Brown's Bass Blog

Some words of wisdom – Flea talks about making the transition from being a ‘badass bassplayer’ to playing what’s right for the song.  We can all use this reminder every once in a while, or more.

Mellowship Slinky in B Major – Make something this funky out of a B7 arpeggio – I dare you.  John Frusciante’s guitar playing is among his most sublime, but maybe that’s beside the point today.

For me the Blood Sugar Sex Magik is the finest RHCP record, the perfect mix of stripped down funk, melody and attitude.  This cut has it all.  Listen for the greasy smears and inflections and the subtle variations and fills.  Perfect Musicman tone, possibly this choice of bass influenced by Louis Johnson, one of the fathers of slapping – we’ll get to him in time….

Sir Psycho Sexy   …. A perfect combination of aggressive filtered funk and subtle melodic playing on the epic outro.  Listen to how each time around the chord sequence he develops the line without drawing attention to it.  Great interplay between bass and each of the drums and guitar.  Flea is not typically known for this style of playing, although it is where he spends his time now.

Speaking of which – a few records later John Frusciante rejoined the group for the ‘Californication’ album.  Reputedly at the end of recording Blood Sugar he “swam down the toilet bowl, through the sewers to the open ocean and freedom” – this album marks somewhat of a return to form after Dave Navarro’s valiant efforts to fill his shoes on ‘Warped’.  On this album ‘Aeroplane’ is a wonderful example of self -confessed trashy white boy funk.

The title cut features lovely interplay again, Flea also employs a masterful command of the simple power of register changes.  Listen to how he dives down for the low notes for emotional impact in various sections.  Also there’s some lovely accompaniment to the guitar solo.

I wanted to let the music speak before I tried to.  For me Flea is the fusion of Louis Johnson’s thumping, the energy and emotion of punk rock channeling a simple earthy sexuality through a love of musics as different as Led Zeppelin, Sly and Family Stone and Miles Davis.  While some critics have panned their live shows and perhaps there are some albums that stand out above the crowd the Red Hot Chili Peppers are a fun band and Flea will always have a place in the bass pantheon.

Flea interviewed by River Phoenix

“Cocaine is a hell of a drug!” – Rick James

Laziness is relative.  Relative to how we perceive those who work harder, longer better hours than we do; relative to our own ideals and goals; relative to our own desire to sleep as long as humanly possible even….

Three months in Shanghai – thirteen weeks of 6 nights a week performing three hours a night.  Helping people dance, supporting the soloists, playing leads and solos myself (more than I ever have) running sound, recording and documenting the shows, being nice to people, solving problems, making sure I don’t look scruffy…. adds up to a lot but is compressed into only 5/6 hours a day. So what happens to the other 18?

Sleep hopefully.  Sometimes 12 hours, sometimes barely 4 … for some reason each of the group has been on some wacky, evolving sleep cycle.  I myself became fully nocturnal for 6 weeks, waking up at 6/7pm and going to bed at between 7am and 2pm.  Sleep can be wonderful, especially a consistent 8 hours (a distant memory!)  We each started to have very vivid dreams (maybe from not being exposed to TV, constant advertising and all that crap??) which have been the subject of many hilarious discussions.  Sleep is truly important.

Eating.  Daily.  After a little adventurousness we all really settled into some favourite haunts – the 24 hour Hot-pot restaurant, complete with muddy toddlers begging outside (wearing fabulously clean, new clothes mind you), is always a win.  Element Fresh has been my drug of choice, great chinese food, western/american fare and fantastic breakfasts til 330pm on the weekends.  My point?  After our initial excitement we became lazy to an extent – unadventurous once we found our comforts.

Hobbies/projects.  I think we all had other goals we wanted to accomplish while we were here.  I wanted to re-write the musical examples from my bass books (so I could publish in the US without breaching copyright law there); work on my own compositions and productions; practice a lot and write this blog.  I got about half way through demos for a solo album (you can hear them on my soundcloud page) and this blog writing stopped and started a couple of times… more on that later.

So…. laziness happened!  Hours spent reading. re-charging, reflecting.  Looking at bbc.co.uk (through a proxy server to bypass the chinese firewall) and keeping with the political turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa or the natural disasters in New Zealand, Thailand and Japan.

Chinese traditional massage happened – and quickly became my favourite way to spend a day off – tiny chinese elbows probing into my sore muscles, stretching out tendons I didn’t know existed and leaving me feeling like a new Chris.

We had a phrase in Peru – “being busy in my hammock” – just being, sitting, slowing down and enjoying the moment.  While I got a lot out of being at Berklee it took months afterwards to be able to just sit and be with myself… rather than constantly working, creating, being on the move and cramming as much as possible into every hour of the day.

We, or I certainly, have found the optimum ways to maintain ourselves physically and mentally so that we could deliver our best in those few hours each night here at the House of Blues & Jazz.  While I may still not be working to my fullest capacity (compared to my own imagination of what I can achieve or what I imagine other people put in) we have almost made it through this marathon without casualty – maybe that’s no small thing in itself.

So I had taken a break from writing here after starting to talk about Flea.  The question in my mind was how to balance making something readable for folks who aren’t necessarily bass players while still getting to the heart of what’s important – in this case why I value Flea’s influence so much in my musical life.  I think I’ve come around to carrying on… unless I feel like not writing it down, which can be fine too.

It’s 1991/2 and I’m playing drums in the school orchestra, after roughly a year of weekly half hour group lessons with another 5 students.  That puts me at 15 or 16 years old.  Listening to all the new Seattle music, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains – all about the drums and the drummers.

Everything I am playing in school orchestra sounds like I’m trying to be John Bonham, because all the drummers from these bands that I’m listening to were all so heavily influenced by him…. Bonham’s from my town incidentally so it’s fitting that I’m channeling second generation Bonzo – even if the conductor wishes I weren’t .. Then one day the first chair violin hands me a grotty tape of a tape of a tape – it’s Primus.  Frizzle Fry on one side – Sailing the Seas of Cheese on the other.  Thanks Austin Poll.

It was so distorted and cool sounding (I was later to hear them on cd and realise that was the number of generations the tape had been copied – handed from musician to musician through school and regional orchestra’s and rock bands) – this wild band from San Fransisco, veritably the other side of the planet – with a sound I had never heard before. My favourite three cuts…

John the Fisherman (Frizzle Fry) Drum groove followed by …. Les hitting all the strings with distortion and whammy bar…. YES!!! And it’s a great song with an amusing home-made vibe video.  Still seeing new things on each view, most of them a bit wrong.

Tommy the Cat features Tom Waits as the Cat.  Great video and story, lovely recording, slamming drums, amazing thump and pluck bass line, insane guitar lines – I was in heaven.

The bass fill (at 1:58) had me rolling on the floor – tears in my eyes.

The bass solo at 3:06 is still one of the greatest moments on the instrument.  In tune it most definitely isn’t, inspired it definitely is.

Jerry was a Racecar Driver

“Nachos? Steamy…”

So after seeing Mark King and hearing  Les Claypool I kidnapped the schools bass guitar ( a CAT bass with P/J pickups) and ‘amp’ for the summer holiday and set about learning  all the songs from these two albums.  That’s how I thought bass was, and should be played and with the little I knew about guitar and drums already I went for it.

Many of my attempts made it onto the first few albums by Touch Bellini, my second ever band (same members as the first – Electric Russell).  These exist only on tapes with homemade sleeves in various parts of the UK.  Thanks to Simon Bellini for tea, inspiration and pressing the play and record buttons on the hifi simultaneously.

Primus Suck.  Especially these first few albums. Check it out.

There was a boy whose back garden met mine, we were friends at school, his name was Chris Shaw (and probably still is).

We used to dance around his living room to this song (aged 10 or 11).

Later I discovered there are three bass tracks in the song, two by Bakithi and a fretless melody line played by Paul Simon.  The bass break at 3:43 (undoubtably my first air bass moment) was recorded on Bakithi’s birthday, which fell on one of the session days I expect.  The slap line was recorded and then repeated in reverse, complete with with strange tape sucking sounds.

You can find out much more about Bakithi Kumalo and his music here.

Another truly wonderful example of his playing can be found here.  This video of “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes” can put a shine on any day, guaranteed.

This is the first time I ever noticed a bass player.  Came home late one night around 1990, switched on the tv to find this concert segment of him playing alone … I was a drummer at the time and this blew me away.

Looking back and listening now there are a few things that I notice..

1) The massive Stanley Clarke influence.  Alembic bass with super light strings, the bends, the slap sound – the whole concept can be taken back to some of Mr Clarke’s recordings and live performances.

2) The way he made Stanley’s thing his own… particularly love the machine gun triplets that develop through the piece to the climax.

3) The rise in tempo from 0:50 to 1:10; it kicks the energy up in the crowd and sounds entirely natural and musical.

4) The LED’s in the neck are soooo smooooooth 🙂 Why was the only other guy to do this Nick Fyffe? (the second Jamiroquai bass player) Bring it back!

I literally spent months and years trying to duplicate and develop what I saw here (in some ways I’m still getting over it).  In 2002 I opened a show at Royal Ascot with Mark King and Gary Husband were headlining, sadly I didn’t get to meet him to say thanks.

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