I just came off stage from my first gig. Wow! I feel great. I didn’t do too bad. It wasn’t planned. I went there with my friend (more acquaintance than friend) Sketch to meet a Mozambiqui bass player I had seen there the night before. No Mozambiquis. There was a band playing earlier, but they had left and the stage was empty. Sketch and I decided to wait around. Sketch was going to sing. I started asking around to see if there were any drummers. Sketch is a singer. He’s got a song in medium rotation on all the major stations here in Berlin. I think he knew how this was going to go down. We had been talking about sound ideas. He asked if I knew any chords with a Zero 7 feel. Soon a drummer showed up and we got on stage. Sketch started noodling on the keyboard that was there. Eventually I found a nice melody and Sketch made up some sweet soulful lyrics to go along. Soon a guitar player came on stage and joined us, and before I knew it, we had a groove. We made up another groovier tune. I looked up, and somebody was staring at my fingers the same way I stare at bassist’s finger when they are on stage. At one point I realized what a pocket was and did my best to stay there, somewhere between the click of the drummer’s stick on the side of the snare and the thump of his big bass drum. I got it. That’s the pocket. The drummer looked up and smiled. Talk about miracles of manifestations. We were groovin. Sketch eventually found somebody to cover for him on keyboards, and some female singer from Spain, who obviously had some professional training, joined us for an all out funk jam. It was groovy. People were actually dancing! It was fantastic to look up and see people dancing to a groove I was laying down. What a wonderful night! I funked so hard, I got tired. People were taking pictures just like I was taking pictures the night before. The lights were hot. Sweat was dripping from my shirt sleeves. It was amazing though. My shoulder started to hurt. We were playing so long. It’s hard work, funk. Funk grooves are especially hard work when the drummer is on one. Man he was good. I had to make up everything on the spot. I realized the importance of the bassman. While I was overnight in the Mannheim train station, I read in this book Reggae, Rasta, Revolution a quote from from Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, producer of Bob Marley and the Godfather of dub music, which said, “The drum is the beat of the heart, right? The bass is the brain.” Bumper stickers and business cards… I’m putting that quote all over. The structure the melody the groove, much of what I think of as memorable about the music is on the bassman. That’s was me, the bassman.
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