2004 05 12

I was listening to Sympathy for the Devil on the radio last night, which has, undoubtedly, one of the best basslines ever to emerge from rock music. I'm not a huge Stones fan, really, I like them, but mostly their older stuff - definitely nothing since Emotional Rescue. I like the Stones when they were still in the 60s, when they were still exiled on Main Street, when they were still bowing to the bidding of their satanic majestys' requests, and obviously when they hadn't washed and had sticky fingers.

Would you let your daughter go out with a Rolling Stone?

This daughter has no desire to go out with a Rolling Stone, never did, and still has a hard time understanding how anyone would touch Mick Jagger with a barge pole - though I wouldn't mind having a beer with Keith. He may look older than Moses, but he's still cool.

Where was I?

Ah yes, listening to the Stones on the radio.

It inspired me. It's driven me. It's got me wanting something I forget about for months on end - learning to play a musical instrument. I had a few guitar lessons as a teen, a few stints at the recorder, and I can hack out most of Heart and Soul on the piano, but I never really got beyond that; partly money, partly other things. That said, it is not the guitar, your trusty old six-string (though laying my hands on a Fender Strat wouldn't do any damage to my morale), that I wish to procure for myself and attempt the complex learning of; oh no, no, my friends. I forgo the six strings in favour of four (although some have five, but that's beside the point).

I am going to learn to play bass.

All day all I can hear out of any song I hear, now, is the bass line - everything from The Police to Aerosmith (and lordy do I hate Aerosmith), but ever since this epiphany hit me in the wee smas, I've been fixated (once you start listening for bass lines, it's all you hear); fixated and contemplating which route I shall go to reach a bass-playing goal. Shall I start with The Police, or do I go the more traditional route and learn My Sharona?

Or maybe I should be like The Ox, go for some Who?