Bob the Bass Player
International understanding and exchange
Instead of the usual post band practice barhopping spree, bassist Bobby Nunn and I decide to hit a noodle stand for a quick snack and then catch the last train out of downtown Osaka. The ride from Namba station is fifty funny but cramped minutes with a few hundred juiced working stiffs. Once we hit his prefecture and exit the train we wait another ten minutes to hop a shuttle and then once off the bus, catch a taxi to his suburban flat up in the hills. We speed along for another fifteen minutes.
“Wait, hold up!” Bob suddenly remembers a critical detail before we get home. He chatters something in Japanese to the driver who nods his head and quickly pulls over to some colorful vending machines next to a small convenience store. We exit and Bob slips a bill into the beer vending machine and wala, we have our jug of Sapporo for the remainder of the evening. I squander the rest of my yen on a couple packs of ramen and a bag of chips in a different machine and then we stumble up the road to his place.
“I’m gonna kick some Ice Cube,” Bob says after we listen to the demo for his band “Colourfast” on his 4 track recorder. He pops a hip hop mixtape into the deck and the beats come hard and fast. Bob’s girlfriend Kadru joins us and we sit and bullshit about his old South High school days in Minneapolis when he was spinning records as a DJ. I ask him when he got started playing the bass. Bob stirs some curry into the ramen and says, “I rented a bass and watched MTV. I didn’t know what to do and I just tried to play every song that came on. After a little while I was able to find the basic groove or notes of the songs.” He explains that his early career as a bassist basically involved getting hammered and blowing out speakers playing AC/DC covers at weekend keg parties at Tufts University outside of Boston. “That was a blast and good for me because I still knew so little about playing whatsoever.”
After college Bob moved to Chicago’s west side and began working for NutraSweet. “Finding a band was difficult and I ended up playing with a group called ‘Girlthing’, which was kind of a joke,” he says. Bob explains that “Girlthing” was really just a pseudo-funk, DAT machine glam band that offered little more than a short, superficial rush during performances. As we all start slurping down the remainder of our delicious noodles he explains that he didn’t really take playing the bass seriously until his friend Jim Anton, bassist for Minneapolis based Beat the Clock gave him some pointers and words of encouragement. “Beat the Clock was playing down the street from where I lived in Chicago and so a couple of the guys crashed at my place. At the end of the show Jim let me play on their twenty minute version of Soul Power. I was like, ‘no way!”
Out of brew, we do the rock-scissors-paper thing to determine who would make the last hike down to the beer vending machine. I choose unwisely and Bob floats me a thousand yen to cover another jug of Sapporo and a pack of smokes. When I return Bob is chilling and strumming chords on his bass to “Mr. Cabdriver” by Lenny Kravitz. We break open the brew and kill the bag of chips as I ask him about the challenges of playing in a new rock band with three Japanese guys. “After I arrived in Japan to teach English for the Jet Program in 91, I began looking for foreign people or bands to play with, but most Gaijin bands already had a bass player.” He also mentions that he had some communication problems with the first couple of Japanese musicians he tried to work with. He elaborates further and says that he was also turned off by the lack of originality in what they wanted to play. “The first couple of bands I auditioned for were not very serious and didn’t have a very wide range of styles of music they wanted to play. They seemed to just be mimicking the stars that they liked and there was very little creativity.”
Bob’s perspective on Japanese musicians changed radically when he met the lead guitarist and drummer from Colourfast. “When I met Yoshitake and Matsumoto I was so surprised! They had ideas of the music they wanted to create and they listened to a wide variety of music, much wider than mine in many respects,” he says thoughtfully.
While the lyrically challenged lead singer Hiroki seemed to be one note shy of being ostracized from the band, Bob emphasizes that his creative relationship with Yoshitake and Matsumoto was rock solid and had recently blossomed as their communication had improved during practice sessions. “For the last eight months we’ve been playing and recording, it just gets better and better. The music has provided a truly international understanding and exchange.”
Originally published in CAKE magazine circa 1993.
