Mountain Bikes, Bass Guitar, and other stuff I like

I must be on an 80s R&B kick. This Luther Vandross tune has been on repeat lately.  Luther wrote the bass part and that is Marcus Miller playing.  Marcus has such a distinct, clear sound and it's been great to explore more of Marcus' music lately. This is another essential slap and pop bass example.  Plenty of space around the notes.  This song has a lot of great breaks, which only add to the funk!

 This week's track is an 80s funk classic.  It was inspired by my daughter's recent viewing of Men in Black.  It's Patrice Rushen's extremely danceable hit "Forget Me Nots."   Yes, Will Smith remade it into Men in Black in the late 90s as you may recall. On this blog though, I'm all about that bass and Freddie Washington is one slick mister on this track. It's definitely a slap-and-pop tour de force with great usage of octaves on the F# and D notes.  It's hard to imagine this song with any other bassline and again, the bass does not overplay, only serving what the song needs. There are plenty of nice fills too with hammers and slides thrown in occasionally. When I play this on bass, I literally can't help but dance along.  What a groove! This is definitely a great track to woodshed if you're looking at starting your funk repertoire!  (A quick internet search will reveal bass tablatures)  Enjoy!

 I heard this song on a run today and realized what a great bass part it has.  That's Tina Weymouth from  Talking Heads' playing on "Born Under Punches."  Tina, in my opinion, is a consistently underrated bassist.  She really has such a minimalist style. This bassline does exactly what it needs to and nothing more, simple and effective.  It definitely gets bonus points for being in such a quirky time signature as well!  She also uses space and air between notes to provide extra, er, punch.   It's such a strange song frankly, with typical Talking Heads bizarre lyrics, seemingly random guitar licks and synth for that matter. Tina's part could've fallen through the cracks and her slap-and-pop style on the track helps the bass break through the mix a bit. This song is a great example of bass parts that just groove and are perfect in their simplicity.  Enjoy and thanks for reading!

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The solar eclipse just happened and it has me feeling cosmic and appreciative of our wondrous universe. It makes me feel pretty small and realize that most of my concerns are really trivial. I was amazed at how the quality of light changed and how the crickets began to chirp.  Not to mention the crescent-shaped lights on the ground beneath the trees.  We had a colander out viewing crescents on the patio because we had no solar glasses.  Briefly, a cloud covered the sun and we looked up for a few seconds at the eclipse.  Then some neighbors let us borrow their glasses.  They are neighbors who for some reason we have never even spoken to, but people realize this is a rare event, so it makes us more human, more kind. This is an amazing time to be alive, with my daughter just turning 1 year old and now this truly inspiring event of nature. One can't help but feel gratitude and a sense of contentment. One of my favorite Carl Sagan quotes: “The surface of the Earth is the shore of

Last week's adventure was up in Dawson Forest, the site of the Georgia Nuclear Aircraft Laboratory. They have about 20 miles of trails up there that are singletrack and doubletrack.  Renee and I took our bikes and loaded up the trail map using MTB Project .  It was a really hot day and we went in the early afternoon, so it was scorching.   I will say that the place, given its history, has a weird vibe. They could've filmed an X-files episode here. Also, a woman was also abducted and murdered out there. Yikes! Renee decided to go on foot and leave the bike behind so I went ahead on recon on the Red trail. It was wide-open powerline riding for about a half-mile then Renee decided to turn around because it was too exposed.  The sun was beating down on us so we headed back to the parking lot and did the Orange trail, heading west.  It was a good sustained climb out and plenty of equestrian "evidence" was about.  Trail treasures?  Jungle-like conditions and trails were m