Friday, May 1, 2009

End of week playlist: Paul + Bass = GOD.

It's become such a cliche that Paul McCartney is underrated as a bass player that he probably is no longer, technically, underrated as a bass player. Here are my favorite Paul-on-bass moments-- or at least, my favorites of the songs I've covered so far. Just cause I'm feeling bassy.











It's interesting that my favorites are mostly middle and late period songs. Did Paul actually get more innovative as they went along? Were the later songs more innovative, thus inviting cooler basslines? Is the bass tracked louder onto the later music so I'm just more aware of it? Hmm.

And as always, what am I forgetting?

4 comments:

  1. I nominate You Won't See Me, Nowhere Man, and, of course, Rain.

    I think it was all of those things, but mostly the former. He only started playing bass in 1961. With the rare exception like I Saw Her Standing There, most early-period songs didn't have such active basslines. He mastered the thing, and THEN started showing it off.

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  2. Great choices, Megan. I'd also consider Come Together. I can't imagine the song without the bass work. BTW, that's a cool picture you chose. The Beatles have to be the most photographed band in history. Bet they got tired of the posing.

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  3. Thanks! I thought it was a good pic for May. (I've been trying to change them seasonally. As if this were some kind of wall calendar. Meh, whatever.) But I have always liked our boys in the garden.

    All of your bass choices (both of you) are killer, by the way, and in a truly all-encompassing list they'd be there. My lists are not all-encompassing, because part of what I'm shamelessly trying to do is send people back to my original posts. I should redo playlists once I've covered all songs, probably, just to be completist.

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  4. Oops. Didn't even notice your playlists were composed of songs you'd covered, even though you linked to the posts AND you wrote as much in the intro. Please ignore me. Most people do, and it works out fine for them. I can give you some references.

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