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Musician news today reports Peter Tork who played bass for the 60's teen sensations The Monkees died at the age of 77.
Mickey and Michael are the two remaining members still kicking...

A beautiful English rendition

Simply Red featuring the amazing vocals of Mick Hucknall

and you don't even have to leave your home.

Drummers aren't usually known for being lead singers in their respective bands. However there are some notable exceptions.

Here is just a few. Feel free to add to the list and post a video if you can.

Karen Carpenter


Don Henley


Peter Rivera


Keith Moon


Don Brewer


Sheila E.


Ringo Starr


Levon Helm


Phil Collins


Dave Clark


Mickey Dolenz


Peter Kriss


That's my list. I know there must be more.

Conventional electric bass playing uses the extended fingers to pluck the strings the same way an upright (concert double bass) is played from generations ago. 'Slap' is a more recent style of bass guitar playing that involves a downward striking the lower pitched strings (slap) with the thumb. The player's hand is cupped to upwardly pluck the higher pitched strings with the index, middle and ring fingers creating a syncopated rhythm. The slap effect has a brighter sound than normal playing and makes the bassist stand out sonically.

That said... I've been following an Italian musician, Davide Biale who runs a YouTube channel by the handle Davie504. He does a variety of videos that support SLAP.
Extremely popular, his channel has 9.77 million subscribers and his videos get millions of plays. Davie is talented, comical, informative and many other things. Distorted face effects, rain for sadness, sparks of energy when the users slap him to make things happen are typical in his videos. So is the click-bait and challenges with other YouTubers. His signature video sign-off is a slap followed by a few seconds of 'emotional support' to pretend he's listening to the viewer and offering advice.

One of my favorite videos is his solo slap performance with chords and tapping style. I know he plays piano and guitar very well, he downplays this as bass is the only 'real' instrument in the world. This is the 'raw' solo version. There are a few videos with other musicians adding flavor to his bass track.

The End is a song off The Beatles Abbey Road album that features 3 lead guitar solos. McCartney, Harrison & Lennon each taking turns and each having a distinct style. It was known that George Harrison and Eric Clapton were friends (perhaps more than friends as Clapton married his ex-wife) and rumored he was invited into the studio while they were recording that album.

There are some die-hard Beatles fans who probably have some documentation. It's believed Clapton many have played parts on the album, but was never credited for doing so.

Paul McCartney started out as a guitarist and later switched to bass guitar. He was the main song writer and often dictated to George Harrison exactly what he wanted for many of the guitar parts. I've heard Paul play a few guitar parts and knew he was good, but not as technically proficient as George. When it came to the 3 guitarists 'trading licks' for The End, it was my opinion that Clapton may have some input without credit.

The guitar cover in this blog has all the parts played singularly. There are several similar videos with some listing who played what part. I could easily believe the part listed as Paul was really George and the part listed as George could have been Clapton. Lennon was the gruff & noisy one.. no mistake about that.
Why do I think it was Clapton? The searing high notes with vibrato was his trademark when he was in The Cream. However, it was stated in many interviews that George was heavily influenced by Eric's style.

Here's one on many covers of The End:

40 years ago today, MTV made it's debut with it's first music video. How many of you remember watching? MTV is not the same cool network it once was. You rarely see music videos on it today, or possibly none. Feel free to post some of your favorite music videos you remember watching on MTV through the years.

I'm moving some things around tonight and came across a bunch of CD's that looks like archived music I transfered to another computer. On it was several tunes of Irish Uilleann pipes.

I'll have to do a time-line one day to see when I started to study pipes and when I actually gave them up. As best as I can recall it was shortly after a roommate came over with a VCR rental of the show Riverdance. I was blown away with the solo by Davy Spillane!
I checked the song credits and started doing research on the instrument. We were in the early days of internet and materials were hard to find.

Long story short. Irish bagpipes differ from Scottish and other bagpipes in that they are driven by dry air pumped into the bellows. The others are mouth blown and the reeds are wet. The main difference is more control over the sound with Uilleann pipes with tapping and note bending.

I located a music store in Maine who had pipes from different pipemakers. 2 from America and 1 from Canada. During that time I bought and sold several sets including some made in Australia by 2 of the best pipemakers in the country.

I had no background in traditional Irish music, but I bought some video tutorials and struggled to learn the instrument. A generation earlier, I studied oboe in the school symphony and stupidly abandoned the thought of a scholarship when I changed my journey to a decade of rock music. So, in my head, the pipes should have been easy. They weren't.

Anyway, it was Davy Spillane who toured in the first Riverdance show and listening to Irish pipes again tends to pull at my heartstrings...