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Double Bass Your oddest combo?

#6
Marc, man, that's pretty out. It is challenging to top "walker with springs.'

My shot: DB & trombone duo, no amp in a subway station.

Second shot: I played in a band (soprano sax, electric mandolin, guitar & DB, which is definitely some out FWIW) which was so out we got sent home before we played a note one time.
 
#13
Played a bit with a really wonderful jazz bassoonist in the early eighties; bass, drums, bassoon, sometimes guitar. Maybe the oddest, though, was just playing solo or duo bass (with an equally demented pal) on the street, as a yout.

The most surreal, odd gigs (maybe another thread?) include playing an Amway convention in L.A. once on New Year's eve, or my brief stint with an Italian wedding band (accordian, drums, keyboard, 400 lb. male singer (with an amazing voice and horrific acne).
 
#15
Way back when I was briefly a tuba player in Halifax, I was invited to play a bizarre concert at The Centre for Art Tapes. This was a group of artists who created musical pieces by recording various things then spliced them together to make a musical collage.

So the piece I was in, the composer recorded various ocean and harbour sounds (being in Halifax that's not hard to do). I played foghorn signals on my tuba, a uillean piper played several Irish tunes at intervals, an alto sax interjected some jazz riffs here and there and a percussionist added the occasional clang. At the climax of the piece we all took a big chunk of dry ice and put it in a barrel of hot water and we disappeared in the resulting fog!
 
#18
Mine aren't that astonishing compared to you guys. None of these are in any way avante garde. 1) Upright bass and voice; I was scared of this one. I wasn't sure I was going to be able to pull off a 4 hour standards gig with bass and singer but it worked; quite well actually. 2) Bass and spoken word. 3) A good one was spoken word, bass, harmonica and percussion.

As an aside, the harmonica player in that group was insanely good. I met him at an open stage in Pittsburgh in the early '90s. My ex-wife, who was both an exceptional singer and poet, and I would sometimes go to open stages which were pretty ubiquitous in Pittsburgh in the early '90's and sing a couple of songs (well, she sang, I just accompanied; NO ONE wanted to hear me sing). Anyway, we were about 13th on the list to go on and were hanging out listening to the amateur strummery (where just everybody comes up and plays American Pie with the wrong chords) and I'm losing my mind because I'm a music lover and, really, there wasn't much of what you'd call actual music happening. Not that I expected a lot, it was an open stage after all. About the 10th act in, the MC announces that Danny Kaplan was going to play unaccompanied harmonica. At this point, I thought I had entered a lower ring of Hell. Solo harmonica?!? Good god. Could it get ANY worse?

He comes up, sits down and starts to play and the clouds parted and the sun shined through, choirs of heavenly angels start singing etc. He was just amazing. A true virtuoso. He wasn't a jazz guy but he had the same mindset and chops of a jazz guy. On harmonica.

mark
 

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