Feel The Night Bass Cover

For those of you who celebrated Thanksgiving yesterday, I hope it was a nice one. Technically, I’m supposed to be posting an Ozzy cover but, in the spirit of giving, I thought I’d do something different.

Crisis was an original band I was a part of in the early 90’s. When I joined up with Eric, Mark and Lou, they already had 7 songs written and this was one of the first ones I played with them. We (Eric) recorded the first collection of songs in Eric’s basement on a Tascam 8 Track reel to reel not too very long after I joined the band. Even though they had most of the material written, they still made room for three songs that I brought along with me…actually, songs that Mark and I did in a previous band, but that’s a longer story. I don’t remember ever listening to what the prior bass player played on the songs and don’t recall ever being asked to. I just did my own thing. I thought the first collection of songs was good but I feel that the second recording was a little more sophisticated in terms of both material and sound quality. Eric used essentially the same recording process but that guy would just never seem to stop improving and evolving.

If then was now, I’d probably take a slightly different i.e. subtler approach to how I played the song but, back then, I had no shame and would overplay the shit out of anything put in front of me. This could easily become problematic if the drummer ever rushed the tempo in live situations but we were pretty mindful of not allowing that to happen.

The bass. Starting last spring, I went on a little bass buying binge. First grabbing a couple of basses that I’d previously owned and then a couple that I’d always wanted to own. Fortunately, no one else really seems to desire these oddball instruments so none of them cost me too much. Anyway, this bass, an Ibanez Roadstar II SR 850 circa 1984, was THE bass that I played during the most musically active period in my life. Mine was white though and I probably owned it longer than any other bass I’ve ever owned. I traded a tricked out Fire Engine Red Rickenbacker for it because I thought it looked like the Spector that Sting was playing on the Synchronicity II video. Eesh. I grew so comfortable playing it that, when I had the opportunity to buy a Wal bass back in 1991, I passed on it because I couldn’t imagine paying that much (at that time, $3,000) for an instrument that, in my mind, didn’t compare to this bass. Crazy, I know. Over time, I was looking for a different sound and started switching pick-ups and adding active electronics and wound up ruining the sound of the bass and I eventually got rid of it. I stumbled across this one on Reverb. It was being sold by a pawn shop in Texas. It’s in better condition than mine was when I got rid of it…and I take very good care of my instruments. It still has the paper covering the rear access plate on it. When I took it out of the case it really felt like being reunited with a long lost friend. Anyway, I though it would be cool to do a few Crisis covers using the same bass I used to originally record them.

And speaking of Crisis songs, I usually would offer to send an mp3 copy of the song to anyone who requested it but that got a bit unmanageable. I finally got around to asking Eric and Mark about their thoughts on making the songs available for download to anyone who might be interested and they were all for it, as I thought they would be. So, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, here’s the link to the Soundcloud page with downloadable versions of the songs. Please feel free to listen and share to your heart’s content.

  / tjh3113