Word: basses
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Vicious rose to fame in 1977 as a bass guitarist with the now-defunct Sex Pistols rock band...
DIED. Charles Mingus, 56, virtuoso bassist and composer whose emotional, free-floating music helped shape modern jazz; of a heart attack after suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease); in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Raised in the Watts district of Los Angeles, Mingus began studying bass in high school, later played with Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker before forming his own combo in New York in the mid-'50s. Influenced strongly by blues and gospel, he began writing music that highlighted the bass as a solo instrument and featured contorted harmonies and quick-changing rhythms with...
...unlikely that the business would have taken great interest in Bok, anyhow. His voice is a warm bass baritone. His songs-some original, some traditional -are sober, a little lofty on occasion, and limited in appeal by theme as well as sound. Among Bok's prime efforts are Seal Djiril's Hymn and Peter Kagan and the Wind, a 15-minute narrative ballad about a fisherman who is, one might say, married to a fishwife: "She was a seal, you know/ Everyone knew that .../ But nobody would...
Other songs on the album go the opposite way--tones and squeals ornament the chillier lyrics about sanitized society. On "Green Shirt," an obstinate bass pulse and the rat-tat-tat of a machine gun drum hover behind these lyrics...
Corea segues into the opening chords of his "Spanish Fantasy" suite, easily the best ensemble piece on the album. The horns really cook, belying their earlier sterile proficiency. Clarke's electric bass works beautifully, and Corea is literally all over the place--playing synthesizer, playing piano, stamping his feet with excitement. Appropriately, the encore is a Corea-Clarke duet; the chemistry between the two is obvious as they perform a free improvisation that is loosely based on the bop standard "On Green Dolphin Street...