resurfaced recordings of my band in my 20s, DOg & Pony, the loudest band in Philly... ever

circa 2003 or 2004

Mike -guitar right (gibson 335s -> wah -> modded 70s silverface twin + my 1962 ac30b)

Jim (me) - guitar left (fender strat -> hot rodded marshall plexi+ 1963 fender showman -> marshall cabs aplenty)

Chris "the Irish Jackhammer" - bass ( P-bass -> Acoustic 360 + ampeg V4b or SVT? -> acoustic folded horn 18" and ampeg 8x10)

Dan the jerk - drums

recorded in an 18th century carriage house in Trenton NJ through my old teac desk to an alesis adat24HD hard disc system, all the reverb is just that cavernous space leaking into room mics, it was SO LOUD, we wore shooting headphones... mixed real fast at Indre in south philly where me and Irish Chris worked at the time back when I couldn't mix on an ssl 4000 to save my life but the raw energy and SPL still speaks to me, hope it speaks to y'all too, 110% motor rock from the stone age. No vocals cuz you wouldn't be able to hear 'em anyway.

In case you're deaf now, let me reassure you that this still rips.

This is great. ...there is an action movie playing in my head listening to track 1.

This is great. ...there is an action movie playing in my head listening to track 1.

Is that movie "They Live!" with Rowdy Roddy Piper?

Love it! 🎸🎸 Nostalgia eh? "It ain't what it used to be"

Track one is giving me a Cold Sweat (vibe)

https://youtu.be/jIvBpe7q1Cg?si=PmMebMa9JCD5OXDd&t=19

Love it! 🎸🎸 Nostalgia eh? "It ain't what it used to be"

Track one is giving me a Cold Sweat (vibe)

Mike would be thrilled to be compared to thin lizzy.

These are awesome Jim

thanks! this record really exemplifies my approach to rock guitar tone: less front-end distortion + more volume = guitar muscle... the power tubes and speakers should compress and saturate like a female yeti flexing her biceps on Mt Everest while the earth gets sucked into a black hole... there's not stomp boxes apart from Mike using my vox wah, which I later traded him for a small stone, I was straight in, not even a tuner pedal, just 2 heads bridged

I wish I had the restof the session, we did like 8 cuts but when I was cleaning out Mike's garage after he got sick this was all I found, the 3 song press kit demo... which was more than I had, the end of this band was drug and alcohol fueled chaos

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO MY FELLOW AMERICANS! not sure what we have to be thankful about but HAPPY HAPPY TURKEY JOY JOY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2 month shameless bump.. still a rock guitar tone primer, play it loud and proud with fenders, marshalls n' voxes

In the spirit of shamelessness, I'm prepared to start a discussion about writing bass lines over slash chords if this thread doesn't start getting more views.

good topic

Well, let's start the bass chat with these 3 bangers at the top of the thread.

Who wrote these tracks? Did Chris have some freedom to interpret/complete these harmonies creatively, or was someone dictating to him exactly what notes he had to anchor his lines to for each chord?

It was a thoroughly colobrative prcess including bass and drums... me and mike might bring a vague idea but it was not 'writing' as I usually know it, Dan and Chris had a lot of instructions for me and mike. Chris had this root note jackhammer thing going and he wanted to know the lead tones for every bar. we all loved the stooges fun house and we really liked his idiotic approach which brought the dumbness of the band to the fore

...Chris had this root note jackhammer thing going and he wanted to know the lead tones for every bar. we all loved the stooges fun house and we really liked his idiotic approach which brought the dumbness of the band to the fore

Ha! Lead tones = lead melody/head?

More like lead tones for the main riffs. He wanted to avoid 5ths oi r 7ths at allcosts

More like lead tones for the main riffs. He wanted to avoid 5ths oi r 7ths at allcosts

Educated men pretending to be barbarians.

... I approve.

I'm always experiencing conflict between my inner King Buzzo and Walter Becker.

I'm always experiencing conflict between my inner King Buzzo and Walter Becker.

Speaking of your inner Walter Becker, the approach I often end up having to take when writing bass lines over slash chords is pretty similar to Chris's approach: cling to a root-only pattern until I get to a safer chord. E.g. if D/F#, I play an F#-only pattern for most of that bar.

This works, but I'm thinking you might have some more creative examples of how to honor the specified bass without clinging to 1 note the whole time?

y'know, personally I've never felt beholden to the root note, even when I play guitar; if its jazzy I might just mute the two Es and voice a root in the middle or omit it completely because I think 4+ note chords on the chart sound more euphonic in context that way, it keeps the cool notes voiced and it saves effort playing notes other people play too... and then every chord sits in a dense mix with the same kind of tone because they all use 2 wound and 2 plain strings (occassionally I'll use the low E but typically I then mute the A as in the Maj7 inversion that looks a little like a minor on the fretboard). Just what you need exactly where you need it with plenty of room for bass, vocals, keys etc to leap around decoratively. So on bass it depends what everyone else is doing and how they do it. If your ensemble is medium to large then odds are you have plenty of root notes happening all the time, do they need low end reinforcement or a bubbly bassline? Are the roots integral to the melody or are the key phrases drawn from other parts of the chords and associated scales? Is there even a vocal? Is someone going to improvise a solo?

I always think of roots as being realtive. On piano, Elton John almost always voices his 5ths on the bottom... of course that allows the bassist to play roots, but you see what I'm saying. No one thinks you should wail away on the minor 3rd and like a dominant 7th in a pop song, but those notes might have a place under a m7 and the root may not... listen for mood some time. Just trying aoviding the roots in a song you know and see how the mood changes. You will of course need to have a practice track to jam with, but give it a go. I wish I had a system but I'm far more caveman than that and shouldn't pretend I'm not. I have a decent amount of education and a good ear but I'm a knuckledragging rocker underneath that and trust my gut a lot.

EDIT: this band before it was dog n pony was also known as 54321BLOWHOLE, the hell's satans and Badass Mexican Cenotaur (yes, centaur with an O, for cinco demayo, but also because Dan thought Cenotaur was the word for a horse-person and we didn't correct him because it was funny)

OK, so the scenarios you're talking about, perhaps it's something like what's going on with the bass in Deacon Blues?

The verses start off really grounded with the bass playing the lowest note of the keyboardist's chord voicing, for the most part.

Then, those grounded 8 bars are followed by 8 bars that aren't so weighty and grounded, and in those sections, I think Rainey is playing extension-function bass notes (2/9?) rather than reinforcing the harmonic floor, which seems to compliment what that section is trying to achieve.

(EDIT: I shortened and cleaned-up some of the logic in the section below, based on findings later in the thread, for the sake of the 1-2 humans that may stumble over this bit in the decades ahead.)

The chords in this less-weighty section are complete as-is, and the bass isn't necessarily defining the harmony here. Rainey sticks to just playing the one note that is (presumably) defined in the chart, not a root5 pattern -- he doesn't deviate from the anchor tone until he's transitioning into the next chord. In a situation like this, I'm not sure he'd have a lot of freedom to play anything more than just the one note in the chart. Among other concerns, he's gotta preserve uncertain/questioning vibe in those 8 bars, making each return of those grounded sections feel that much more peanut-butter in the contrast.

This is where I'm currently at/struggling in my learning. I'm trying to figure out what kind of freedom/good-choices a bassist has in all these different slash chord scenarios... do these sections in Deacon Blue demand that the bassist keep things pretty conservative, or are there equally-viable options that I just don't see yet? (probably the later).

Then there is Babylon Sisters, where Chuck seems to be establishing root notes that are NOT in the chord voicings floating above... and so he's playing a root/5th pattern throughout the verse sections, presumably to define a harmony that wouldn't otherwise be there.

In Babylon Sisters, Chuck's playing seems to be treating the chords voiced by the keyboard as upper structure/color. Is Chuck doing exactly the opposite of what Chris is trying to do in these Dog & Pony tracks? Chuck is hitting those 5ths to pull the harmonic center of gravity away from the keyboard parts, and Chris is avoiding 5ths to avoid shifting gravity in that same way.

Also: "Cenotaur" sounds like a line of vitamin gummies at GNC that are laced with male-enhancement ingredients.