No Stairway
No Stairway 31 (Season 2, episode 8) - All About the Bass
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Episode notes
Learned folk have often disagreed on the origins of the bass line. Today, the daemonic bastard child of the drums and the guitar is the undisputed driving force beneath all of our favourite modern popular songs, but there was a time in the recent past when records were tinny and bland and completely devoid of funk. Some blokes down the pub would have you believe that the bass line was invented by noted Italian guitar manufacturer Oliviero Pigini, who, having had the misfortune of losing both his thumbs in a kneading machine accident as a child, miscounted the number of strings on his new range of guitars in 1946.
The new 4 string guitar was an instant hit amongst less able players all around the world and thus the bass guitar was born. However, that is an old wives tale. The truth is that the bass line was invented in 1879 by Nebraskan fisherman Valentine McConaughy. Valentine had specialised in catfish and trout fishing until a working holiday in the Caribbean caused him to fall in love with bass fishing – so much so that he developed his own range of extra thick fishing line for this purpose. Alas, back home in his landlocked home state there was little call for bass fishing, however, his “bass lines” proved an instant hit amongst local thick thumbed banjo players, and the modern banging donk was just around the corner. Many Thanks, Mr McConaughy and your fat thumbed friends!
In this week’s episode, Bill accuses Carl of being disingenuous about Soft Cell, Tim accuses Bill of being “sublime” and Carl accuses OutKast of being a “bourgeois disgrace”. It’s the usual stuff, on a different day.
This weeks playlists: