Mark King

Squonk

During the 80's which in my opinion was possibly the worst decade of music that I had to endure( Sorry if this offends some), there were a couple of artists that I did stumble on.
I bought "a Physical presence" it was a live album of early 80's concerts by Level 42, The bass was quite different, killer slapping kind of a thing. This was before they sold out to comercial pop.

Anyway I recently acquired Level 42 live in Reading 2003, and I had forgotten how good Mark King actually was.
Anyone else remember Mark King and his killer slapping style?

AlanRatcliffe

Yup - he is a monster. Took what the bassist from the Family Stone was doing, refined it and exported it to the masses.

Slapping's never been my kind of thing on a bass, but he was impressive to watch. I could play Lessons in Love on bass, but only as long as the song started at 120 bpm and gradually slowed down until it ended at about 60 bpm. LOL! Saw a live concert on video once and his solo was quite the thing to see (I think the song was was called Heavy Water??).

The downside was, it became impossible to find a bassist in the 80's who didn't slap. "Dude! It's an AC/DC cover. Please stop that!"

Bob-Dubery

Squonk wrote: During the 80's which in my opinion was possibly the worst decade of music that I had to endure( Sorry if this offends some),

Aha! A kindred spirit! I am fairly allergic to the 80s. Even good artists made bad records in the 80s. It seemed to be an age where producers thought that hits were attributable to SOUNDS. So whatever had been on recent hits started popping up all over the place. The BIG drums. The flanged fretless bass. Loads of players started sounding like Mark Knopfler - though I don't blame Knopfler for that. There was that marimba synth sound, that Fender Rhodes-ish synth sound.

And let's not even talk about the hair.

I think Bruce Cockburn is fairly amazing, but some of his records from the 80s are hard going for me because I have to get past all the production cliches before I can start paying attention to the songs. Those albums may have done well at the time, but they haven't aged well - and I don't think Cockburn is alone in that.

Squonk wrote: Anyway I recently acquired Level 42 live in Reading 2003, and I had forgotten how good Mark King actually was.
Anyone else remember Mark King and his killer slapping style?

Monster! Level 42 were not my thing, but a monster is a monster and King is a monster.

Riaan-Combrink

Alan Ratcliffe wrote: The downside was, it became impossible to find a bassist in the 80's who didn't slap. "Dude! It's an AC/DC cover. Please stop that!"

LOL! How true ?

+1 on Mark King. Great player. Even commercially speaking, songs like Leaving Me Now were great pop songs (composition, performance & arrangement wise) amidst some of what was out there.

Renesongs

Yep - I kind of left the 80's rock scene the hell alone and moved to jazz, Got back into rock in the 90's mainly under the influence of Satriani and Vai