Ten Days and a Bass Guitar

A friend of mine today took it upon himself to lend me his bass guitar while he went meandering through the dessert. While walking home with it on my back, amplifier in hand, I was checked out by three girls, treated like royalty, and sang to by a crazy South African man. Something about that bass guitar said, “here’s a man worth noticing.” Or, “here’s an arrogant twat.” Either way, the experience was a change from the normal walk home, which often involves being metaphorically shat on and gang-raped by swaggering, tracksuit-wearing buggers or unnecessarily angry kids carrying unnecessarily complex phones.

The bass guitar gave me a sense of power. I was safe in the knowledge that if one of those angry kids decided to hurl his phone at me off the cuff I could easily bat it away, or at least dodge it and break out into a lean, mean, groovy bass riff. So I’ve decided to document the next ten days, in honor of my bass guitar experience.

Day 1: The long walk to freedom

Cry freedom! The South African’s are here to sing us Bob Marley and make everything ok! Yes, I didn’t know his name but I knew he was from South Africa. The man who stopped me near the central station looked rough – almost as if he had been through the Anglo-Boer war three times, on the wrong side. Perhaps it was the amp in my hand which attracted him to me, perhaps it was my good looks, charm and professional swagger, nevertheless he was attracted to me (in the most heterosexual and plutonic way possible) and took it upon himself to sing me his rendition of Bob Marley’s Redemption Song. I say his rendition because what came out of his mouth sounded more like a bad version of Cats (drowning) than Redemption Song. It was terrible. So terrible, in fact, that I was tempted to use the aforementioned bass guitar to hack my arm off just to take my mind off the pain of listening to him. I’m still thanking God he didn’t make it passed the first chorus.

I walked on in good humor (for not even Bob ‘Schultz’ Marley could put a damper on my mood – I had a bass guitar, after all) and became very aware of low-hanging road signs and signals. I’m quite tall and the bass axe added around half a foot to my stature. I also became aware of the fact that everyone was looking at me. Even the unnecessarily angry kids took time out from listening to their blaring phones to have a gander. One would think I was carrying an AK-47, not a guitar. People stopped what they were doing, got out of their cars, abseiling window cleaners lowered themselves on pain of losing their jobs, and girls took it upon themselves to unhook their bras when I passed. Ok, that last sentence was a load of crap and happened only in my head, but I’m certain that that’s what would have happened if it weren’t for my overgrown ‘terrorist’ beard.

All jokes aside though, the main thing you notice when you have a bass guitar on your back is bass lines – from the funky bass riffs of James Brown to the bluesy bass riffs of Clapton and Hendrix, and the overdriven bass riffs of Rage against the Machine and Muse. I’ve been a guitarist for many years and, while I’ve always been really good at picking out each instrument in an arrangement, I’ve always focused on the rhythm or lead guitar tracks. You must understand that suddenly and automatically focusing on the bass track blaring through my earphones was a completely novel experience; even more novel was the realization that this focus was present only by virtue of the fact that I was carrying a bass guitar. It is truly and amazing instrument.

The next ten days are going to be fun.

Peace, love and revolutions.