Funny story about Gipsy bassplayers

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  • #595
    Thijs Gorter
    Participant

    Hi Everybody!

    Djordje asked me to share this story with y’all after I sent it to him.

    I stumbled upon Djordje’s slap bass site looking for god knows what. I noticed he has a ‘thing’ with Gypsy bass players. Apart from roots orientated stuff I play quite a bit of East Block stuff with my acoustic band, so I too have a big interest in those guys.

    Which leads me to a funny story about a thing that once hapened to me.

    I was playing at an art festival in Kassel, Germany with Mark Foggo, with whom I’ve been playing for a year or two. Europeans might know him, he’s an original Two Tone Ska man that still delivers his Ska/Punk mix all over the continent and has been doing so for the last 25 years.

    After the gig we went for a walk backstage. Behind a big tent we caught up with a few gypsy’s that turned out to part of Taraf de Haïdouks. I knew they were on the bill as well and I hoped that I could see them play. I was to late, but we sat down to drink with them and they started to play. One guy was just sitting there, and as somebody walked by with a three string upright he beckoned the guy over an started to play the bass. It was then and there that I made a vow to myself to burn my double bass when I came home again (Foggo is a strictly electric bass gig). That guy was AMAZING! Easily he best upright bassplayer I have ever seen!

    As none of the Taraf’s spoke anything other than Romanian, I asked the tour manager to give the bassplayer my compliments. He looked at me all funny, and said: ‘the bassplayer isn’t here, he’s in the hotel, he’s not feeling very well’. ??? It turned out that the guy that I saw playing the bass was ‘just’ the flute player!!! Unbelievable.

    I think it was one of those once-in-a-million nights that gave me a good story too!

    Some time after that I got to see the movie Chocalat in one of my rare romantic moments. In the movie there’s a scene where Johnny Depp is at a party where the Taraf are are playing in exactly the same setting as I have seen them in. Great movie :-)!

    Regards, Thijs from Holland

    #596
    Robin
    Participant

    The Gypsy people are crazy musicions. Here’s a clip that i saw on the tube and that guy is crazy fast!
    [url=http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GL7SskX13U&feature=related]Crazy[/url]

    #599
    Hiwatt
    Participant

    Amazingly good story :woohoo:
    What would have happened if you had meet and seen the actual bass player playing ?…hahaha…you probably had move to Antartica and forget about civilisation… :laugh:

    #600
    Hiwatt
    Participant

    …and what a nice vid clip !!! Indeed a fast slapper…Thanx for sharing. 😉

    #601
    dubouchet
    Participant

    Hi,
    Gipsies slappers are an essential inspiration.I got a file about them in my PC, here is a one :

    #602
    dubouchet
    Participant

    Sorry ! :

    #603
    dubouchet
    Participant

    An exemple about a three strings player that I like very much :

    #604
    chris
    Participant

    aaaaaah this guy got really nice sound. How theese 3-string bases are tuned? EAD?

    #605
    dubouchet
    Participant

    No, A/D/G.
    That’s kind of weed wacker strings.The “flubby” E string problem is solved !

    #608
    chris
    Participant

    KIND of? what kind? i cant believe that wackers can sound like this, even chemically treated etc. I thought that theese are guts or something. they got such a “full” and loud tone

    #609
    dubouchet
    Participant

    In this video you can see the color of the strings and be sure that it is not gut ! weedwacker strings are able to sound pretty good.

    Check out “Dark eyes” on my page ( http://www.myspace.com/dubouch )I play with weed wackers too.

    #610
    johnny atomic
    Participant

    Badass!!

    #684
    Thomas LORIOUX
    Participant

    funny, i saw these guys last year while on holidays in Rome.
    great musicians !

    #685
    dubouchet
    Participant

    You’re lucky Thomas !
    Let me know when you’ll be back in France, we are always playing gypsy style in here :

    #687
    Thomas LORIOUX
    Participant

    sounds Good Nicolas.
    and i’ll profit of that visit to take a lesson (or 2 )from you 😉

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