Advice to Young Aspiring Artists from Patti Smith, David Byrne & Marina Abramović

in Creativity, K-12, Life, Music, Poetry | June 23rd, 2014

If you dream of becom­ing the next Dis­ney Chan­nel star, you’d do well to heed the advice of cast­ing direc­tor Judy Tay­lor, who uses “read” and “tal­ent” accord­ing to their indus­try def­i­n­i­tions, and seems unlike­ly to cut any­one slack for youth or inex­pe­ri­ence.

If, how­ev­er, you’ve got the soul of a poet, a painter, a musi­cal adven­tur­er, all three, or none of the above, I sug­gest falling to your knees and thank­ing Den­mark’s Louisiana Muse­um of Mod­ern Art for pro­vid­ing you with an alter­na­tive. The week­ly videos on art, lit­er­a­ture, design and archi­tec­ture for its Louisiana Chan­nel are a gold­mine of inspi­ra­tion for non-main­stream types both young and old, but cer­tain seg­ments speak explic­it­ly to those just embark­ing on the jour­ney.

As any num­ber of us geezers can attest, Pat­ti Smith and David Byrne speak with author­i­ty. It’s okay if you’ve nev­er heard of them. If you were three or four decades fur­ther along, you would have.

(As to Mari­na Abramović, go easy on your par­ents if they need to spend a moment or two dial­ing her up on Wikipedia. I’ll bet Pat­ti or David would­n’t peer down their noses at some­one for not rec­og­niz­ing one of the world’s great­est liv­ing per­for­mance artists. Excuse the dan­gling prepo­si­tion, but she’s def­i­nite­ly some­one worth find­ing out about.)

I real­ize I don’t speak for most of Amer­i­ca, but for me, these guys loom larg­er than Jay‑Z and Bey­once com­bined. I also real­ize that in terms of both wealth and name recog­ni­tion, there’s a sta­ble full of teen celebri­ties who leave them in the dust.

Inter­est­ing how all three resist the notion of tal­ent as some­thing to be com­mod­i­fied.

Abramović, above, speaks of artis­tic explo­ration in lit­er­al terms. In her view dif­fi­cult work should be pur­sued with the brav­ery of 17th-cen­tu­ry sailors who sal­lied forth, believ­ing that the world was flat. I sus­pect she’s a tougher cook­ie than cast­ing direc­tor Tay­lor. Wit­ness her dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion between gar­den vari­ety artists and great artists, the month long rub­bish bas­ket task she assigned her stu­dents, and the rig­or­ous­ness of her own prac­tice.

Her fel­low trail­blaz­er Smith has a more mater­nal touch. The path she pro­motes is sim­i­lar­ly twisty, low-pay­ing, and hard, but coun­ter­bal­anced with “the most beau­ti­ful expe­ri­ences.”

Byrne tack­les some of the more prac­ti­cal aspects of com­mit­ting to the artis­tic way. To wit, there’s no shame in day jobs, even if it’s been eons since he was in a posi­tion to need one. He also makes some very valid points about tech­nol­o­gy, below, with nary a peep as to the impos­si­bil­i­ty of con­cen­trat­ing on one’s stud­ies when one is check­ing Twit­ter every two sec­onds. We all stand to ben­e­fit.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of sev­en books, includ­ing No Touch Mon­key! And Oth­er Trav­el Lessons Learned Too Late. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In Touch­ing Video, Artist Mari­na Abramović & For­mer Lover Ulay Reunite After 22 Years Apart

Pat­ti Smith Shares William S. Bur­roughs’ Advice for Writ­ers and Artists

David Byrne’s Grad­u­a­tion Speech Offers Trou­bling and Encour­ag­ing Advice for Stu­dents in the Arts

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Hear the Earliest Known Talking Heads Recordings (1975)

in Music | June 23rd, 2014

We’ve fea­tured a fair few ear­ly Talk­ing Heads per­for­mances, from Dort­mund and Rome in 1980 to Syra­cuse in 1978 all the way back to CBGB in 1975. But you haven’t real­ly heard ear­ly Talk­ing Heads until you’ve heard the ear­li­est Talk­ing Heads. The same year of that CBGB show (one of many they played after their debut there open­ing for the Ramones), the trio of David Byrne, Chris Frantz, and Tina Wey­mouth record­ed a series of demos at CBS stu­dios. Still unsigned and in their ear­ly twen­ties, this first con­fig­u­ra­tion of the Heads (after the band, new­ly arrived in New York, shed their iden­ti­ty as “The Artis­tics” from their days togeth­er at the Rhode Island School of Design) laid down the very first known record­ed ver­sions of such notable tracks as “Psy­cho Killer” above, “Thank You for Send­ing Me an Angel” below, and “I’m Not in Love” below.

You can find a fuller playlist, which includes more songs from these CBS ses­sions like “I Wish You Would­n’t Say That,” “Ten­ta­tive Deci­sions,” and “Stay Hun­gry,” here. We often hear these songs described as the defin­ing mate­r­i­al of a pio­neer­ing “post-punk” band like Talk­ing Heads, so the fact that all these tracks come from 1975 make them per­haps the first exam­ples of the genre ever record­ed. This way of play­ing slight­ly ahead of their time may actu­al­ly have kept the group from find­ing a label to sign them until 1977, when Sire picked up the now-quar­tet (with the addi­tion of mul­ti-instru­men­tal­ist Jer­ry Har­ri­son) and put out the immor­tal pair of LPs Talk­ing Heads: 77 and More Songs About Build­ings and Food. Yes, even though they’d record­ed these demos at CBS stu­dios, CBS Records passed up the chance to take them on. Sure­ly they lived it down more quick­ly than did Dec­ca Records after hav­ing reject­ed The Bea­t­les, but still, nobody every stayed atop the zeit­geist by turn­ing their back to the Talk­ing Heads.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Talk­ing Heads Play Live in Dort­mund, Ger­many Dur­ing Their Hey­day (1980)

Watch the Talk­ing Heads Play a Vin­tage Con­cert in Syra­cuse (1978)

Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club that Shaped Their Sound (1975)

Live in Rome, 1980: The Talk­ing Heads Con­cert Film You Haven’t Seen

Talk­ing Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” Per­formed on Tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese Instru­ments

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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A Free Playlist of Music From The Works Of James Joyce (Plus Songs Inspired by the Modernist Author)

in Literature, Music | June 23rd, 2014

James_Joyce_in_1915

Last week we quot­ed a review that Carl Jung wrote of James Joyce’s Ulysses in which the psy­chol­o­gist called the labyrinthine mod­ernist nov­el an “aes­thet­ic dis­ci­pline.” Jung’s phrase can describe equal­ly the reader’s expe­ri­ence and Joyce’s own high­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed artistry. The author him­self pro­duced a detailed schema of Ulysses’ struc­ture for his friend Stu­art Gilbert: in addi­tion to pri­ma­ry fields of ref­er­ence like human biol­o­gy and col­or sym­bol­ism, Joyce con­nects each chap­ter to a par­tic­u­lar “art”—theology, rhetoric, archi­tec­ture, and med­i­cine, to men­tion but a few. But for all this rig­or­ous schema­ti­za­tion of each episode, music spills out into every chap­ter and ful­ly per­me­ates the nov­el: adver­tis­ing jin­gles, hymns, sonorous high ora­to­ry, sen­ti­men­tal bal­lads, brood­ing folk songs…. Joyce heard music every­where.

And it’s no sur­prise, giv­en that the nov­el­ist once aspired to a career as a per­former. Joyce com­posed his own songs, played piano and gui­tar, sang in his high tenor, and cham­pi­oned the work of fel­low Irish­man and tenor John Sul­li­van. He was also, again unsur­pris­ing­ly, a schol­ar of music. Sun­phone Records, which released a two-vol­ume set called Music From the Works of James Joyce, remarks that he had an “ency­clo­pe­dic mas­tery of music of every type and genre, rival­ing his vast knowl­edge of world lit­er­a­ture. As a writer, he nev­er­the­less incor­po­rat­ed music into all his works in increas­ing­ly com­plex ways.” (For detailed info on the music that inspired Joyce, vis­it the Sun­phone Records site and click through the links.)

Music From the Works of James Joyce com­piles many of the songs Joyce allud­ed to in his poems, sto­ries, and nov­els (such as music-hall bal­lad “Finnegan’s Wake”). It also includes Joyce’s own work—his col­lec­tion of poems, Cham­ber Music—giv­en “musi­cal set­tings” by com­pos­er Ross Lee Finney. Inspired by this enlight­en­ing col­lec­tion of Joyce’s favorite music, blog­ger ulysse­s­tone of Spo­ti­fy Clas­si­cal Playlists com­piled the playlist above of all the songs avail­able to stream. This playlist includes not only songs that influ­enced the author, or were writ­ten by him; ulysse­s­tone also added sev­er­al songs that Joyce inspired, such as Syd Barrett’s “Gold­en Hair,” based on a poem from Cham­ber Music, Kate Bush’s “Flower of the Moun­tain,” based on Mol­ly Bloom’s final solil­o­quy, and Jef­fer­son Airplane’s “Rejoyce,” a “high­ly selec­tive cap of Ulysses.” John Cage’s Roara­to­rio appears, as does the work of sev­er­al oth­er Joyce-inspired clas­si­cal com­posers.

The playlist begins with the voice of James Joyce, not singing alas, but read­ing from Ulysses’ “Eolian” episode. DJ Spooky (alias of Paul D. Miller) mix­es the author’s voice with Erik Satie’s Gnossi­ennes. To hear the unadul­ter­at­ed Joyce read­ing, check out our post on the only two record­ings of his voice.

Note: If you need to down­load Spo­ti­fy in order to hear the playlist, you can find/download the soft­ware here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Joyce Reads From Ulysses and Finnegans Wake In His Only Two Record­ings (1924/1929)

James Joyce Plays the Gui­tar, 1915

Carl Jung Writes a Review of Joyce’s Ulysses and Mails It To The Author (1932)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Discover the Lost Films of Orson Welles

in Film | June 23rd, 2014

To know an artist, you must know all the work they ever made pub­lic. But to tru­ly, thor­ough­ly know an artist, you must also know all the work they nev­er made pub­lic. This notion, in our age of DVD delet­ed scenes, ded­i­cat­ed uni­ver­si­ty cours­es, and oth­er aids to com­pletist enthu­si­asm, has gained quite a lot of trac­tion. But how many cre­ators work­ing today give you the sense of only see­ing the tip of their pro­duc­tive ice­berg than did Orson Welles, whose rumored unseen or nev­er ful­ly devel­oped works some­times seem even to out­num­ber those in his impres­sive and (in the main) high­ly acclaimed canon? Sure, the man made War of the Worlds and Cit­i­zen Kane, but every­one knows those. What about The Dream­ers, The Deep, The Oth­er Side of the Wind — seen any of those? Now, thanks to Cinephil­ia and Beyond, you can see them, or at least parts of them, in 1995’s Orson Welles: The One-Man Band by Ger­man film­mak­er and seri­ous Welles fan Vas­sili Silovic.

In col­lab­o­ra­tion with the auteur’s long­time com­pan­ion Oda Kojar, Silovic digs into the Welles archives and bring to light evi­dence of all sorts of projects unre­al­ized, unfin­ished, or sim­ply unre­leased. The New York Times’ Stephen Hold­en writes that Silovic’s film “offers tan­ta­liz­ing excerpts from Welles’s lat­er works along with rem­i­nis­cences by Ms. Kodar of their nomadic life togeth­er. As Welles dashed about the globe pur­su­ing act­ing jobs and financ­ing for his projects, he tot­ed around a 16-mil­lime­ter edit­ing table and a giant suit­case of equip­ment that made him the film-mak­ing equiv­a­lent of a one-man band. Many of his small­er projects might be described as ambi­tious home movies filmed on the spot wher­ev­er he hap­pened to be.” We see bits and pieces of an incom­plete thriller, a clip from the pilot for a pro­posed tele­vi­sion talk show, some of “the sto­ry of an aging, fero­cious­ly inde­pen­dent film direc­tor (played by John Hus­ton) wrestling with the Hol­ly­wood estab­lish­ment to com­plete an icon­o­clas­tic work.” We even get a glimpse, as if you still need­ed evi­dence that Welles led a sto­ried life, of a chat he had with the Mup­pets.

You can find some icon­ic, com­plete films by Welles in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via Cinephil­ia and Beyond

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Eight Inter­views of Orson Welles by Film­mak­er Peter Bog­danovich (1969–1972)

Watch The Tri­al (1962), Orson Welles’ Worst or Best Film, Adapt­ed From Kafka’s Clas­sic Work

Watch Orson Welles’ The Stranger Free Online, Where 1940s Film Noir Meets Real Hor­rors of WWII

The Hearts of Age: Orson Welles’ Sur­re­al­ist First Film (1934)

Orson Welles Explains Why Igno­rance Was His Major “Gift” to Cit­i­zen Kane

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Eddie Vedder Sings Disney’s “Let It Go” at Pearl Jam Concert in Italy

in Music | June 22nd, 2014

If you’re a par­ent of young girls, you can’t escape “Let It Go,” the song from Dis­ney’s 2013 ani­mat­ed film, Frozen. Not even Eddie Ved­der (father of daugh­ters born in 2004 and 2008) can shake it. Just wit­ness what hap­pened on Fri­day night when Ved­der per­formed Pearl Jam’s 1993 hit, “Daugh­ter,” live in Milan, Italy. You appar­ent­ly can’t think “Daugh­ter” with­out think­ing “Let It Go.” A longer ver­sion of the Pearl Jam per­for­mance can be viewed here.

via That Eric Alper

Relat­ed Con­tent

Pat­ti Smith’s Cov­er of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Strips the Song Down to its Heart

Spring­steen Plays Lorde’s “Roy­als” & AC/DC’s “High­way to Hell” in Down Under Con­certs

Bill Mur­ray Croons a Soul­ful Cov­er of “The House of the Ris­ing Sun”

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Jim Carrey Commencement Speech: It’s Better to Fail at What You Love Than Fail at What You Don’t

in Graduation Speech, Life | June 22nd, 2014

The come­di­an Jim Car­rey, who remains ded­i­cat­ed to the prac­tice of Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion, gave a com­mence­ment speech at the Mahar­ishi Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­age­ment, which com­bines teach­ing tra­di­tion­al sub­jects (math, busi­ness admin­is­tra­tion, etc.) with less con­ven­tion­al top­ics like TM and “Sus­tain­able Liv­ing.” In the speech, Car­rey put some things in per­spec­tive for the grad­u­ates: “The deci­sions we make in this moment are based in either love or fear. So many of us choose our path out of fear dis­guised as prac­ti­cal­i­ty. What we real­ly want seems impos­si­bly out of reach and ridicu­lous to expect so we nev­er ask the uni­verse for it.” And then, draw­ing on his own per­son­al expe­ri­ence, par­tic­u­lar­ly as a child, he offers this advice: “I learned many, many lessons from my father, but not least of which is that you can fail at some­thing you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance doing what you love.” You can watch the full speech here.

via Devour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch Explains How Med­i­ta­tion Enhances Our Cre­ativ­i­ty

‘This Is Water’: Com­plete Audio of David Fos­ter Wallace’s Keny­on Grad­u­a­tion Speech (2005)

Jim Car­rey Sings a Pret­ty Damn Good Cov­er of The Bea­t­les “I Am the Wal­rus”

Alan Watts Intro­duces Amer­i­ca to Med­i­ta­tion & East­ern Phi­los­o­phy (1960)

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Mavis Staples and The Band Sing “The Weight” In Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz (1978)

in Music | June 21st, 2014

It’s a tough choice, but I think the moment above may be one of my favorites from the 1978 Mar­tin Scors­ese-filmed farewell con­cert for The Band, The Last Waltz. In this clip from the film, The Band per­forms one of their sig­na­ture songs, “The Weight,” with soul and gospel leg­ends The Sta­ples Singers. Sta­ples patri­arch and gui­tarist Roe­buck sings some lead vocals, as does, of course, the group’s star Mavis. “As the song fin­ish­es up,” writes Elon Green at The New York­er, “Mavis, clos­est to the cam­era, throws her head back, leans toward the mic, and says, almost inaudi­bly, ‘Beau­ti­ful.’” It’s a beau­ti­ful moment, for sure, and a great sto­ry that Mavis tells in full on Green’s “Cul­ture Desk” post (excerpt below).

It was so beau­ti­ful to me. I was sur­prised that was caught on tape, you know, because I thought I was whis­per­ing. It wasn’t rehearsed to go like that. It was just a feel­ing that brought that on. The excite­ment of being with our friends—Levon and Danko and those guys were such good friends of ours—to be singing with them, and know­ing that this is going to be on the big screen, the sil­ver screen, it was just a moment in time for me. You could prob­a­bly, had you been there, you would have heard my heart pound­ing.

Despite its roots in Amer­i­can coun­try and Appalachi­an folk, like so much of The Band’s music—and so much Americana—“The Weight” lends itself equal­ly to soul and R&B inter­pre­ta­tions. The song’s been cov­ered by The Supremes and The Temp­ta­tions (singing togeth­er), Aretha Franklin record­ed a funky, soul­ful ver­sion, and it’s long been a part of Mavis Sta­ples’ live set. “The Weight” is also one of those great songs that brings black and white artists togeth­er; it’s tes­ta­ment to The Band’s keen appre­ci­a­tion for Amer­i­can roots music (which they learned by heart as back­ing band for rock­a­bil­ly star Ron­nie Hawkins and lat­er Bob Dylan). Below, see Wilco, Nick Lowe, and Mavis Sta­ples rehearse the song back­stage at the Civic Opera House in Chica­go in 2011.

via The New York­er

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch The Band Play “The Weight,” “Up On Crip­ple Creek” and More in Rare 1970 Con­cert Footage

Bob Dylan Plays First Live Per­for­mance of “Hur­ri­cane,” His Song Defend­ing Rubin “Hur­ri­cane” Carter (RIP) in 1975

The Queen of Soul Con­quers Europe: Aretha Franklin in Ams­ter­dam, 1968

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Hear Isolated Tracks From Five Great Rock Bassists: McCartney, Sting, Deacon, Jones & Lee

in Music | June 20th, 2014

Last week we sparked some heat­ed debate (and some typ­i­cal inter­net vit­ri­ol) with a post fea­tur­ing iso­lat­ed drum tracks from six of rock’s best drum­mers. Well, here we go again, this time with iso­lat­ed bass tracks…. Bear in mind that the bassists fea­tured here are some of the top play­ers in rock who actu­al­ly have bass tracks avail­able online. There are many more I’d love to hear out of the mix—and no short­age of jazz, reg­gae, funk, and soul bassists I deeply dig. If you don’t see your favorite play­er here… real­ly, don’t take it per­son­al­ly.

The bass gui­tar tends to be a for­got­ten instru­ment, some­times not even missed when it’s gone (think Black Keys, The Doors), but despite the suc­cess of the rare bass-less band, it’s hard to imag­ine some of the songs rep­re­sent­ed here with­out the fun­da­men­tal thump and groove of well-played basslines. We begin with John Deacon’s bassline for Queen and David Bowie’s “Under Pres­sure,” above. As we men­tioned in a recent post on that song’s evo­lu­tion, Sty­lus named this the #1 bassline of all time.

I don’t know what that acco­lade is worth, but the bassline is at least one of the most rec­og­niz­able, thanks in no small part to Vanil­la Ice. In the con­text of Queen, Deacon’s per­haps best known for the pound­ing stomp of “Anoth­er One Bites the Dust,” one of many songs he wrote for the band. He has very delib­er­ate­ly dis­ap­peared from the spot­light since Fred­die Mercury’s death, but his taste­ful, melod­ic play­ing is in no dan­ger of being for­got­ten.

Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones, on the oth­er hand, refus­es to leave the stage, for which the sev­er­al dozen musi­cians he’s toured and record­ed with since Zeppelin’s demise are all grate­ful. Cur­rent­ly one-third of super­group Them Crooked Vul­tures (with Dave Grohl and Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme), Jones also plays man­dolin (on Zep’s “Going to Cal­i­for­nia,” for exam­ple), lap steel, and this triple-necked mon­ster. For all his con­tin­ued rel­e­vance into the 21st cen­tu­ry, Jones’s some­times smooth, some­times burly basslines for Led Zep­pelin, such as the unfor­get­table “Ram­ble On” riff above, will be his endur­ing lega­cy. One would have to be a hell of a bass play­er to keep up with John Bon­ham, and John Paul Jones is exact­ly that. He got his start play­ing jazz at age 15, and while still a teenag­er, played in a jazz-rock col­lec­tive that includ­ed John McLaugh­lin (whom Jeff Beck has called “the best gui­tarist alive”). Want to learn how Jones does it? Check out this bass les­son with the mas­ter him­self.

When the sub­ject of rock bassists aris­es, Ged­dy Lee’s name will invari­ably come up. Like his band­mate Neil Peart, Lee’s musi­cian­ship astounds, his prog-rock stylings seem inim­itable, except per­haps by Primus’ Les Clay­pool (who Lee names as one of his favorites). Bass mag­a­zine No Tre­ble calls Rush’s “YYZ” (above) “one of the great­est bass lines of all time.” It’s not exact­ly my cup of tea, but I do know at least one bass play­er who left for Berklee Col­lege of Music hat­ing Rush, then came back lis­ten­ing to this song over and over in hushed awe. Not every­one loves Lee’s over-the-top high pitched vocals, but one has to admire the fact that he plays basslines like this while singing some of the most philo­soph­i­cal lyrics in rock, cour­tesy of drum­mer Peart.

The last two bass tracks fea­ture bassists who, like Lee, are also singers. No one pulls that off with more grace and style than Paul McCart­ney. In the bassline to The Bea­t­les “Come Togeth­er” (above), you can hear the deep, res­o­nant tone of McCartney’s semi-hol­low Hofn­er vio­lin bass (many of which have been “nicked” over the years). Of McCartney’s play­ing, John Lennon once said, “Paul was one of the most inno­v­a­tive bass play­ers ever. And half the stuff that is going on now is direct­ly ripped off from his Bea­t­les peri­od.” In my own bass-play­ing days, I cer­tain­ly stole my share of ideas from McCartney—or more prob­a­bly, his basslines were etched into my music brain, and my fin­gers auto­mat­i­cal­ly plucked out McCart­ney-style pat­terns. Music Radar puts “Come Togeth­er” at the top of a list of “Paul McCartney’s 12 great­est Bea­t­les bass per­for­mances,” for the “spooky, sin­u­ous, throb­bing and groovy” track above, “as orig­i­nal as it gets.”

Our iso­lat­ed drum tracks post hap­pened to fea­ture the oth­er rhyth­mic halves of every play­er on this list except John Dea­con, and while this wasn’t exact­ly by design, it’s no sur­prise to me that’s how it worked out. A great rhythm sec­tion works as a close­ly-aligned team, find­ing locked grooves, cre­at­ing empha­sis and punc­tu­a­tion, build­ing struc­tures and spaces for lead play­ers to fill. A drum­mer like the Police’s Stew­art Copeland need­ed a bassist as pre­cise yet pas­sion­ate as Sting. Very few oth­er bands have suc­cess­ful­ly fused punk, jazz, and reg­gae rhythms into a greater whole, a feat accom­plished in part because of Sting’s ver­sa­til­i­ty as a play­er. From the mut­ed “train engine” punk of “Next to You” to the left-field pop of “Mes­sage in a Bot­tle” (above), Sting’s aggres­sive play­ing, often fret­less, most­ly finger-picked—to quote that rep­utable source Uncy­clo­pe­dia—“makes him bet­ter than all oth­er musi­cians com­bined by 12 orders of mag­ni­tude, and that’s a pop fact.”

But seri­ous­ly, he’s good, and so are dozens of oth­er rock bassists who don’t appear above. Name your favorites, and if you find their bass tracks online, share ‘em! Alright, let the bass slugfest begin, and be sure to check out No Tre­ble’s “Iso­lat­ed Bass Track Week” posts, with tracks from undis­put­ed mas­ters of the instru­ment like James Jamer­son and Jaco Pas­to­ri­ous.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Iso­lat­ed Drum Tracks From Six of Rock’s Great­est: Bon­ham, Moon, Peart, Copeland, Grohl & Starr

Paul McCart­ney Offers a Short Tuto­r­i­al on How to Play the Bass Gui­tar

The Sto­ry of the Bass: New Video Gives Us 500 Years of Music His­to­ry in 8 Min­utes

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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