The Red Bass of Destiny
“It was 1989 and I was in San Diego, CA playing in a band on weekends and working as an electrician during the week.
I worked with a guy named Matt, and we had started the band after a few weeks of shop talk about music. At the time we were both into the same stuff: what in retrospect we’d call pre-or early grunge. Pixies, Tad, Soundgarden, Black Flag, and pretty much anything on the Sub Pop label or Taang Records.
We’d heard Nirvana’s first single “Love Buzz” the year before, and were excited to get their first full album “Bleach”. Our favourite moment on that record was the bass intro to the first song, “Blew”. It was the coolest intro we’d ever heard – we wanted to marry that intro. Matt and I told our bassist Mitch that he MUST learn the bass part, and we were goddam SURE going to play that song at our next gig. We told him we’d even buy him a bass (he’d been playing his Dad’s old 1970’s Danelectro which wouldn’t stay in tune).
New instruments were out of our price range, like most things during our 20’s, so off to the pawn shop we went. Mitch had been talking about the different kinds of feedback he could get with an open-bodied bass, so I was immediately intrigued by a violin-like hollowbody down at the end of the wall, weirdly priced at $247.50.
This one looked like McCartney’s Hofner made by someone on acid. It was a deep Chinese red and shiny as hell. No fret buzz, smooth and warm. Silky. The neck was straight but there was a 1/4″ ding on the upper back, at the 14th fret. It wasn’t enough to make the finish fall off, but it was cracked and could be felt. I laughed and said “It’s a bass – you shouldn’t be playing this high anyway”. That turned into a long-standing joke.
Mitch loved it, and we were sounding good for the next two weeks. “Blew” was a killer played live to our alt-indie music community. That’s when Matt and I got fired for drinking beers during lunch.
I called Mitch, whose Mom told me he couldn’t play with us anymore because he had been arrested for assault and robbery the night before. She very decently returned the bass, and I started looking for work. It took me about a month to find a new job, and I had to pawn a few things to pay the rent.
From the pawnshop, I got a loan on the bass and a few other items. In this way I stayed off the street until I went back to work. My employment history from this period of my life reads like a who’s who of electrical companies in the San Diego area.
I was working but not thriving because of too much partying. This pattern continued for the next year or so, and I was a regular at the old pawnshop. Put something in for being short on cash, pay it back plus 10% a week later – that is, if I could afford to get it out of hock. One of those times, I couldn’t. I got a $70 loan on the bass and couldn’t afford to get it out before the loan expired.
Driving by the pawnshop I could see it up on the wall in the same place it was 6 months before, weirdly priced again at $247.50. It wasn’t flirting around anymore. Now it was a stern rebuke; I was ashamed.
These kinds of feelings grew over the next months, and I finally took action. I had dropped out of college a few years before to play music, now I lied about my qualifications and got a job as an electrical engineer for a large government contractor called Raytheon Corp. The thing was, the job was out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean at a military base where they had a plant that destroyed chemical weapons. No more staying out too late, no more drugs of any kind. Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) discipline.
It was just what I needed – I was out of control and getting worse.
To make a long story a bit longer, it worked. By the time I finished with my overseas journeys in 1998 I had an actual career as an Electrical Engineer. I’d finished my degree while out in the islands, and now that I had some self-respect, I was respectable.
Around 1992 I had taken up computers and the internet as a hobby, and I entered that industry when I got back to the States. Around this time my creative side, which had been sleeping off the late 80’s, started to reawaken.
By 2001 I was working in Silicon Valley, the embodiment of the dot.com world. At a little music store the size of a grade-school library, I saw a guitar on half-price sale: a 12-string Samick Nightingale. I bought it immediately, and I still own and love it. All of a sudden I was back in the business: my first love (music) was still my deepest. I started lurking on eBay, window-shopping all the cool gear.
One spring day in 2003 I was scrolling though bass guitars. I didn’t have one at the time, and I was helping with a record my friend’s band was making. My job was to listen to the demo and play bass to it, then send back the mixed version. Out of the blue I remembered the red bass that had looked so abandoned the last time I’d seen it. The pawn shop was gone; the land sold for a condo project. Then I remembered the brand name: Kent.
The first 20 or so results of my “Kent” + “bass” search were all unremarkable solidbody Precision bass knockoffs. Then there it was: one that looked just like mine except for the tobacco-burst finish, which I thought was ugly as sin. Another scroll, and I saw it. Chinese red. The pictures weren’t all that detailed, but I figured what the hell. $300 was a decent price in Wisconsin and wouldn’t break the bank.
The bass arrived a week later in the usual Big Box Of Guitar. I was a bit disappointed at first: it smelled like cigarettes which made me fearful of its condition, but I tuned it and played a bit and it seemed to be just fine otherwise. New strings, and it was even better. The neck was dead straight; I always worry about hollow instruments. Setting the action brought it back to life.
I wanted it to smell like carnauba wax instead of cigarettes, so I began a methodical cleaning. Remove all electrics, clean/check connections. Chrome polish bridge cover. Lemon oil fretboard. On this bass I used Cobalt core strings; I like the combination of flatwound warmth and cobalt kick, Orange Crush 25 freq set to keep some higher tones in. Now for the wax: Mother’s California Gold carnauba wax.
It was obvious this piece hadn’t had a good cleaning for years. So before the wax, I did a gentle once-over with Meguiar’s polishing compound. The body looked alright; some moderate checking of the 40-year old paint. Headstock was ok, remove strings to clean machine heads. Sprinkle graphite, wipe off graphite. The neck…
The neck. A ding on the upper side of the back. About 1/4″. As I started counting frets I felt a tingling sensation work its way down my spine. The ding wasn’t enough to make the finish fall off, but it was cracked and could be felt.
I couldn’t avoid the thought: “It came back to me.”
I felt myself tear up a little, and I stupidly wondered what paths the bass had been down, to end up halfway across the country in Wisconsin, while I was trying to become an adult halfway around the world in Oceania.
It didn’t matter, I decided. I shouldn’t have been playing that high anyway.”
Stephen Falken
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