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My Instrument of Destruction (and I) |
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| I don’t know too much about the techie kind of stuff about my bass, never actually found out, maybe I should one day. So this column is more about some of my memories with it than the logistics. I have a red (wood finish) Ibanez Roadster, four-string, passive pickups, short neck – bought it 9 years ago. In fact, some people have mocked me, saying that it is too small to be a bass (I tell them that at least I am not trying to compensate for small, um, things!). What always suited me though is that it is much lighter than bigger basses, and not at all neck-heavy. This makes headbanging on stage much easier! It does not have the clearest bass sound I have ever heard, but it pounds just like I want it to (metal band remember?). The way I got my bass is a story of sheer persistence, in my opinion anyway. At the end of my standard 6 and 7 years of high school, I worked in bottle stores – first in Jhb central, and later in Hillbrow. Take into consideration that this was end of ’92 and ’93, so Hillbrow was already not the place to be, especially if you were a little snotkop 15 year-old white boy. I got paid about a grand per month to work from 8am to 8pm weekdays and 8am to 6pm Saturdays (I believe the term is ‘exploitation of children’). Highlights of the time in Hillbrow include two armed robberies - the first time I just went home, the second I was in the back stacking beer (still remember how to do that! SAB will be proud!) - and of course selling booze to an array of ‘interesting’ characters. Told you I was persistent! Because of what I went through to get my bass, I will NEVER sell it. Not at any price. So finally, at the end of 1993, I bought the bass second hand for R1000 from some dude who needed cash to pay off his new Les Paul, and bought a little 40 watt Axtech amp from T.O.M.S. I was ecstatic. For the next six months or so I basically just messed around with two friends who had guitars (and later became Bedlam’s guitarists), trying to figure out our fave songs by ear or from mags like Guitar or Guitar World. At the same time I was also messing around with some (easy!) scales, finger tapping, things like that. But I never became a very good technical player and gave up trying to read sheet music after about a week. All I wanted to do was play my heart out as well as possible, and if other people liked it too, that was okay with me. It was during this time that I felt like joining a band, so getting the Junk Mail seemed logical. Weird thing happened: I got a call from a guy (a friend of a friend) who I had been hearing about for some time. He was quite a good guitarist, and he taught me all kinds of cool stuff about root notes for solos and I don’t know what else (see 2nd last sentence of previous paragraph). We jammed all kinds of stuff – Hendrix, Eagles, Guns N’ Roses, Beatles, etc. It was a far cry from the Thrash/Death Metal that was to come, but it was awesome to kick back, play some ‘slow’ music, and to just be in a band. A while later Bedlam was formed – if you wanna hear the whole story, ask me, its way to long for here. Anyway, both my guitarists (as well as a mid-term kinda guy who is a little Malmsteen in the making) had all kinds of technical knowledge about 5ths and octaves and stuff, so I learnt quite a lot from these guys. At the same time I was moulding my style on bands ranging from Motley Crue and LA Guns to Black Sabbath, Sisters of Mercy, Pantera, and Sepultura. This style still persists – a cross between glam, rock, classic metal, and faster-than-a-speeding-bullet metal. And my ‘little’ bass served me well throughout. A few anecdotes I remember from back then (please consider that Jack Daniel also played in Bedlam so forgive me if I don’t remember much!). First club gig ever, Wings Battle of the Bands, 1996. The guy from Retribution Denied breaks his E-string and asks if he can borrow mine. They being supremely cool, obviously I say “no problem”. So there I sit for 30 minutes stressing my ass off that he would break mine too (no back-up!). Also, I was thanking the stars for buying a tuner just a few days earlier, as ‘ear-tuning’ has never been my forte. A few years later, my first gig with a Marshall: “$%*&! Are you sure that is my bass?” An old habit of mine was to turn down my bass so I could talk in between songs. Once, at Zeplins in Boksburg, I played an entire song with my volume down. Saddest thing is that no one even noticed! At Wings, I did an ‘Ozzy thing’ with my arms during a guitar interlude - hit my hand against the guitarist, and dropped my pick (yes, I use a pick, sue me) just before a fast-as-hell piece. Luckily I had messed around with slapping for a while so I just pounded the hell out of my E-string and scaled down the speed of the fills exponentially so it would still be in sync. Firstly, please, no boy-band jokes. And secondly, no one noticed. Same thing happened at our second last gig, but this time the mic stand was to blame (my front teeth will also never be the same). After the song I announced that I need a minute to look for my pick. Just imagine the remarks. Every now and then I would get cramps in my right thumb (early arthritis?) that were so bad I couldn’t hold the pick. So I would just improvise and grab the mic and try and look really evil while ‘singing’, with a few slaps in between, until it went away. And again, no one noticed. So, those were just a few memories from my archives. Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to challenge sanity every chance you get. |
