Sunday Night Music:

First Carl Verheyen and Steve Bailey. Carl Verheyen, along with Steve Morse and Eric Johnson, is one of my favorite instrumental rock/fusion guitarists. Shredders are a dime a dozen; so it helps to have a style that distinguishes oneself. Verheyen knows all of the blues based rock licks, but when he plays lines constructed from the standard major and minor modes he doesn't use the same 'ol patterns that most shredders use, but rather uses many unorthodox intervallic leaps. From what I've heard, jazz musicians did this years before he did. But Verheyen is the first in the rock/fusion idiom to really pioneer this style.

And Steve Bailey is just one of the best electric bass virtuosos period. This one is called Too Loud, Too Fast, Too Bad.



This next song which features two bassists and a drummer illustrates just what else the bass can do. It's Bailey and fellow bass virtuoso Victor Wooten of Bela Fleck and the Flecktones fame. If you listen carefully you'll hear at once, a classic baseline, chords and a melody coming from two bassists, each of them at different times wearing the three different hats. Two bassists doing three things. This one is called A Chick From Corea (I wonder who that could be about?).