When asked what was best in life, Conan famously replied “To crush your enemies, see them driven before you and putting de new strings on de Rickenbacker”. If he had been born in later times, he would surely have added “and playing solid 1980s hard rock” - and the rock does not get harder than Thin Lizzy and the mighty Phil Lynott!
To get the full 80s experience, I swapped out my aging Dragon Skins for some bright new Hybrid Slinkys (although the A string is a little big for the nut…), set the POD express to round and added some compression.
The song isn’t too tricky but you have to keep the swing feel going and do a couple of walkups with eighth notes. I tried adding in a couple of Phil Lynott stage moves with the bass but what looks good in front of the mirror does not always work in front of the camera…
Took a while to get the rhythm - I was regularly “practising” on the bus by mouthing the lyrics and strumming my right hand at my belt. I got some looks from other passengers - probably thinking I was having a stroke or something
As I stated in the 2025 Goals thread, I want to start to stretch myself with some John Taylor (Duran Duran) lines. John Taylor is such a superb musician.
I’m a looong way off many of his lines - my ambition is to be able to play Rio, but I’m not sure that I’ll ever reach that level of mastery! Anyway, here’s the first one…
Duran Duran - Virus
Virus is a Duran Duran deep cut, only released on the Japanese edition of the 2004 album, Astronaut. Why only released in Japan? I have no idea because it’s blurry fantastic!
Once again, I’m joined by my daughter for the video
Dingwall Combustion into the Hotone Ampero, then on into GarageBand. To get the tone I wanted, I doubled the line (copy-paste), keeping one clean and adding some post production overdrive to the second.
That rocked, Ed! Nice playing! Had to break out the stage moves for that one. Something tells me that is not the song for me to learn how to use a pic on….LOL
Wow…this is a fun start to my day…great sound you’re getting out your gear…makes me want to start learning about effects. Really well played. I’ll have to start paying more attention to the bass lines when a Duran Duran song comes on my 80’s Pandora station.
Evidently, that Japanese edition extra song thing must happen with other artists. I was working on Norah Jones “What Am I To You” and it was on her debut album as an added track only in Japan. Then she slapped it on her 2nd album and it became a hit.
PERFECT “Daddy Daughter” Disco cover!! So fun to watch and listen to. Great tone, great bass playing, and great moves on the dance floor - what more could any daddy bass player ask for….??…. Kudos to you both (and the pup too!)….
My wife was off camera and decided to disrupt proceedings by throwing the ball
JT’s bass lines are well worth listening too…he is a master of the craft!
It’s fun, finding these deep cuts!
If I ever get to be able to play that line, I think I’d finally be able to call myself a bassist!
Thank you, @Lanny, it’s great fun doing these videos!
Thank you, Travis!
I agree. Astronaut was the first album after the original 5 hit back together again. I can only assume that they were not all happy with it. There is another song, Beautiful Colours, from that period that didn’t make it to any form of release, but can be found on YouTube, but not released by DD, or sanctioned by them. You’ve got to be fairly deep down the DD rabbit hole to know about this stuff
