Well - you learn something every day (B.O. content)

[stubhead]

I am quite sure that two of my biggest bass influences in the early Paloezoic times had to have been Phil Lesh and Berry Oakley, because... well they just were. Bass can get really boring if you don't dick around a bit, but to do it so well that it adds to rather than detracts  - "Hey, the bass player's dicking around" - well, it don't grow on trees.

And I had long known that Phil Lesh first played a Guild hollowbody with the Hagstrom pickup, then that bass seriously re-purposed with essentially an active parametric EQ (20 years before Nordtrand, Aguilar etc)  installed by a few guys who went on to be Alembic, then those basic guts re-installed into a solid body, which might actually have been the first Alembic.

And I had known that Berry Oakley first had a Guild hollowbody:

(SUBTITLE: HEY, WHERE ARE ALL THE PEDAL BOARDS?)

And then he went Fender, but I never knew this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9VA0jnFNHI

He thought highly enough of the Hagstrom to put it into his Jazz bass. These pickups, of course have been recreated as the "Dark Star" line:
http://www.hammoneng.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPb2_REhv3E

 

[Eric Banjitar]

Been a dead-head forever. Love me some rich Phil from the "phil Zone" right out in front of his amp.  It has always amazed me the way Phil can dance around the notes of a scale, essentually playing lead and still keep the bus on the road.

"The bus come by and I got on.  That's where it all began"