Month: August 2025

I was watching something on TV the other night (I think it was ‘Duster’ – mediocre but with great music). One of the songs they played was Long Cool Woman by the Hollies. As soon as I heard the opening bass line I knew the song and I began wondering what other songs had such memorable bass lines. I looked around and here are a few.

John Deacon rips out a propulsive bass line on this one with Queen. You’ll recognize it immediately.

This one by the Jackson Five is another song that you will recognize immediately by the introductory bass line at least if you’re old enough.

And while we’re with Michael Jackson, who can forget the bass line from this? “Billie Jean” is pretty understated; it’s the vocal delivery giving much of the emotional punch. But those vocals need something to walk along, much like the music video’s light-up sidewalk, and it’s Louis Johnston’s bass providing that path. Johnston’s notes feel dangerous.

Paul McCartney is amazing with the low pulsating bass work: There are sexy basslines and then there are sexy basslines, and McCartney’s sensual slides across the strings are firmly the latter. His work adds an addictive tempo to this classic Beatles song, all the more powerful due to its restraint.

Nice, slow and propulsive bass on this one…

Another old one…

Here’s another unforgettable bass intro

And this one has a great bass line…

Okay, one more…

I’m sure I’ve missed many but these come to mind – enjoy!

Today is Independence Day in Benin, a public holiday there. The region of modern day Benin first came to the attention of the Europeans as a source of slaves with the shores of the region earning the name ‘the Slave Coast’.

The Kingdom of Dahomey was a West African kingdom located within present-day Benin that existed from approximately 1600 until 1904. It developed on the Abomey Plateau amongst the Fon people in the early 17th century and became a regional power in the 18th century by expanding south to conquer key cities like Whydah on the Atlantic coast which granted it unhindered access to the tricontinental Atlantic Slave Trade.

The Kingdom of Dahomey was an important regional power that had an organized domestic economy built on conquest and slave labor, significant international trade and diplomatic relations with Europeans, a centralized administration, taxation systems, and an organized military. Notable in the kingdom were significant artwork, an all-female military unit called the Dahomey Amazons by European observers, and the elaborate religious practices of Vodun.

The kingdom fought the First Franco-Dahomean War and Second Franco-Dahomean War with France. The kingdom was reduced and made a French protectorate in 1894. In 1904, the area became part of a French colony, French Dahomey.

In 1958, French Dahomey became the self-governing colony called the Republic of Dahomey and gained full independence in 1960. It was renamed in 1975 the People’s Republic of Benin and in 1991 the Republic of Benin.

A group portrait of the “Amazons from Dahomey” during their stay in Paris, 1891

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Aladdin…

I have questions….

Today is the birthday, in 1951, of Canadian guitarist and vocalist Tim Bachman best known as a member of Bachman–Turner Overdrive (BTO). Bachman was one of the four founding members of BTO, a group that have sold nearly 30 million albums worldwide and also featured his brothers Randy (guitar/vocals) and Robbie (drums). He died on 28 April 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cia_v4vxfE