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Two Bassists in a band

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This. melts my mind every single time.
 
I am just throwing this out there out of curiosity. Some bands have two drummers like the Grateful Dead all the way to Lawrence Welk and other groups in between. Does anyone know of bands that had two bassist? Would it work? Thanks

Symphonies do it all the time.

Limited general appeal, mostly listened to by other bassists who just all about the bass.

Sort of like Jerry and the Harmonicats.

 
I worked for decades (my whole career) for a company that made pro audio gear - musical stuff in large part. We had a LOT of musicians in the place, and every year, there was a Christmas show with all in house talent - ad hoc bands formed just to do that show.

One of them one year (I was a part of that) was comprised of 8 (yes, I said 8) bassists and a drummer. We tried it without the drummer, but decided we needed one. A couple guys sang, we all worked on different parts so we weren't just a huge cluster**** of low end, and it came off really well. Bassists are often the most "well adjusted" musicians in the band - in terms of not being divas - we're in it to serve the song, whatever that takes. Having a whole band with that attitude, as it turns out, is glorious.
 
I've done it in my own bands, but we're talking instrumental groups where I switched from bass to guitar part way through while the other bassist played bass all the way through, and one was doing lead bass the other doing low bass, and I've watched concert encores in mexico of the warning who had opened for another band, and at the end the main band brought out the warning to perform an encore with them that had been worked out, where The Warning's bassist Alejandra was bassist for the encore while the headlining band's bassist was doing higher melodies or chording up the neck. That works too.

But two basses playing bass parts? Only in spinal tap. It could get muddy easily without being carefully crafted, and wouldn't provide much that you couldn't do with double stops on a single bass anyway.