Happy Birthday Fender Jazz

This year is the 50th anniversary of the creation of the Fender Jazz Bass. In this video Ed Friedland takes a look at the 50th Anniversary Fender Jazz Bass and gives a great little history discussion on the Jazz.

Diesel @ the Fly By Night Club

Mark Lizotte is the greatest singer-songwriter-guitarist of our time!  Yes that's a big statement, but I defy anybody to propose someone who is better?  Someone who is more the complete musician - who can sing, play and write with equal brilliance. As a front man and vocalist his soaring voice could stand on its own.  As a guitarist, effortless and innovative matching it with any "legendary" blues player I've ever seen and listened to. Apart from having hit songs, his writing is melodic, diverse and always interesting.  Who else can put these three elements together?

Bass Brain Damage

Its now my turn in the studio to put down the bass parts for "Steal Your Mind". We're recording our 2nd EP at Stellas Kitchen and Steal Your Mind is probably going to be the lead track.  Recording for me is a love hate type of thing. Every musician has their insecurities and doubts about their ability and for me its recording which is where these feelings surface the most. For bass every pop or string clack in your playing stays forever on the track.  

Sportz Radio Star Recording

At Stellas Kitchen land we're recording our new EP.  So far we've completed the drum tracking and some guitar parts for two of the four songs and to be released on the EP. We've taken  extra time and effort to prepare how each instrument will sound this time through and have done a heap more experimenting.  Once we had the tempo, we recorded basic scratch tracks of guitar and vocals for each song. After they were down, we started trying to get some good sounds for the drums.  Jon is blogging the process here on the Gear Page forum. The aim of that thread to create a bunch of advice and sound samples/reference material etc, for anyone interested in recording and music in general.  Its a little bit into the inside of SK too. 

The West Coast P-Bass

More parts have arrived from the US so last night I got to building my Fender Precision/Jazz bass hybrid.  I'm gonna use this P-Bass experiment to both see how this hybrid goes and upgrade the my existing standard Jazz 4 to 70's style bass. The 70's Jazz pearl inlay necks I got from the US are just too pretty to "waste" on a P-Bass!! So there's gonna be some switch-a-roo parts swapping in this make-over. 

60's/70's Fender Jazz Bass

There is plenty of debate about which is the best sounding Jazz bass era.  From what I've read and the opinions I've heard most seem to say the early 60's was the best decade for Jazz basses. That is, before Leo Fender sold Fender to CBS in 1965. Production quality went downhill from this point as CBS sought to maximise every cent out of the Fender business. 

Fender P Bass v Fender Jazz Bass

Great comparison and history discussion of the Fender Precision and Jazz Basses

Get Me a Fender Jazz Bass!!

Technically I'm a shithouse bass player! My fingers are all jumbled up and all over the  place. I think ever even practiced scales on bass until about a year ago!!! I snobbed Fender. I dunno much about the world's renowned soloist bassists ... I can't even hold a pick properly!!  I pretty much have done everything in bass totally arse about!  I think it was in 2007 around when we started Stellas Kitchen, I saw Diesel at the Leopold Hotel and I was watching bass player Richie Vez play. To me he was everything I wanted to be in Stellas Kitchen and as a bass player. What he was playing was amazing.. subtle at times - his technique and his singing was great too.  Everything he did was in context of the band and the songs. I'd rather watch a good bassist play as a component in sync with his/her band and the song, over some mad soloist bassist any day!  This is why I'm more into bassists like Ritchie, Chris Wolsteholme, Flea and Pino Palladino.

Five String Basses

As the Hondo II was'nt cool enough for me and I also got my first "real" job, I began thinking about getting another bass guitar.  I didn't really know what I was looking for or exactly why but I decided I would get something 5 string.  Five string basses were beginning to be used more in music and a lot of what I was listening to so I thought I'd try my hand at one.  I stumbled across a Fenix SH 5 String bass .   Fenix guitars and basses were made in Korea by the mainly piano manufacturer Young Chang. Its the yellow bass guitar in the picture and is a solid maple body with gold GOTOH hardware. What I really liked about this bass was its cut away small body design which gave great access to the high 24 frets (not that I really needed it!!)