Sidemen, rhythm section, session musician. Forever ignored in favour of flashier lead guitars, outspoken vocalists, and virtuosos, the bass leads a lonely life stuck in the role of supporting player. Stylus, in deference to the underdog, presents some of the greatest moments when the bass player finally got some…
50. Diamond D - Sally Got A One Track Mind
Perhaps the most important thing when we're talking about a bassline that is, after all, sampled, is to look at how the artist uses the sample for the song; in this case, early 90s production genius Diamond (a member of the aptly-named Digging in the Crates crew) picked up a little Tower of Power and designed a song around the swooning bassline, filtered with technology that had just become readily available. And what a dominating bassline it is, playing lead melody for a track about the pitfalls of promiscuity. By adding decorative atmospherics, Diamond melts a formerly funky bassline into a cold sheen of abject sadness.
[David Drake]
49. Liquid Liquid – Cavern
Would anyone have given a shit about “Cavern” if Grandmaster and Melle Mel hadn’t instigated seven shades of litigation when they sampled (nay, covered it!) on 1983’s “White Lines (Don’t Do It)”? Who knows, but thanks to that single act of aural plundering, Liquid Liquid are in possession of one of the most famous bass lines ever to scar vinyl. Bestowed with the kind of rubbery addictiveness DFA would re-mortgage their mother for, “Cavern” is undergirded throughout by Richard McGuire’s relentless two-note behemoth. Contrasting perfectly with the histrionic art-school squawks and falsetto, the lower end is made all the more irresistible by the regular finger-clicking silences which instil the lolloping bass with an exuberant pregnancy that elevates it to greatness. If all that sounds like hyperbolic bollocks, give it the air-guitar treatment and you’ll soon agree…
[Adam Park]
48. The Sea and Cake - Bird and Flag
My brother and I used to joke about Sea and Cake bassist Eric Claridge. With Archer Prewitt and Sam Prekop both having carved out respected solo careers, and John McEntire working with Tortoise (among others), we imagined that Claridge—also the schlubbiest member of the band—probably just sat on his sofa at home, practicing his bass, while waiting for the others to come back from tour. But Claridge, who actually played with Prekop in Shrimp Boat, is also the band's secret weapon. On much of The Fawn, which flirts with electronics and repetitive patterns more than any other album in their catalogue, Claridge lays down loping lines that feel curiously subterranean. The skeletal "Bird and Flag" illuminates the man's style best: amidst a flurry of jittery textures, his melodic, head-nodding ten-note line pulls the song down to earth.
[John M. Cunningham]
47. Black Flag - Six Pack
Along with "TV Party," this was one of two anti-anthems on 1981's Damaged. But since the Flag played the whole LP with a debtor's desperation, these tracks kind of switched sides, into the realm of full-bore adoptability. For his part, Chuck Dukowski turns in a bassline seemingly crafted to confuse allegiances: ominous stabs at the lower register, gradually giving way to shorter clusters, inching up the scale at you. No funk, just chords. It's a neat little cycle of rising threat that especially plays well when Greg Ginn's guitar joins with its frantic scrapings. Soon Hank jumps in—something about beer. It barely matters at this point.
[Brad Shoup]
46. Tom Tom Club – Genius of Love
It's no surprise that Tina and Chris had to get away from Talking Heads frontman David Byrne to create what is undeniably their most euphoric groove. Rather than ranting about the paranoia of modern life or how heaven is a place where nothing ever happens, Tina Weymouth's sighs about being in heavy with her loving boyfriend and her "Sweet Soul Music"-style tribute to Smokey Robinson and Sly & Robbie create the perfect inspiration for Chriz Franz's rolling bass line underneath, seemingly harmonizing with the song's far more obvious guitar hook and propelling the song into the clouds. Sure, some lyrics about cocaine and the boyfriend being gone later in the song inspire thoughts that all may not be right in Tom Tom Club land, as they themselves perfectly summarize, but who needs to think when your feet just go?
[Andrew Unterberger]
45. John Mellencamp featuring Me’Shell Ndegéocello - Wild Night
Van Morrison’s “Wild Night” is a great record, but this cover is even better—due, yes, to the way it’s recast as a duet between Indiana’s favorite non-basketball-playing son and the world’s greatest African-American lesbian funkateer, but moreso thanks to the perfect bassline Ndegéocello gives it. No, she didn’t create it this bassline, but she reinvigorates it and makes it pop, making it funkier than anything else you’ve ever heard from Mellencamp. She owns it. Her bassline doesn’t “roar [sic] just like the night,” but it takes you there—and it’s a round-trip ticket, chile. Ndegéocello’s bass is “Wild Night”’s grease, but some you don’t mind getting on your hands.
[Thomas Inskeep]
44. Squarepusher - Iambic 5 Poetry
There comes a point in everyone’s life when a nice sit down and a cup of tea looks preferable to pumping yourself full of ketamine and fidgeting the night away to modem-fractured something and bass. That point was reached by Squarepusher on 1999’s “Iambic 5 Poetry.” In stark contrast to his tinnitus-inducing back catalogue, the lead track from the Budakhan Mindphone EP was a slow-motion epic that incrementally layered dusty layers of jazz-tinged detritus atop a ponderous bass line. Shrugging along with what initially seemed an overt lack of intention, the melodious bass soon revealed itself to be brain-itchingly addictive and oddly catchy, expertly straddling the line between a funeral march Joy Division and the Butch Cassidy Sound System.
[Adam Park]
43. Bill Withers – Lovely Day
What many people remember best about “Lovely Day” is the moment when Withers stretches the word “day” out for a full eighteen seconds toward the end (in addition to all the times he belts it out for seven or eight seconds). A truly stunning vocal performance, no doubt, but the taller the skyscraper, the stronger the foundation must be, and few basslines hold a song down as well. It’s so smooth that even Clyde Frazier and George Gervin couldn’t touch it, remaining rock-steady and cool while Withers’ face turned purple. The bassline of “Lovely Day” struts onward to this very day, a vital artifact from an era when slow jams actually jammed once in a while.
[Ross McGowan]
42. Primus – Jerry was a Racecar Driver
Les Claypool gave my thumb and pinky more than a few calluses through the years. Our man also possesses a funkiness that is equal parts the love child of Larry Graham and Jaco Pastorius, and SF Bay Area gonzo. “Jerry” is Primus’ stay in Camelot. Claypool’s riff twitches to a gas huffing, chicken-walk groove that then breaks furniture and bones in the song’s midway mosh when Larry LaLonde blows his nose with a guitar. Few bassists pinned such life into the machine like Claypool did in that brief time when the bass actually co-starred in rock. Sadly, the instrument fell back into being a wallflower again when mall-ternative rock was blown across all six winds.
[Cameron Macdonald]
41. Smith & Mighty - Bass is Maternal
“Bass is maternal / When it’s loud, I feel safer.” So say Smith & Mighty in the title track of their debut album. The Bristol duo’s mixing of dub, hip hop, and electronics would already have been termed “drum ‘n bass” by the UK press when this album was eventually released in 1995, but when they created this song in 1989, the idea of echoing drums and deep, deep bass thumps would have no real reference point. So the lyric here is key, for with it Rob Smith and Ray Mighty crystallize the maternal appeal of bass, an instrument that is less a sound than a foundation, a structure upon which all other sounds rest. It’s a warm, rich, inviting, and comfortable force that gives shape to everything else in music.
[Michael Heumann]
40. Pigbag – Papa's Got a Brand New Pigbag
Ain't no jive. The problem with the Pop Group is that their awesomeness was directly proportional to when they were being the least ironic about their name, which unfortunately adds up to a grand total of one song, "She is Beyond Good and Evil," one of the most mindblowing things western civilization has yet to produce. Pop Group bassist Simon Underwood took that song's psycho-funk groove and had the good sense to rein it in a bit to the point of near-accessibility for his new group Pigbag's "Papa's Got a Brand New Pigbag," creating a fret-jumping bass thump to hyperspeed the song into the 4th dimension and getting the song as close to "hit" status as he was likely to see in his lifetime. If the godfather of soul was still capable of rational thought in the 80s, he would've looked proudly on the boys.
[Andrew Unterberger]
39. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Give It Away
A remarkably simple funk-fuelled effort from the man who up until Blood Sugar Sex Magick was best known as the man most likely to play everything in a slapthafeckouttait style. Moving into a more bendy punctilious style, where songs are formed as opposed to jams rocked, his playing is still anything but perfunctory. Even though most of the song’s space is taken up by the other instrumentation (Jew’s harp, high-ended drums and Frusciante’s guitar), Flea’s fidgety energetic restraint on the bass drives everything. So much so that over the song’s chorus he manages to get away with just playing two notes. Its like he’s pulled out thirty-three notes of nimble fret mania from “Give it Away” and left a relatively small handful of precise notes in their wake; more movement less noise.
[Scott McKeating]
38. Stevie Wonder - Boogie On Reggae Woman
It’s not just a bassline, it’s this fuzzed-up happy farty bassline crucially underpinning one of Stevie’s funkiest excursions (which, musically, has nothing to do with reggae, it’s worth noting). P-Funk may have had better basslines, but I’m not sure they ever had one this weird in this big a smash. Stevie isn’t generally thought of as particularly outré, but if anything in his catalog fits that word, it’s this. Processed like heck, and possibly the first synthesized bassline to anchor a #1 (R&B) single. If you don’t find that reason enough to bow down, well, I can’t help you.
[Thomas Inskeep]
37. Alice in Chains – Would?
A fecking monster. Grunge was a genre more known for its shredding, discordant guitars, pounding drums and angst-ridden vocals than any sort of bass bravado, being essentially a funk-free genre. But with one song, Alice in Chains proved what a stupid concept that was. The bass line, which rightly kicks off the song, is among the most sinister things you'll ever hear, a prowling, unstoppable slither of mystery and horror. The rest of the band performs ably as well, with Layne Stayley providing some of his most memorable vocals, but in this song, for once it's the rest of the band that complements the bassline.
[Andrew Unterberger]
36. Tenor Saw - Ring the Alarm
Or maybe this piece should be called the “Stalag Riddim” as whilst “Ring the Alarm” is the most popular track to ride this riddim, I’ve listened to forty-three other versions in the run up to writing this piece, and there are scores more than that. And that’s the strength of this music, and the bassline on which it rides, that it can withstand assault from any angle. The initial two heavy bass stabs can signify righteous blood and fire preaching or stand as the deep foundations against which Scientist’s tides of dub echo buffet. The higher swinging between notes that completes the phrase keeps the arses moving on the dancefloor. It’s Tenor Saw’s version that remains the classic, however, because of the way that it dramatises this whole process. His lyrics are a confident proclamation that the sheer physicality of the sound, the bass, can destroy all comers at any soundclash. Ring the alarm; another sound is dying.
[Patrick McNally]
35. Can – Mother Sky
Holger Czukay could hypnotize with just two notes. His riff on Can’s “Mother Sky” rollicks over drummer Jaki Liebezeit’s lock-groove so simply that it’s almost scary. Czukay, the heart and soul of this classic 15-minute trance-out, used fingerwork that made a slight spring, helping to keep the blood flow in his brooding, shamanistic riff. But it’s not all repetiton, Czukay smoothly shifts gears at key moments, adding a few more chords to wake up the ghosts and he later speeds up the roil as the band becomes possessed by the groove. Given the near-religious devotion that such a practice demands, this may just be Czukay’s mind going beyond his ego and body into cosmic unison with the rest of Can. Timeless.
[Cameron Macdonald]
34. Charles Wright and the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band – Express Yourself
Once upon a time, people actually got upset that rap groups sampled other artists’ records, and had the conflict played itself out in a courtroom, NWA’s use of “Express Yourself” probably would have been the crucial piece of evidence that rendered the case forever closed. Played by Marvin Dunlap, the bassline puts an immediate swagger in the step of even the squarest of squares. As impressive as that feat may be, perhaps its greatest attribute is the way it’s implemented within the original song—how it drops out for the bridge and the horn section. But it may just be its absence that proves its worth: the moments where it disappears only heighten one’s desire to hear it again and again and again.
[Ross McGowan]
33. The Damned – Neat Neat Neat
If modern music history turns your double play, then the question of "first punk band" has probably been posed in your presence a few times. Does proto count? Mod? Garage? Endless, rapturous dissension! But on yr licensed Trivial Pursuit card (Indie Windbag edition), there is no debate for first punk single: "New Rose," by U.K.'s Damned. This was the follow-up, no less powerful, featuring Captain Sensible's funky low-end intro. The tone's noteworthy: it sounds either like he broke out the 4-inch amp, or he'd gotten the loudest acoustic bass in the pawnshop; either way it just forces the gleeful fury northward.
[Brad Shoup]
