really think whatever you can get your hands on and mod it the way you want, put it to your standards, I think that's Punk. But I'm only 17, so I don't know REAL Punk. =P
But I do think anything with a middle pickup is probably perfect for Punk. The P-Bass tone is, in my opinion, the greatest tone for Punk.
 
#17
Meddle said:
Depends how you define Punk. Do you mean the wanky homoerotic New York arthaus stuff like the New York Dolls and Patti Smith banging on about horses? The cartoon Phil Spector lame brain bludgeonings of The Ramones? The Clash spent a little bit too much time hanging around artschool smoking weed, Sandista?!?! The Sex Pistols were another cartoon band made up by Malcolm Mclaren to suit his closetted sexual and monetary desires.... errr.... The Buzzcocks were limp-wristed tunesmiths... The Stranglers were old men hacking away... Sham 69 were a pub rock band chancing it... The Damned were a goth band in disguise (though Rat Scabies used some sort of Violin bass back in the day). The Velvet Underground are again a blugeoning Phil Spector style band who were the play-things of Andy Warhol. Everything after 1980 is not punk but some subset of punk resulting in horrific punk pop. Ah so we must look at those obscure bands on the Nuggets compilation albums, they are punk right? Or maybe The Monks from Germany....


So... you must mean the uber principled bands of all sorts of styles on SST? Those dudes who lived in vans for ten years and made $2 a week from selling merch... Bad Brains? Sorry but they dug up roots reggae and dub influences half the time... errr....What was Mike Watt using in the Minutemen prior to the SG basses? Is that a P bass on Meat Puppets I? :help::help::help:



Basically see what "punk" bassists were using and don't do that. Don't play Ricks, the market has driven right up since Kim Gordon was uselessly hacking away at one in the 1980s (with a screwdriver probably). Don't buy those apparently no longer inferior 1970s P basses (because the market has driven those right up because in this economic climate and if you drink enough before playing them you might not notice the worse workmanship). Errrrr, even those lucite Ampeg Dan Armstrong basses are expensive. You are doomed.
Click to expand...

^priceless^
I knew 'punk' was past anything approaching relevance when I got *into it* in like 80- wasn't aware anyone else felt this way.
 

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