Stanley Clarke Bass

[glocke]

Am I the only one that doesnt get into the whole stanley/bass virtuoso thing ?  When RTF or Stanley (or Geddy Lee for that matter) comes up in a conversation, and I mention that Im not really into those guys, I get looked at like I have three heads and five arms...Those guys are great, and while I appreciate and respect what they do, its just something that doesnt really turn me on musically...
Am I the only one?

[hendixclarke]

That was great information people. I learned a lot from you guys. As someone who didn't miss the musical age of 70's jazz fusion era, Stanley Clarke was considered a rising star. His licks were not only fast, but it has direction and impact to his drives and statements. Listen to Rock, Pebbles, and Sand album. Man, there's a solo he did with the Alembic that started real smooth and with a very long harmonic rhyme just before he strums and dominate a directional cord. Man when I hear that song on that album, I just want to get out my car, house, etc., and salute Stanley for his serious contribution to music. Yes, he could take a double bass and make me feel the same way, and he did that too.  
 
Alembic is only a hammer (a tool) and just because you own the best, don't mean you could play the best. Stanley could take a Sears Catalog Bass from the 60's and ?wake my ass up?  because his bass language I am so attuned, would still be understood. However, with the Alembic Bass, his message was much cleaner. I heard Stanley play on a Fender Jazz, and it is very apparent, the design seemed flawed for the things I seen Stanley do in comparison to Alembic Small body. Even rolling down the frets without running up against the attached neck is a massive advantage with the Alembic. Smooth is everything.  
 
Then during the 80's his music got refined and solo's became the expected. Like Moses Staff, the Alembic Omega body became fused to Stanley like it was part of his soul. I am not sure why he put all his art in the Alembic during electric moments. It could be perceived to be a limit to some people. I am not one of those folks (Let me just say this now...) but perhaps, he might feel that it is his true signature sound at this late in the game.  
 
I would love to hear Stan and Joe Satro-o-so play in concert. Damn I love Joe Satriani's music. Ibanez, Sony and other mega companies love this guy too. That's another story...
 
The Alembic Small Body was available before being called The Stanley Clarke bass.  
 
Lastly, Stanley is the Bass Prophet and the Alembic Bass is The 10 commandments he throws down to his people musically!

[olieoliver]

How does a young new on the scene musician afford Alembics?
Get paid by the competition.

 
PS. This is TIC guys, I have no idea of the circumstances behind this ad.  
 
Olie

[hendixclarke]

LOL!!!!
 
That is a great ad!  
 
Look like a Sear's Ad. Stanely was not even able to look into the camera on that shot. LOL!!!
 
Krammer... (My dramatic pause).

[hendixclarke]

That picture was from Stanley?s I want to play for you daze. To me, that was the Album that liberated bass players a round the world. It awakens people like: Percy, Jaco, Jeff, Burney, Alfonse, and Marcus. If you don't know these bass players, you better go ask somebody... (As they say in the hood...)  
 
Stanley started the bass solo era and Kramer was a hell of a bass, but... (Dramatic pause... fill in the blanks people.)  
 
Ok, I'll tell you...  
 
Kramer was a Fender Copy ok, I said it.  
 
However, Kramer (if my memory serves me) a new line of basses which had aluminum necks. I call it a ?disco bass? because players were always playing disco music with them. I remember Funk-star Rusty (From Sly-Stone) having one, and was playing the hell out of it too. I remember his, looked almost omega-like.  
 
But one thing unique about Kramer basses were their aluminum neck mix with wood. This made the bass very light, and strong and the action was good too. However, the one thing I loved about them the most, was the thin-neck. I believe this was why the action was so good and were the ?preferred basses? for people who wanted to funk and groove. This was an advantage, if you were dancing on stage with your bass, I don't think there would be any question, Alembic basses wouldn't be the choice product. I never even seen anyone try to dance with an Alembic. (That would be very funny to watch...)  
 
However, I was not suprised of the showmanship of folks could dance with a kramer because those basses are so light. That foot the bills in my book.  
 
hee hee... and the disco bass award goes to KRAMER! Disco bass... LOL!!!!!
 
That picture of Stanley, got me falling out of my seat in laughing...
 
Thank you for this great humor high school moment.
 
I remember people having the Afro with the part in the middle... That was a cool ass look too...
 
Check out Stanley on the  want to play for you... That was the GQ-Disco 70's era.

[hendixclarke]

Even Ronald McDonald had a FRO in-them-dazes.  
 
Universal Peace, Love and Share!

[keavin]

http://www.stanleyclarke.com/board/thread.php?id=349

[bigbadbill]

Glocke, each to their own. I love Stan, I love Geddy, most of the players I love are quite busy (as are most of the bands, jazz, rock, prog, whatever)but if they don't do it for you, that's your choice. I know plenty of bassists don't go the busy route, and prefer much more simple players. Different strokes and all that.

[bassman10096]

I saw Stanley with RTF pre-Alembic and post Alembic.  Till that time, the only Alembics I'd seen were #1 (Casady) and Lesh's Osage.  I had been told those basses were built by a company called Alembic, but knew nothing else about the company or its products.  The first time I saw the small standard body in Stanley's hands ('73 or '74), I knew intuitively that it was an Alembic.  Something about the abreviated curve of the horns and the stylized body size and shape had an obvious connection for me with the design of the Standard body, omega cuts, etc.  Shortly after, I saw a picture that identified Stanley's bass and discovered I had been dead on in my guess.  The look of those and the Standard body instruments was unique and distinctive in a way you did not encounter in those days.  Those memories were where my need to own Alembics began.

[terryc]

Now for the UK input(if not already)When I started listening to music whenI was 12/13 years old it was the British rock scene, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Yes etc then one day there was this band on TV, The Mahavishnu Orchestra and I could hear this strange intensified music with no lyrics, this guitar player in white playing like there was no tomorrow with absolute ease, this was my introduction to jazz fusion. I wasn't even playing guitar at the time but was interested.
About a year or too later I see RTF on The Old Grey Whistle Test and here is this black guy playing a bass to which I didn't even recognise, it's not a fender, Gibson..what is it??
And that began my love of Alembics, you see in the UK in the 70's there was no way any music store would have one of those, no one knew who or what they did.
It wasn't until the 80's to 90's that eventually they really came available over here..Mark King had three made with the Laser LED's fitted..I believe his were the first to have those LED's  fitted.
Now with the internet opening everything globally we all know about Alembics.
As far As Stan's brown bass, there is a great shot of it on the album 'If This Bass Could Only Talk'  wood worn where he rests his thumb, screws missing etc. It was Stan's album 'School Days' which did it for me..bass solos..they are for the old jazzers on uprights.not electric bass players, play past the 12 fret are you kidding??
Then Jaco took it further, did he ever own an Alembic, some say he wasn't too keen on all the controls but boy he could make that Fender sing, and now we have many bass players who are fantastic technicians and players both amateur(look on youtube) and professional.
Some say 70's music was full of self indulgence, unfortunately UK punk reared is huge ugly head(it was all crap..I don't care what anyone says it was.. full stop) but the 70's pushed the boat out even further as the 60's did by removing the moor ropes, Jaco, Stan, Chick Corea, McLaughlin and all those great jazz fusion musicians who said to the rock bands 'We can fill auditoriums too'
Anyway I have gone on too long but this thread is very interesting to read

[smuprof]

Hey Guys -  
 
Let me offer a couple of points of clarification.  I collect books on basses and amplifiers (I probably have about 30, which ain't easy if you start looking for bass books)  
 
One of them has the article mentioned above (Guitar Player, May, 1980), and here is the history according to Stanley himself:
 
 . . . a Kent hollowbody bass . . . one of their $29 specials, and I didn't even have the case . . . I had a homemade tube amp built by a friend . . . I also had a smal cabinet with no back and a single 15 speaker.  And did it distort.
 
Well, I used it until I got a Gibson EB-2, a hollow-body in 11th or 12th grade.  It was the worst bass they ever made, but it worked for me and I loved the feeling of it.
 
In 1971 I was with the Joe Henderson Quartet . . . I knew Chick Corea . . . and had this idea of putting a band together (Return to Forever) . . . I was still using my EB-2 and an Acoustic 136 amp with one 15 in it.  I eventually got a bigger amp - an Acoustic 140 with two dual 15 speaker cabinets.
 
GP:  By the time you did Where Have I Known You Before, you were playing string bass only a small part of the time.  (This was released 7/1974)
 
SC:  . . . and that's when I got turned onto the Alembic bass.  I met Rick Turner when we were playing at the Boarding House in SF, and in a nice way he told me, Look, you really play well, but your sound is atrocious  He told me to try the bass he had with him; I think it was one of the first alembic basses.  So I tried it out and it was great.  And I haven't changed since.
 
 . . . it was about $1,200, but by that time I was making a bit of money, so the burden wasn't too bad. It ws more culture shock, I think, because I was used to paying $400 for a bass.  It had gold-plated hardware, a curly maple neck, great design, fancy pickups and a fancy cord.  I didn't know what any of that meant, but it sounded the end!  And that night on the gig, it was like a new bass player had been born.  I could suddenly play anything I heard in my head.  The problem with the Gibson bass was that I'd hear things and try to play them and my fingers would go along but the right sound wouldn't come out . . .  
 
 
Aside from the history details, that my friends, is a heck of an endorsement!
 
(I'll create a second post for the Kramer comments).
 
JFT

[smuprof]

And a couple of thoughts on Kramers from a guy who still owns one . . .  
 
The concept was pretty advanced with the aluminum necks.  They were bolt-ons, essentially a single piece of milled aluminum for the neck in the shape of a T.  From a physics standpoint, particularly given their mass, this made for an extremely stable neck relative to string pull.  Sustain was awesome, even for a bolt-on HOWEVER aluminum is very sensitive to temperature changes, and it was and still is impossible to keep them in tune for more than a couple of songs without retuning.
 
Kramer was started by some guys with ties to Travis Bean, a company whose basses had full aluminum necks with a fretboard.  Kramer improved on this with the T design, creating wood inserts for the back so essentially most of what you had your hands on was wood and not aluminum.  They made the fretboards out of Ebanol I believe the same thing bowling balls are made out of, and they had very little radius, and the combination made it easy to get very low action.
 
The other complaint about Kramers was neck dive - it was horrible in almost every case - no matter what you do, a full scale metal neck is heavier than any other neck material, and it's going to pull down.  I remember playing on one in Atlanta in 1980 and you literally were limited to how fast you could play by how fast you could move your left hand without dropping the neck!  
 
The one thing I would point out is the necks were not thin - the string spacing is narrow by today's standards, but the front to back is actually pretty thick - not a bad feeling, but definitely not thin.
 
One last tidbit - I bought a flying V several years ago out of nostalgia, and it is the only Kramer design I've ever seen that actually balances!  It's a short scale (30.5) bass, so the neck isn't overly long, and with the extended wings of the V, the neck joint is essentially the middle of the bass.  I suppose the added mass of the other wing and the balance point make this work.  You can still tell the neck is heavy, but you don't have to hold it up to play it  
 
It's a fun little bass to play (as long as you keep your tuner plugged in line) and always a hit when you're playing 80s music, but mostly it hangs on the wall of the music room for decoration . . . it's a far cry from my MK 5 string!
 
JFT

[hendixclarke]

smuprof,
 
I enjoyed reading your post and I also remember reading down beat mag during the 80's as well, and it basically said the same thing. The Alembic small body was his bass of choice.
 
I really believe the bass was born as a lead instrument after Jimi Hendrix died. I think bass developers fell into the problem of making basses for singers and guitar player which meant the back of the bus sort to speak for bass players. SC was going to use anything to breakout of this mold by any mean necessary; but lord and behold, there?s this company that give him a better AXE to cut with...and it was of nothing the world had seen too.
 
Alembic has such a beautiful story for us all. Some days when I am driving, and I hear THE WHO or RTF I feel like stopping my car just to salute Alembic. It feels good to know something works and people do go the distance for x intersecting y at maximum value, quality and lasting performance.

[hendixclarke]

Check out The Romantic Warrior on the Romantic Warrior album with Return To Forever. Now check out the fact that his opening solo starts out with the bow and then he switches to finger style. Now think about how you would do those runs on electric, but hold it, wait, he's doing this on an upright! Not only that, he's only about 20 something in 1976! This is just one example of some of the awesome stuff this guy has done and continues to do WITHOUT an ALEMBIC!
 
Now, give this guy his electric dream bass: THE ALEMEBIC, and watch what happens. A true player.

[bigbadbill]

Smuprof, I used to play one of those Kramer Vs on a regular basis, many years ago in a Manchester music shop (A1 music for those who remember). I always really liked it; nearly bought it a couple of times.