One of the best bass players EVER to grace modern music passed away on Jan 4. Mick Karn. (Also see his profile on All Music Guide).
He was the bass player for Japan, Rain Tree Crow, Dali’s Car, Gary Numan & Tubeway Army, No-Man and many others. I’m particularly fond of an album he did with Yoshihiro Hanno in 2000 called Liquid Glass. If you haven’t heard me play it once in a while, you probably aren’t listening. Mick Karn was heralded throughout music, even in the standard jazz genre’s as one of the best bass players around. He was also proficient with very odd (to my liking) implementation of woodwinds in rock music. He was very good at clarinet and bassoon. He used them a lot in the music he made in the 90’s with Jansen/Barbieri/Karn (or JBK) which was the instrumentalists from the band Japan.
Nobody sounds like this guy playing bass… NOBODY. If you don’t believe the power of this, try you tube’ing his name and look at all the people trying to play his bass lines.
This video is actually fun to watch and listen to. You can really hear the quality in the sound Mick Karn was driving at. Listen to this guy try to teach a Mick Karn bass line. He’s doing “Cantonese Boy” from Japan. Just the sound of the fretless bass played in this fashion gives me freakin goose bumps.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m gonna miss Mick Karn.