The Tubes Bass Cover Buffet - Amnesia/Sushi Girl/A Matter of Pride/Mr. Hate

00:00 - Amnesia
04:27 - Sushi Girl
07:58 - A Matter of Pride
11:13 - Mr. Hate

“If you can possibly manage the time, please watch all 4 bass covers at one meeting.”

Or, “Step right up and pay one price at the all you can eat Tubes Bass Cover Buffet.”

I thought I’d try something a little different and record all four songs in one shot, in the order they fell on my practice roster. They were coming together pretty well and I thought I’d see if I could make it through 4 in a row without screwing up too badly. Of course the thing I am least happy with is in the last song, near the end of Mr. Hate when I do my faux-picking thing. I forgot that I’d just trimmed my nails. I usually leave the nail on my index finger a touch longer than the others for just this sort of thing. Anyway, it was a bit too short so, for the first bar or so, only the downstrokes were coming out.

I love The Tubes, this album, The Completion Backward Principle, and Outside Inside in particular. These 4 songs are off The Completion Backward Principle album which came out in 1981. Rick Anderson is the bass player for The Tubes and a bass player I really like.

On a personal note, when I was playing with an original band called Crisis, the guitarist who recorded and engineered our first demo, Eric Schink, asked me to bring him something that represented how I wanted my bass to sound within the context of the recording. He didn’t ask how I wanted my bass to sound, he wanted to know how I wanted it to sit in the mix. It was a tough question, but after some careful consideration, I brought him this album.

I’m playing the ’76 Guild B-301 on which I recently installed, what I like to call, a Near-Zero-Mod Thumb Rest.
It’s a Jazz Bass Rest that uses one existing pick-guard screw for the vertical mounting hole and a newly drilled hole for the horizontal mount.
Tim at Zero-Mod did some custom grinding to keep the edge of the rest from overhanging the pick-guard because that would have botherd me.
The thumb-rest allows me to pluck a bit further up toward the neck. I find that even that half inch or so makes a difference in string tension and tone - the strings feel a bit looser, the tone is a touch fatter, and it affords me a more comfortable hand position.