13 basslines

Man, it’s been awhile.

I present: 13 basslines that strike me as wicked cool. Enjoy!

1. First off, here’s the apt­ly-named Cana­di­an bank 13 Engines with the intro to their tune “Bred in the Bone”. There was a video for this one, which I hap­pened to see a time or two on Much­Mu­sic, and I bought the tape (Per­pet­u­al Motion Machine) on the strength of this song. Lat­er I was ecsta­t­ic to find the CD for five bucks, but that’s a sto­ry that’s already been told.
2. Next let’s throw a lit­tle more love at anoth­er Cana­di­an band, the Trag­i­cal­ly Hip. They’ve got a lot of great tunes, but the bassline for Blow at High Dough always makes me smile. Maybe that’s because it was the theme song for the fun­ni­est show ever on tele­vi­sion, Made in Cana­da.
3. What’s that? You want more Cana­di­an bass? Okay, here you go: K‑OS’s Crab­buck­it. This one makes me want to smile, too, and it makes my feet want to walk. Big time.
4. Ok, now to Cal­i­for­nia, I think. (Don’t wor­ry, we’ll be back in Cana­da before this is all done.) Faith No More’s Midlife Cri­sis is a hard-hit­ting tune, full of grit­ty lyrics like “Go on and wring my neck / like when a rag gets wet”. The kind of stuff I like. Too bad they broke up.
5. But that’s okay, too, because now Tom Pat­ton is mak­ing music like this track from his Peep­ing Tom project, Mojo. The entire album is amaz­ing, but this one–the first single–remains my favourite.
6. When I think of the But­t­hole Surfers, I think of two things. One is the Simp­sons episode where the Flan­der­s­es lose their house in a hur­ri­cane and end up liv­ing in the church; the kids dig shirts out of the lost and found, one of them ends up witha But­t­hole Surfers shirt, and says, proud­ly, “Look, Dad­dy, I’m a surfer!” The oth­er thing is their song Pep­per.
7. Told you we’d be back in Cana­da. Here’s a dou­ble shot from the smalls, “Canada’s hard­est work­ing inde­pen­dent band”. Here’s a snip­pet from their rockin’ clas­sic, Pity the Man with the Fast Right Hand. How can you fail to love a title like that?
8. And the oth­er one from the smalls, who had an amaz­ing bass play­er named Corb Lund (who has gone on to a roots/country career), is the aston­ish­ing bass solo from Take it from a Rye­man.
9. Rob Zom­bie’s great­est hits album had a nasty, brutish song called Pussy Liquor. The lyrics may be evil, but the catch­i­ness of the tune can­not be denied.
10. Next up we have the Beast­ie Boys, with the bassline from their tune Root Down.
11. And so we come to Primus. It was dif­fi­cult not to make this the “top 13 Primus basslines”, but some­how I man­aged to resist the temp­ta­tion. First up we have the intro to the groovin’ Over the Elec­tric Grapevine.
12. When Metal­li­ca’s bassist Cliff Bur­ton died, Les Clay­pool, Primus’s bassist, was one of the musi­cians who audi­tioned to take his place. He did­n’t get the gig, but Primus some­times plays Metal­li­ca tunes in their con­certs. There’s a boot­leg out there of Mas­ter of Pup­pets; what I’ve got is The Thing That Should Not Be.
13. Last but most assured­ly not least, we have the song that got me hooked on Primus: a live ver­sion of their clas­sic Tom­my the Cat.

Tech­no­rati: Thurs­day 13

Post your link in the com­ments and I’ll add it here!

• Doug’s abused drugs list (not that Doug has abused these drugs) (that I know of)
• Shoshana’s joys of motherhood
• Wan­na be next? Of course you do.