My favorite overplayer

[Baldwin Funster]

I dont think anyone else would be tolerable overplaying this much on a tear in my beer country song. Except The Killer.[video:youtube]

[Motif88]

Love it and agree...

[Ed A.]

Over-player: yes

Favorite: no

 

[video:youtube]

[Polkahero]

Never get tired of watching that performance. Killer!

[jazzpiano88]

Over-player: yes

Favorite: no

 

[video:youtube]

 

No Bueno for me. He's got the chops but the composition is harmonically about as interesting as chopticks to me.

[jazzpiano88]

My Favorite: Jaco

 

[video:youtube]

[KuruPrionz]

My Favorite: Jaco

 

[video:youtube]

 

 

You Sir, have most excellent taste for music. That's a great concert and a great band and Jaco might have remained "sort of known" if not for Joni putting him on her records and taking him on tour at the height of her own popularity.

 

For keyboard overplayers, I'll choose Oscar Peterson FTW.

[jazzpiano88]

My Favorite: Jaco

 

You Sir, have most excellent taste for music. That's a great concert and a great band and Jaco might have remained "sort of known" if not for Joni putting him on her records and taking him on tour at the height of her own popularity.

 

For keyboard overplayers, I'll choose Oscar Peterson FTW.

 

. I love this clip of Oscar demonstrating two handed octave unison (@5:00)

 

Dick Cavett: "Was that ever hard for you, I mean could you do it the first time you tried it?"

Oscar: "Ehh NO"

 

[video:youtube]

[KuruPrionz]

My Favorite: Jaco

 

You Sir, have most excellent taste for music. That's a great concert and a great band and Jaco might have remained "sort of known" if not for Joni putting him on her records and taking him on tour at the height of her own popularity.

 

For keyboard overplayers, I'll choose Oscar Peterson FTW.

 

. I love this clip of Oscar demonstrating two handed octave unison (@5:00)

 

Dick Cavett: "Was that ever hard for you, I mean could you do it the first time you tried it?"

Oscar: "Ehh NO"

 

[video:youtube]

 

Thanks for posting that, I've always loved Monk for what he doesn't play and Oscar for what he does. Some fleet fingers there!!!

[pinkfloydcramer]

I dont think anyone else would be tolerable overplaying this much on a tear in my beer country song. Except The Killer.[video:youtube]

 

Mine too. So inventive.. way beyond rapid fire RH pounding and glisses.

[CEB]

He is right.

 

[video:youtube]

[Markyboard]

I know its sacrilege but I have to go with Joey here. Unfortunately it's not just my dropped jaw that tires in amazement. My ears can only take so many notes per minute. Or is it second?

[CEB]

My favorite, the worlds first Rock Star.

 

https://www.npr.org/2011/10/22/141617637/how-franz-liszt-became-the-worlds-first-rock-star

[jazzpiano88]

I know its sacrilege but I have to go with Joey here. Unfortunately it's not just my dropped jaw that tires in amazement. My ears can only take so many notes per minute. Or is it second?

How about this one? (Even has a nice Turkey in the Straw quote near the end)

There is a flurry in part of the solo but I think it"s acceptable.

 

[video:youtube]

[Markyboard]

Don"t get me wrong, there"s plenty of Joey I like. I"ve seen him live several times. It"s just that some of it is a bit much for my taste fitting in with the theme of this thread. But what I like I like a lot.

[SamuelBLupowitz]

Jerry Lee's made a life out of getting away with inappropriate things ...

[KuruPrionz]

Jerry Lee's made a life out of getting away with inappropriate things ...

 

Indeed. A friend's band was hired to be his backup band at a gig in Fresno. The venue brought in a rented Steinway grand piano for Jerry to pummel.

At one point, he poured beer all over the keys so he could do some of his fancy slide flourishes.

 

Pretty much a dick move in my book!

[Marzzz]

My Favorite: Jaco

Nah- Jaco was brilliant. I especially loved his playing on Joni Mitchell's Hejira. My only complaint about Jaco was that he inadvertently spawned a host of imitators back in the late 70's, none of whom could pull off his fretless technique. I remember reading an Allan Holdsworth interview where he was auditioning bass players, and if he saw a fretless when they opened the case he would immediately say "next!"

[EricBarker]

That's a great concert and a great band and Jaco might have remained "sort of known" if not for Joni putting him on her records and taking him on tour at the height of her own popularity.

 

I've seen this sentiment a few times and I strongly disagree. While Joni may have been a bigger act, not a lot of casual listeners of her music know or even care that Jaco played with her. Weather Report is where he was a center-stage star. Remember Birdland was a HUGE hit for many years. Teen Town is probably his most well known tune. I love Joni and what she did to bring him forward and cross him over to other genres, but it's not like Jaco wasn't already a rock star with WR.

[area51recording]

He is right.

 

[video:youtube]

 

In my mind I can hear Nigel Tufnel saying this......

[GRollins]

I'm going to say this once, real plain and clear: It ain't overplaying if the notes work.

 

Some peoples' notes don't work. They're overplaying, even if it's slow.

 

Some peoples' notes work. They're not overplaying, no matter whether the sheet music says quarter, eighth, sixteenth, thirty-second, or whatever.

 

I can't think of a single instance where I'd say that Jaco or Chris Squire or Geezer Butler or Mel Schacher "overplayed" bass on anything. Ditto Steve Howe, Jimi Hendrix...Rick Wakeman...John Coltrane...etc. The list is long.

 

The list of actual "overplayers," however, is much longer, because the level of musicianship required to make a flurry of notes work is not as common as some might suppose or wish. For me, one of the dead giveaways is when all someone can do is play scales. Only scales. I don't care how fast someone can play a scale, it gets repetitive and boring, very, very quickly. Show me a subset of the scale that's a melody. Play it fast. Play it slow. Whatever works for you and for the song. Just don't give me an entire evening of scales--you're wasting my time. I'm not impressed. Now, there's a point in one of the songs on Topographic Oceans where Steve Howe (and maybe some of the other guys, I don't remember) plays a descending Em scale. That's all, just an ordinary Em scale. I'm willing to go along because I know he's got his reasons for playing that scale and I know for a dead-certain fact that he's got the chops to do much more if he thinks the song needs it, because he's demonstrated same so many times over that it's not open to question. But someone who can only do scales is a loser, no matter the speed...yes, even if they're slow. And scale-players are dime-a-dozen. They took their lessons. They memorized the fingerings. But they're lost if you ask them to come up with an actual melody. Something that you can hum. Something that you want to hum. Something that sticks to you like glue; that you can't get out of your mind. Yeah. That. Gimme one of those guys. If (s)he's got the ability, I'll go along for the journey, even if it's a friggin' roller coaster ride. Sign me the hell up. I wanna go there with them. I wanna go on that trip, just to see where the riff goes and where it ends and I want to marvel at what they did and how they did it.

 

Or, as Jaco used to say: "It ain't bragging if you can do it."

 

Grey

[pinkfloydcramer]

[video:youtube]

[jazzpiano88]

I'm going to say this once, real plain and clear: It ain't overplaying if the notes work.

I can't think of a single instance where I'd say that Jaco or Chris Squire or Geezer Butler or Mel Schacher "overplayed" bass on anything. Ditto Steve Howe, Jimi Hendrix...Rick Wakeman...John Coltrane...etc. The list is long

Grey

I think you are missing a key point.

My point with Jaco is that there were many instances where he would overplay inappropriately during a live performance.

Examples: Going full bore monster bass licks over vocal lines and other people's solos. It must have driven Wayne Shorter absolutely nuts. It's distracting and does a disservice to the song.

Yeah we know he's the bass God but he doesn't need to demonstrate continuously over 100% of the tune.

 

As for recorded performances and bass solos I agree, I've never heard any overplaying from Jaco.

[The Real MC]

I enjoy jazz but I really dislike overplayers, especially those who are just playing scales. That's probably why Bebop is my least favorite jazz music.

 

Joey's first few albums weren't overplaying at all, there was real good feeling in his playing and space between his notes. Later he took off on bebop playing; after about three minutes of non-stop overplaying I just turned it off.

 

Miles Davis was furious with players who didn't respect space. He and Coltrane were sharing the stage and Miles didn't like his long drawn out solos. Coltrane pined that he didn't know how to stop, and Miles retorted that he try taking the ******* horn out of his mouth.

 

Funk is similar, you CANNOT overplay in that genre. Space is prime in funk. When our jazz band played a funky tune I had to tame our drummer to not play so much. It's hard to keep that discipline, and I'm guilty of that from time to time. I felt that Herbie's funk period suffered from overplaying.

[The Real MC]

And then there's Art Tatum. One could accuse him of overplaying, but he knew when to respect space behind a singer. Tatum was more of a stride player, and his technique was so intense that classical pianists were drawn to him. I could really get an education listening to Tatum than most jazz players.

[GRollins]

Was this when Jaco was having trouble with drugs? That might need to be factored into the equation. I don't know about overplaying, but I've definitely heard a live performance or two where he underperformed. There's a solo on YouTube where he basically just made a bunch of noise with effects and played some disjointed licks that never came together. Disappointing. In that case, I suspect (but cannot prove) chemically induced difficulties.

 

Drugs can lay anyone low, no matter what their abilities, and Jaco went way too far down that path. Cost him his position in Weather Report, if I recall correctly. Assign blame properly: Blame people for doing drugs, not for over- (or under-) playing.

 

Setting drugs aside, I expect that Jaco's Weather Report cohorts knew him and how he played and were presumably comfortable with it in a jazz improv setting. If I like or don't like something, I try not to project on others as to whether they like or don't like it--I just stick with what I know, which is whether it works for me or not. All else is needless distraction. I happen to like Jaco's playing, but don't count him as an influence on my bass playing. Like Hendrix (who I also like, but don't count as an influence on my guitar playing), they're kind of off in their own world and I'm glad they lived and that they made music, but I don't feel the need to follow either of them stylistically. Not sure why, because on paper you'd think the two of them would be tailor-made for me, but it's just never seemed that their styles would get me where I want to go.

 

Grey

[TommyRude]

I'm going to say this once, real plain and clear:

 

[jazzpiano88]

I'm going to say this once, real plain and clear:

[TommyRude]

I'm going to say this once, real plain and clear:

 

[Bobby Simons]

That harp player in Blues Traveler. At times the onslaught of harmonica notes sounds almost comical to me, yet no one else seems to notice. Oh well, what do I know?