Don't Shoot The Bass Player (He's doing his best!)
By Pete Massey
HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED what it's like playing bass at a Bluegrass pick? Well, apart from being expected to know every bluegrass song ever written in any of 12 keys and their minor variations, it's a whole lot of fun! Especially when you have Banjo Bill, hell bent on maintaining his ambition of always playing faster than he did last week. The tempo gets so fast that the melody (if there ever was one) gets completely lost in a blaze of notes so blurred that no-one can tell if that was a clever riff or a mistake. All this seems to happen as he gets braver and braver after copious amounts of alcohol have been imbibed to settle his nerves. The bass player is expected to cope with all this as well as have the ability to 'read ahead' so as to anticipate chord changes on an unknown tune. "That's not hard!", I hear you cry; well, maybe it isn't when you can hold off and listen to be on the safe side, but the bass player just has to keep going and provide a steady, driving beat- he can't just slip extra bits in and out like those slick banjo players!
...the melody (if there ever was one) gets All goes well until the singer suffers an X-files experience (you know - gets abducted by aliens) and puts an extra beat or so in the bar before changing to the next chord. This adds another dimension of pure panic while the concentration is recovered, because 'the singer is king' so do I follow him or keep the time or what? Then you're just settling down and enjoying yourself, getting all the 'thuds' in the right place again, your mind starting to wander under the alcofuelence of all the incohol, when all of a sudden someone calls "Bass break!" and you realise you haven't really been paying enough attention and can't properly remember the tune! But at least, being bluegrass, one can play an improvised solo. Not like the fiddles and mandolins, who always seem to be in need of either a pee or a pint when the singer calls out "Dream Of A Miner's Child - key of B flat!". Strange, isn't it? Pete Massey, Chester
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