Anyone want to help me learn the bassline to this song?

Cafe Society
1

Or, I guess a better question would be, do you think I, as a beginner, can play the bassline to this song: Thank You, Friends by Big Star. My friends are having a Big Star/Alex Chilton tribute show in early July, so I’d have till then to learn it.

Background:
I’m very much a beginner. I can read tabs, I know where notes are on the fretboard. I can play scales (minor/major/chromatic). I can play easy songs like Kim Deal’s stuff in the Pixies (Debaser, Gigantic) and Damage by Yo La Tengo.

I don’t need to learn to play it spot-on correctly, I can fudge it so it sounds close enough. I just don’t know how to listen to the song and transcribe it into something I can play. There’s no bass tabs for the song out there, though there are guitar tabs, which give me some idea of what I should be playing, but that’s where I hit a wall. What then?

We’d actually love to do Alex Chilton by the Replacements but that’s way too fast for me to play, sadly.

2

It’s a great song, and I’ve loved it ever since I got a precious reel tape of the 3rd/Sister Lovers sessions years before anything official was released.

I’m a guitarist but know my way around the bass. I’m just not quite sure how to deliver “help” to you from this distance.

The song is in G, and the opening lines are G-A-C-G. I’ve played the opening riff as a stage warm-up for years, but have never actually learned the song all the way through, so I’d have to work out the rest of it with guitar in hand, which I can’t do here at work.

There’s a chord sheet here, though I’m not sure I agree with everything on it. Generally, though, if you play the root note of the chords you see, it’s gonna sound OK, even though of course sometimes the bass will play something other than a root note.

Maybe others will have a more fully formed or detailed idea of how to help you. I will try to revisit the thread tonight when I’m home and can have both the song and my guitar on hand.

Good luck…tell us more about the tribute show in the meantime, if you like. Very cool that you’re doing it.

I always feel like I’m bragging when I say this, and that’s not my intent. But unlike most who discovered them years after the fact, I’m pretty close to a ground-floor Big Star fan.

When I got my first post-graduation radio job in the summer of '73, the station I worked for had a promo copy of #1 Record, which I copped and instantly fell in love with. The passing years have not diminished that love; it’s still in the running for my favorite album of all time.

The only other time I can think of that a musician’s death affected me as profoundly as Alex’s was when Gene Clark died in 1991.

3

I don’t really know how people can help me either, if that makes any sense :slight_smile: Maybe someone out there reading this will magically have it all tabbed out and my search will be complete!

They were before my time, but so many of my favorite bands cited them as influences that I couldn’t help but check them out and love them.

It’s just a small bar run by friends who are all very big Big Star fans. Anyone who cares to play can. My friend plays guitar and sings, and I suggested he and I do this song. (I so want to sing the backup but a) I don’t sing and b) I couldn’t sing and play bass!)

Thanks for your input!

4

Rasa, I sent you a PM that I hope will help.

Hope the tribute show goes well!

5

Thanks for the effort, DChord568!

Perhaps the awesomest tribute song ever: Alex Chilton by the Replacements I really wish I could play that one, it’d be so much fun to play live.

If anyone has any suggestions for other Big Star songs with simple basslines, feel free to share them! Our “band” will probably consist of me and my friend who sings/plays guitar, and his MPC.

6

I think **DChord **set you up nicely - I am a huge, huge, huge Big Star fan, but came to them later. Heard about them for years but finally got the CD’s maybe 10 - 15 years ago and wondered why I had not let such great much into my life years ago.

Their songs are pretty basic chord-wise - shouldn’t be too tough to find the chord forms, and you can follow on bass. It’s Big Star’s instrumentation and arrangements that truly stand out - Chilton (and Bell on #1 Record) are great players who play and weave their parts together in wonderful ways. And there is a lot of electric mando-cello, mandolin type stuff interspersed. September Gurls starts off with a mando of some sort, not a guitar, for instance…

The gig you are rehearsing for sounds really fun - wish I could be there!

7

Great to see you chime in here, WordMan! I wish we could sit down together for a few hours over some drinks sometime.

And I’m glad to see you make a plug for the excellence of Bell’s and Chilton’s guitar work, which often goes unrecognized in the midst of all the other praise Big Star garners.

Don’t know if you got the Big Star box set, but there’s a recently discovered live show on there (recorded after Bell had left the band) that has some fearsome guitar work by Chilton.

Not that it’s dazzling in the traditional jaw-dropping sense…but it’s just so in the pocket and perfect for the songs. And he accomplished it all with minimal or no effects…just really sharp, clean playing.

8

Agreed - a beer and a jam would be great.

I have a CD of a Big Star show - I want to say it was a concert right before Third/Sister Lovers was recorded, so Bell had left the group. It was at a college in the Southeast or Midatlantic (??). I suspect it is the one included in the Box Set.

Hereis the one I have…

I really need to go back and dig into Third/Sister Lovers. I haven’t given it the time it deserves…

9

No, this is a different live show. Yours is actually a live-in-the-studio broadcast on radio station WLIR. Good, but not as hot as the newly discovered live set from a Memphis club (Lafayette’s Music Room) that’s on the Keep Your Eye on the Sky box set.

This one has an interesting song selection, with tunes from the first two albums (including, amazingly, “The India Song” and a greatly expanded “ST100/6”), interesting covers (e.g. “Hot Burrito #1,” “Baby Strange”) and even a Chris Bell song that he eventually recorded solo.

It’s pricy, of course, but for this and the many outtakes/alternate versions, the box set is really worth having if you love Big Star.