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Who plays harder lines while singing: Les Claypool or Geddy Lee?

Who plays harder lines while singing?

  • Les Claypool

    Votes: 47 26.3%

  • Geddy Lee

    Votes: 66 36.9%

  • Carrots

    Votes: 12 6.7%

  • Mark King and Esperanza Spalding have them beat.

    Votes: 54 30.2%
  • Total voters
    179
#4
I don't know this Esperanza Lady but I know Les Claypool has Geddy dead to rights it's just too bad neither one of them have a good singing voice. I know opinions, but I found Geddys lyrics to be great but his voice didn't ring true in my ears. I think Les is so good on bass that singing is just a joke to him so his lyrics and voice suck and he doesn't care because he knows I will still pay him. By the way I love both bands I just think it's a strange question given the different attitudes. If your question is more like who has to concentrate more to sing I would say Geddy and he gets better results too.
 
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#5
Lowendchamp said:
I don't know this Esperanza Lady but I know Les Claypool has Geddy dead to rights it's just too bad neither one of them have a good singing voice. I know opinions, but I found Geddys lyrics to be great but his voice didn't ring true in my ears. I think Les is so good on bass that singing is just a joke to him so his lyrics and voice suck and he doesn't care because he knows I will still pay him. By the way I love both bands I just think it's a strange question given the different attitudes. If your question is more like who has to concentrate more to sing I would say Geddy and he gets better results too.
Click to expand...

I appreciate your thoughtful answer.
 
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#7
I went for Mark King and Esperanza, but I am absolutely biased because I don't like either Geddy's voice or Les's singing voice, so I'm sure I'm not objective. Not that King has a great voice but it's certainly better than both of those, and of course Esperanza sounds like an angel; she's could get by just as a lead singer and still sound better than most.

Of course that doesn't really speak to who plays the harder lines while singing. I'm not up to Geddy Lee yet but I can see myself getting there for at least some of the songs, so he seems like the one doing the least of this bunch. This isn't a knock, he's certainly amazing I have huge respect for him as a bassist but it seems like a realistically-achieveable level of amazing. Like, I see it, and I think "if I practiced enough—a lot—I could get there."

I haven't learned to tap yet but it seems hard and Claypool is certainly good at it. but because I don't do it I'm not really sure just exactly how hard Les is really working—I admit I'm not really qualified to judge. I kind of feel that way about Spalding, too, I don't always have a clear sense of how hard what she does really is. She makes it look so easy, but then I stop and think about what she's actually doing and it seems distressingly hard. Unclear if I could get to their levels with enough practice.

King's lines are kind of head-warping for me, machine-gunning 16ths at 130 bpm with amazingly consistent slap tone still seems to me to be inhuman, so his seem the hardest. I have listened to Level 42 for years but I didn't really realize what was actually going on until after I started to play bass and saw some live footage. Mind. Blown. I kind of think that no matter how much I practiced, I couldn't get there.
 
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