“Hold Your Head Up”
by Argent

“Find Your Way Back”
by Jefferson Starship

Bass players can ruin sweet music. There's nothing worse than what would be a good song, but the bass player insists on thumping up and down all over his bass, creating a distract soup of low notes. The true geniuses of the bass are not the dudes that can really play it well. They are bassists who can't play at all, so they just play one note, over and over, in rhythm with the song. Let the rest of the band worry about such musical niceties as "changing notes." Argent's anthemic, fist pumping, feel-good-about-yourself hit "Hold Your Head Up" by is 7 minutes of the same simple bass line over and over. Yes, at about 3:45 into the song, the bass player plays a couple of fills, but this is in the middle of a two minute organ solo. The rest of this inspirational rocker? Just "thump thump thump" over and over.

"Find Your Way Back" by Jefferson Starship is kind of like "Hold Your Head Up" plus ten years of production knowledge. Fortunately, the production advances that allow for "Find Your Way Back's" super slick production were not matched by a commensurate rise in bass mastery. The bass player for Starship knows his place, going "thump thump thump thump" through the whole chorus. This song is so inspirational, I think it might secretly be about Jesus. It almost reaches "More Than A Feeling" territory, or it would if the melody on the chorus had any more notes than the bass playing in the verse. If you listen to these two songs over and over, you will be able to accomplish anything you desire, from finally getting off the couch to make a sandwich, all the way to finally getting the nerve to go to the store to buy more beer.

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