skip to main |
skip to sidebar
It takes a special bass player to get a solo perch up on the 'blague. Or in this case, a visionary who happened to work the low side. I suppose this could be considered a curiosity for those who know Haruomi "Harry" Hosono mainly from his pioneering electronic work. But this is quite the classy groover, which goes to show that 1973 was 1973 just about anywhere.
Falling victim to the same hubris as Kiss, the members of Yes decided that the mid-'70s would be a good time to unleash a full complement of solo albums upon an unsuspecting public. (You can check out a detailed critical summary here.) At the far ends of the embarrassment scale were singer Jon Anderson's cosmic drool epic and drummer Alan White's, um, reggae exploration. Meanwhile, bassist Chris Squire somehow managed to cram Yes-sized pomp and near-constant bass shenanigans into a decent pop song. Who knows, maybe it had something to do with hiring Bruford back on drums. I like this song with surprisingly few reservations.
I used to like Tortoise a lot. Probably more than they deserved. It's pleasant stuff, but listening these days, they sound like less than the sum of their parts (though they get big ups for schlepping around two marimbas all these years). Here's one of those parts—bassist Doug McCombs's solo project, which does the proverbial 'soundtrack to imaginary film' thing, and does it quite well. He's one of the least bass-y bass players around. Which adds range to the melodies, but sadly, suggests that there was very little bass face going on at the sessions. Oh those dour Chicagoans.
It takes a special bass player to get a solo perch up on the 'blague. Or in this case, a visionary who happened to work the low side. I suppose this could be considered a curiosity for those who know Haruomi "Harry" Hosono mainly from his pioneering electronic work. But this is quite the classy groover, which goes to show that 1973 was 1973 just about anywhere.
Falling victim to the same hubris as Kiss, the members of Yes decided that the mid-'70s would be a good time to unleash a full complement of solo albums upon an unsuspecting public. (You can check out a detailed critical summary here.) At the far ends of the embarrassment scale were singer Jon Anderson's cosmic drool epic and drummer Alan White's, um, reggae exploration. Meanwhile, bassist Chris Squire somehow managed to cram Yes-sized pomp and near-constant bass shenanigans into a decent pop song. Who knows, maybe it had something to do with hiring Bruford back on drums. I like this song with surprisingly few reservations.
I used to like Tortoise a lot. Probably more than they deserved. It's pleasant stuff, but listening these days, they sound like less than the sum of their parts (though they get big ups for schlepping around two marimbas all these years). Here's one of those parts—bassist Doug McCombs's solo project, which does the proverbial 'soundtrack to imaginary film' thing, and does it quite well. He's one of the least bass-y bass players around. Which adds range to the melodies, but sadly, suggests that there was very little bass face going on at the sessions. Oh those dour Chicagoans.
