Venue: Bluesiana Rock Cafe / Velden am Woerthersee / Austria
Concert date: November 14, 2007
Attendance: 25
Ticket price: 23.00€
Doug Wimbish! Who, what, how? A bassist who, over his musical career, has pretty much tasted everything there is to taste. A guy who keeps hitting venues across the old continent, he’s already played Velden in Carinthia three times this year alone. In early March he showed up as Bad Dog, in a lineup with Little Axe, who backed big Rolling Stones fan Bernard Fowler (RockLine report HERE), in the summer he raised hell there again with his Living Colour buddies (RockLine report HERE) and now he’s back for the third time. Totally solo. Doug Wimbish Soundsystem, something uniquely his own and inimitable in every way, strictly “wimbishology”. Doug Wimbish is everything to himself, and to his listeners too. An orchestra in a single man and a single man in an entire orchestra!
Let’s refresh a few basics about Doug. Bassist Doug Wimbish is, even now, without a doubt right at the cutting edge of innovation and development in electric bass playing worldwide. The man is a top-shelf musical name, recognized and highly respected among his peers, as his collaborations over an enviable career confirm: Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger, Madonna, Seal, Annie Lennox, James Brown, Mos Def, Shugarhill Gang, Grandmaster Flash, Jeff Beck and Joe Satriani. Doug belongs to the cult band Living Colour and is one of the greats of professional bass playing, and that’s proven not only by his inventions, like the Snail, but also by the stage mileage he’s racked up. Soon after wrapping up his solo tour, he’s heading out on a new one as part of the backing band of former Nightwish singer Tarja Turunen.
This time my travels took me to the lovely Bluesina club in very interesting company. With Blaž Gregorin, one of the main driving engines of the Menart label, and two music enthusiasts who kept the car filled with a proper, positively charged racket the whole way, and who crowned their enthusiasm by reaping their currently high popularity as Dagi and Mate. Good morning, Da Phenomena. We hadn’t even properly ordered beers or scattered the sensors of the photo reception across the jungle of Doug’s stage gear, which was waiting sado-masochistically for its master to come visit, when he came sauntering past us at 9:10 PM with a bass in his hand. Ladies and gentlemen! The star of the evening, Doug Wimbish.
Heh, star or no star, the locals of Austrian Carinthia clearly weren’t bothered that night, since the four of us visitors from Slovenia made up almost half the audience, not counting the bar staff, owner Gudrun and Doug’s father-in-law, daughter-in-law, and of course his life partner, who kept Wimbish at full gallop tonight as well. The man didn’t waste any time. He couldn’t have cared less about the poor turnout. He stepped onto a stage full of colorful toys and started grazing on our ears. The “Doug Wimbish Soundsystem” show is an unusual adventure for the casual visitor who isn’t used to Doug’s tricks. He builds the sound himself, the kind that usually takes at least three people on stage, if not more. He buries himself in it with his bass, entertaining himself with vocals that often lean toward shouts and rabble-rousing with simple slogans.
Surrounded by a multitude of gadgets that obey only Doug and fire off, on his command, a tonnage of the craziest sounds, which Wimbish masterfully blends with computer sampling techniques and tools into a one-of-a-kind mix of “trance”, “jungle” and “hip-hop”, Doug convinced the few curious souls in an instant that he needs nobody else on stage besides himself. The element of spontaneity is the most attractive thing about watching Doug. What on earth will he pull next? Doug isn’t one of those bassists who need to unleash massive amounts of supersonically shredded guitar notes to fascinate those around him; instead he subordinates everything to total surrender to feeling, to building atmospheric sonic tapestries. Collage upon collage. With a huge element of surprise. Playing the chaos pad (thanks to Dagi for the lesson), flapping his arms around, coaxing the strangest sounds out of the bass, often compressed into the sound of a distorted guitar so you get the feeling of a guitar solo, laid over a techno beat, veering off into dub and hip-hop, dosed with pure experiment and creating often chaotic, even transcendentally psychedelic soundscapes, from which Doug would always successfully jolt the audience awake with riffy fifths and funking.
Doug is an outstanding entertainer. Einstein or Terrorism? The latter being a pure parody of George W. Bush, whom Doug fired from his service to the USA in the last verse: “George W. Bush! You are fired!”! Doug whirled around the stage in a totally uncontrolled, immersed state, deftly hopping from his notebook to stomping on various effects pedals. At one point the man (I was quietly expecting this) stepped off the stage and strolled among the people, first showing owner Gudrun his strong, healthy teeth as he plucked the bass strings with them, then walking to the other end of the room, where the Da Phenomena crew selflessly donated an empty beer glass, which Doug used to keep clowning around and entertaining people, sliding the glass along the strings.
He split his set into two parts with a 20-minute break in between. Before most songs he took the time to talk to the people (the dozen or so “lost souls” of Bluesiana that evening) and get them better acquainted with how his work operates and the methods behind it whenever “Doug Wimbish Soundsystem” happens. Among other things, he explained that he just doesn’t enjoy playing in a band where the repertoire and the way it’s performed are set in advance. “After the sixth show it can get boring,” he declared, adding that he’d rather walk between the raindrops. So his show, much like the Free Form Funky Freqs show at Bluesiana two days earlier (with his Living Colour colleague Vernon Reid in the lineup, RockLine review HERE), meant complete trust in following primal instinct and in the uniqueness of each individual concert performance. So what we heard in Bluesiana, nobody will ever hear again in quite the same way, because Doug approaches with “no approach”. His approach is full devotion to creating atmosphere through musical expression based on instinct, going with the first thing that hits him. At one point it was downright funny when Doug couldn’t immediately decide which pedal to hit with his foot, or which quick combination of presses on different pedals to go for, there are that many crammed under his feet. Like a chameleon in countless disguises, or sonic guises.
Two hours of music. For a handful of people he spoiled even further with his sparkling sense of humor. Simple as that. The man came just to have fun. That’s all. And in doing so he conjured up a one-of-a-kind experience. You’re sipping your beer, and a meter away from you the phenomenal Doug Wimbish is writhing on stage. The mom and dad of the bass guitar, who’ll be back with Bad Dog and the saying “no winter for Eskimos,” will visit Bluesiana again as early as January 2008!
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