Cameo - Cameosis (1980) - bass

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• published: 07 Mar 2015
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In the 80s we didn't really know if the band Cameo was a gimmick or a funk band actually to be taken serious, but the bass playing on their early albums is certainly NOT a joke. It has some of the meanest baddest-ass dirty bass playing ever heard back then. On the same level of smudgyness as Prince playing bass on "Let's Work" or "Lady Cab Driver"... lots of almost unplayable ghost notes, mean laidback timing... funky as hell ! I'm not sure if I got the technique right in this playalong, I got the closest possible with a slap/pop combination, as illustrated in the lead-in part. About the type of bass: this certainly was not played on any regular '70-80s brand or type (Fender, Music Man). Back then, there was no YouTube and the only way of knowing what instrument was used was to try to catch a TV appearance of your artist. In those days, even cable television was not yet broadly available, so we in Belgium had to rely on the artists appearance on Top of the Pops style programs on the local channels, that were invariably always playback. So no way of knowing with certainty if the bass the guy was using was really what you heard on the recording. Off to the local music stores then, to try to locate a bass with that sound. In the '80s, recognizing a bass was not so difficult as today: basses with 4 tuners in a row were Fenders, the rare basses with the 3+1 were Music Mans, and than there was a whole slew with 2+2 tuners, which could be anything from a Ibanez to Alembic, SD Curlee, Ibanez, early Warwick, ... the bass on this recording belongs to the 2+2 category, and I have no clue what it really is. It sounds really "woody", and on some odd day in my own first reconaissance missions in music shops in Belgium as a teenager I undoubtedly have stumbled upon some bass that had a sound that resembled what I am hearing on Cameosis, but cannot exactly pinpoint it. Maybe I'll have to ask Aaron Mills himself to know for sure...