Alembic: Calling all bass players (Beau, Valis, etc)

[kdh]

Yes never stood a chance. J. Geils had people bouncing off the walls, they were the east coast version of ZZ Top, a badass boogie band. If you can sit through Whammer Jammer, there's something severely wrong with you.

Speak of the devil:

http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2017/04/11/523489861/john-geils-guitarist-of-the-j-geils-band-dies-at-71

[SemiSalt]

Jay Geils was one of my very tenuous links to celebrity. He was in my class beginning the middle of elementary school through high school. He lived about quarter mile from me in house his father had built out of an old horse barn. We were never close friends. He played the trumpet in the HS band, and I think in what might be called "garage bands." I never thought of him as an especially good musician. I did think of him as a bit of a wise guy and entrepreneur. After school, I knew about his band, of course, but I didn't follow it. They had some sort of weird connection to the Joe Franklin Show, which was a local (to NYC) late night talk and nostalgia show.

He attended an HS reunion about a year and a half ago. He said he had picked up the trumpet after a long layoff, and realized that he had always played a student model trumpet, never a really good professional model.

(My other tenuous link to celebrity is that Meryl Streep attended the same HS. I think she was freshman my senior year.)

[VALIS]

When I said I had met with Ron Wickersham (Alembic founder) a decade ago I was way off on the timing! I've been recalling the occasion and it was actually around 1986-1987 -- 30 years ago -- when I was a consultant and was looking for circuit board fab operations. Ron was doing some in-house fab for prototyping so I dropped by to check it out. He showed me around, let me play some basses, and also proudly demonstrated a wood-burning laser he had mounted to an X/Y plotter table for doing custom woodwork. He was quite the geek and we got along nicely.

As for fixed-frequency inflection points on tone controls, I think this is a matter of convenience and tradition, given that back in the early days that's all we could easily do. Also, as has been said, these controls obviously don't have the same effect on the harmonic content of each note over the instrument's multi-octave frequency range, but instead are useful in fitting the bass "sound" to the room, and into the overall band. It's pretty common to cut the midrange, so you get some bottom and some edge to your sound, without competing so much with the guitar and vocals. This is obviously style-dependent, but a "V" or "smile" setting on an EQ, or similar tone control settings is often seen. For that matter, one of my bass amps has a fixed "twin-T" passive notch filter right after the first stage preamp, for just this reason. I don't really like the idea of it being there, but the amp sounds pretty good so I haven't messed with it. When I'm practicing, or playing quiet music with a sparse arrangement I usually dial in a pretty flat sound. Put me on a stage with a loud guitar/keyboard/drums/vocals band and I usually dial down the mids. If we're being funky I boost the highs. Sometimes, no matter how much I tweak, is still sounds like mud....

Don't be fooled if I sound like I know what I'm doing. I'm just a hack.

[VALIS]

Oh yeah, J. Giles -- When we were making the movie "Standing in the Shadows of Motown", I got to know Seth Justman pretty well. Seth was the J. Giles band keyboardist, and his brother Paul was the film's director. Seth helped with some of the film's concert scene arrangements, and we hung out together a bit during the film's editing and promotion. Seth wrote many of the J. Giles hits, and Paul Justman helped with the lyrics on a few (Freeze Frame, Centerfold, and others). I really liked Seth -- haven't seen those guys in quite a while.

[Tucky]

I hadn't heard of your Standing In The Shadows connection before Paul, congratulations on your part in a great documentary (and always when I think of that movie a thank you to Joan Osborne, who just nails "What Becomes Of The Broken Hearted"). I've seen a couple of good rock documentaries recently- "Sweet Blues" about Michael Bloomfield and and "Bang" the story of Bert Berns. Both were great and done on a shoestring by Bob Sarles. The window to make these kinds of films is quickly closing.

My brother was the original drummer for Morphine and returned to play in the two drummer setup. Believe it or not, Morphine and Mark Sandman (speaking of bass players and basses) just had a documentary made about them. My brother was talking with the fellow that made that film, and the idea of making a film about Jim Gordon came up, another difficult story of a fine musician, who with Car Radle was another great bass/drummer combo.

One of the best bass sounds I have ever heard was Sandman playing a telecaster guitar with an Octaver in Treat Her Right, another great Boston band. Go figure. It was a complete disconnect to hear this beautiful round full bass while watching him play a guitar. And then he moved on to a one string bass and finally all the way to two.

[kdh]

My family all enjoyed "Twenty Feet from Stardom" about backup singers.

[kdh]

My brother was the original drummer for Morphine and returned to play in the two drummer setup. Believe it or not, Morphine and Mark Sandman (speaking of bass players and basses) just had a documentary made about them. My brother was talking with the fellow that made that film, and the idea of making a film about Jim Gordon came up, another difficult story of a fine musician, who with Car Radle was another great bass/drummer combo.

One of the best bass sounds I have ever heard was Sandman playing a telecaster guitar with an Octaver in Treat Her Right, another great Boston band. Go figure. It was a complete disconnect to hear this beautiful round full bass while watching him play a guitar. And then he moved on to a one string bass and finally all the way to two.

Learn about those wacky basses here...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClQLC2kzkWg[/youtube]

They certainly ain't Alembics.

[VALIS]

I hadn't heard of your Standing In The Shadows connection before Paul, congratulations on your part in a great documentary (and always when I think of that movie a thank you to Joan Osborne, who just nails "What Becomes Of The Broken Hearted").

Yeah, I am the "Elliott" in "Elliott Scott Productions" -- we financed the film and of course lost our shirts on it. We sort of know that was going to happen when we went into it, but still, the ways a distributer can screw you are breathtaking. Anyway, it was a great experience. We took the film to a bunch of film festivals and got fantastic responses, and went to the Grammys in New York, where we got a couple of Grammy awards. After the film, the remaining Funk Brothers did some world touring. We hooked up with them in Helsinki, where Steve Winwood and Billy Preston were doing the singing. Many of our Finnish relatives got to meet the Funk Brothers backstage at that concert.

Joan Osborne was truly great with the Funks. I've got the rough-mixes from her concert session (we did a separate day for each vocalist; first band and vocalist run-throughs, then we opened the doors in the evening for the audience and we took two or three takes of each song). Joan just sang beautifully on each take. By the end of the night she was getting a bit hoarse and you can hear it a little on "Brokenhearted". It suited the song. Seth Justman did the arrangements for the breakdown / finale on that song and I love it. We got a Grammy for Chaka's performance of "What's Going On", but If I had been choosing I would have given it to Joan for "Brokenhearted".

I actually wasn't there for Joan's performance -- I was still working at the time. My friend David Scott was in Detroit for the concert filming, and he called me up saying I just had to get out there. I flew in for the last night, when Chaka was performing. There was a big snowstorm going on, and we were one of the last flights to get in. We had to use a 4WD jeep to get to the concert venue. Two days before, the overhead water pipes in the theater had frozen and burst, flooding most of the sound equipment. When I arrived they still had heaters and blowers drying out the stage, and were connecting the replacement gear. I got to meet Joan later, when we were promoting the film. I also got to meet MeShell Ndegeocello when she was performing in Petaluma, and I gave her a pre-final-edit version of the film.

Like I said, it was a fun experience. I think I'm done financing films though!

Speaking of equalization, that Helsinki concert was held in a big indoor arena, and Winwood's sound guy ran the board. Afterwards, I had to compliment him on the amazing job he did of dialing in the sound in that arena -- he was a true pro. Of course Winwood was great.

[Tucky]

There is a moment in the movie where Joan is sitting at a table with some of the Funk Brothers and they are explaining something about how songs came about and they start doing the beat to "Heard It Through The Grapevine" and she come in singing "Bet you wonder how I knew" perfectly syncopated and they just look at her in the nicest way. I think it is after that that she asks something about passing the audition and they say she already did. And yes the way the song runs to the end is masterful, Seth deserves the accolade you offer him. I love the repeated "Tell me, tell me".

Sorry you lost money- when I saw the Bert Berns movie his son was there and he and his sister had clearly spent plenty of their money, but at least it was from royalties on songs their father wrote (Twist and Shout, Cry Baby, Cry To Me, Pain In My Heart, Here Comes The Night, etc) which had reverted back to them. And presumably song royalties from the movie would be theres as well.

For anyone who hasn't seen it-

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBzuNZ9DlnI[/youtube]

[JoeP]

That movie really turned me on to Joan Osborne. Thanks for producing it Paul.

[Rob McAlpine]

Joan Osborne is one of the great under appreciated talents.

Colin Blunstone of The Zombies did an interesting cover of What Becomes of the Broken Hearted. Different, but good.