Replies to post #1647 on Rock and Roll History (ROCK)

[Alex Zivojinovich]

Nice! I agree that this is a pretty cool site, and am glad you showed it to me.

But in your first post you picked bass as your favorite instrument and bragged about how the bass can be the whole band? You're biased toward the bass. And calling guitarists "prima donnas" if they happen to be able to play more than 4 notes per measure, unlike most bassists?

Not cool, buddy.

Let's see a bass create "texture" like the best guitarists can.

My favorite instrumentalist is the guitar player who can switch between soft, moody textures and fast, screaming leads and back again. The kind where you might not really hear what he's doing most of the time, but he's creating an ambience that defines the band's sound.

Let's see you do that on a bass. What kind of ambience can you create with a steady, boring "thump, thump, thumb, thumb". Hell, bass is just a tunable bass drum. You could be replaced by a tympani player.

Besides, most bassists are just guitarists who weren't good enough so had to play the bass instead.

[Bob Zumbrunnen]

Have to agree with you there. Bass is *the* rock 'n roll instrument.

Hope the board moderators don't mind this semi-off-topic stuff.

[The Professor]

Percussive enough to be a whole rhythm section

Surely, you jest, buddy.

Let's see. 2 or 3 fingers plucking 4 strings is a rhythm section? How about a pair of sticks and a pair of feet, all a blur of fluid, adhesive, and cohesive motion.

A rock act can't do without any instrument. But without drums, there's no band. No rhythm; no band.

And let's not forget some of the other contributors to the collective that may come to be known as a unit. Say, lyricists? Without a great lyricist, you just have people banging on skins and plucking on strings while someone belches meaningless drivel into a microphone.

Or worse, you get things like:

I get up at seven.
yeah.
I go to work by nine.
Got no time for livin'
yeah.
I'm workin' all the time.
Seems to me I could live my life a lot better than I think I am.

I'd continue, but it's really too painful. Bad enough that "yeah" is considered prose. Worse that "seven" is supposed to rhyme with "livin'" and "nine" with "time". Unforgivably, the last line uses "am" instead of "have". If the "lyricist" really wanted to use the word "am" (likely, since he rhymes it with "man" in the next line), proper usage of the language would dictate "It seems to me I could be living my life a lot better than I think I am."

And yet that author gets all the credit nowadays because he sings songs written by a REAL lyricist. Of course that band went nowhere until they did get a real lyricist.

Drummers and lyrcists make rock bands.