Did anyone else watch this? Shown last Friday on BBC4 as part of a Guitar, Bass & Drums series. It was lovely, and I thought the previous week’s episode with Stewart Copeland was very good too. Both presenters showed a real passion for their instrument. My favourite bit of Tina’s show was watching the current bass player of Chic, who has been in the band a long time I think, attempting to demonstrate Bernard Edwards technique on the breakdown riff for Everybody Dance and finding it distinctly tricky. To be fair he said he’d never seen anyone else play like Bernard, either before or since. These episodes should be on the iplayer for a few weeks. Each one is well worth an hour of your time
On bass – Tina Weymouth! BBC4
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I saw about half of it and you’ve reminded me I need to watch the whole thing. I really enjoyed what I saw, better than the drum programme.
I often stand with the parents of a musical teenage daughter at my lad’s football matches. On Saturday they told me their daughter had watched it with them and then asked if she could have a bass guitar for her next birthday. That’s good parenting in my book!
I saw it advertised last night and didn’t realise it had already been on. Must get it on catch up.
I found it much more fun than the Copeland one. Lenny Kaye on guitar on friday. Odd choice? We’ll see.
It’s the crumhorn episode I’m really looking forward to.
.. Adolf Hitler on Vibes.
We watched the drumming doc last night. Bit too much of the bloke from the Chilli Peppers , but jazz obsessed son was chuffed Buddy Rich got a big mention along with several other jazz greats. The bit about the invention of the bass pedal and the modern drum kit, moving drumming from lots of people banging one instrument to one person banging lots of instruments was excellent.
That Congo Square eh? Catnip for a BBC music doc at the moment. ‘You’ve got 15 minutes left for your pilgrimage Soweto, then clear off as that bloke from The Police has got the rest of the day booked in for a visit to the spiritual home of modern-day music’.
It was pretty good, I liked her dig at David Byrne, but maybe after 30 years she should get over it?
I thought it was great. Loved Bootsy Collins and especially Herbie Flowers talking (and filling up as he did so) about how he came up with that Walk on the Wild Side riff. Both programmes were excellent at spotlighting the usually unheralded but brilliant musicians in Motown and other 60s records.
It was fascinating. High point for me was the graph of the baseline on ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’.
Amazing, really. Herbie Flowers gets paid 12 quid for creating the walk on the wild side bass line.
To play devil’s advocate…you hire the session musician, ask them to play 100 things, one of them works. The artist creating the song knows the one that works; others might not.
I heard Jay Graydon on this. His view is as a studio musician you aim to fill up your diary and charge what you need to meet your needs. Sometimes you play on hits, most times not. If you want to be an artist you make your own music and take your chances. Mind you he won two grammys for songwriting and had a massive hit with Airplay, so I guess he knows.
Really good programme, and Tina is as cool as ever.
I think Bowie is a famous example of often taking all the credit because he chose the musician and the music they came up with. And they mostly seem perfectly happy with that. Imagine ‘Stay’ without Earl Slick’s riff.
Yes the doc on Diamond Dogs shows the soul players talking about how they taught him soul music. But he was always about repackaging other people’s ideas, but better. The VHS, not the Betamax.
Bootsy Collins was great at talking about how James Brown did exactly this – he quoted him as routinely saying whenever one of his brilliant musicians came up with a fantastic lick – ‘That’s great. Glad I thought of it!’
Tina was great, a well put together show with some real insight. The drums one was much less so, because Copeland insisted on imposing himself on it, and his talking heads (Chad Smith esp) were less impressive. They should have got Sheila E to host it.
Exaclty, i got bored in the drum one because I got tired of him.
Me too. Tina was terrific though – completely riveting.
His talking heads…ISWYDT.
I saw both, with my drums obsessed (and pretty talented) 16 year old son, who made quite a few comments throughout both. Interesting reading the comments here about the difference between the two programmes. Personally I would have liked to have seen Tina play a little more, as she has a fantastic economical style which suits much of her music perfectly. A bit less Copeland and a little more Tina would have got the balance perfect for me. As for the upcoming guitar one, I hope it isn’t just screechy 3,000 notes a second metal dudes…
Great stuff, Tina. I’ve always loved you and I always will.
Isn’t that Dizzee Rascal such a nice chap.
She didn’t mention how David Byrne made her re-audition to stay in the band a few times. Why I don’t know, she was ideal.
Let’s have a Tinafest ! She features prominently in this one.
I don’t know any Talking Heads because I didn’t like David Byrne (Afterword horror) mostly because of that Psycho Killer video with the tight yellow t shirt, but this is brilliant.
Completely brilliant and unexpected at the time because I had pictured Frantz and Weymouth as moody, ice cool arty types. Could well have been a Sesame Street song.
That’s the best thing about it, isn’t it, and it came across in the film too, she is fun!
Watched it on iplayer last night. Fab. I’m a root note plodder so felt very inferior. Ber-nard…wow!
It was terrific – even Mrs. T commented how good it was, and that is a sort of Old Grey Whistle Test at chez T. I did think it was funny that she used a bootleg Macca though…!