Bassnectar on his history, posted via bassnectar.net
A quick run down of my musical life:
When I was in junior high I began discovering music that struck me, as opposed to music that felt familiar (like my parent’s music). This was mostly Metallica (the first song I heard of theirs was “Enter Sandman”, so this was after they had already become “mainstream” and blown up), NWA (which I memorized completely verbatim), and Nirvana (again my introduction to them was “Smells Like Teen Spirit” their ‘breakout single’ which all hardcore Nirvana fans I am sure despised and griped about) but for me this music was raw, pure, and extremely riveting. I gravitated towards anything heavy, and fell headfirst into the local underground scene, which was full of freaks, lunatics, and overall playful, strange, creative people.
I begged my parents for a crappy guitar, and after three quick lessons I formed a band with my best friend, and we set out to lose ourselves in heavy metal. To this day I do not know THE SLIGHTEST musical theory, I don’t understand notes or chords or anything like that… I taught myself to play by basically remixing the songs I loved best, or combining riffs from different songs. Or I would take a hook (like the opening guitar in Black Sabbath’s “Ironman”) and play it at various alternate speeds, trying to change up the feel but maintain the essence.
About this time, my Uncle Joe (who has always been a bohemian world traveller) started bringing me hand drums and teaching me beats. He would leave me with cassette tapes of brazilian Samba and Batucada beats. As I learned to play the drum, my ability to keep time with my band mates improved significantly.
The music I was into became progressively more and more hardcore, and as I began turning away from Religion and mainstream American culture, my friends and I descended into an obsession with the darkest, heaviest music possible. Death metal, Black metal, doom, grindcore… and I mean we became *OBSESSED*…it was all we ever did. There was an intense camaraderie between the various metalheads in the area, and a network developed. There was so much creativity and experimentation exchanged as the 2 or 3 kids from each high school influenced each other, shared new styles, and got together to form bands or make underground shows happen. Sometimes we would have informal ‘shows’ in our practice studios, or in my bassist’s garage (or on crazy days we would set up and play on his rooftop), as well as taking over various Battle Of The Bands, or throwing grindcore/punk crossover shows in the basement of the Cupertino Public LIbrary. A very unique community formed, comprised of freaks from every nook and cranny. It was a community of misfits and oddballs and rejects, but it felt like home. Bands like Exhumed, Spazz, Gory Melanoma, Dawning, etc were all very influential.
As time progressed, my songwriting developed, and although I did not officially know what I was doing, I was writing most of the music for my band from intuition, and again from opening to all the influences around me. I experimented with 4-track recorders and FX pedals. During senior year of high school, as my friends and I started going to “raves”, I started making rough forms of DIY techno music (with crappy drum machines, my guitar, my effects pedals, and bad vocal effects) and listening to late night electronic music shows on KFJC.
Upon going to my first rave on September 5, 1995, I basically changed irrevocably. I was still extremely obsessed with music, but the rave scene at the time opened my eyes to the beauty of community (something I had been raised with in the hippy commune I grew up in) and I felt completely open and connected to other people. As opposed to the introverted darkness of metal, I found ‘rave music’ to be just as raw and powerful and immersive, but the values were very positive and friendly, and so was I.
I got into raves not for the drugs, or even the music (although both were very powerful) but rather for the community. I was so mesmerized by everything i found in the rave scene that my only response was to give back. I wanted to get as utterly involved as I could, so I could re-create my experiences for as many other people as possible. I was usually completely sober, running around all night long taking care of everyone I met or dancing for 8 hours straight like a mad man.
Soon I knew all the promoters in the area, and thousands of people in the San Francisco scene. As my tastes developed into hardcore psytrance (we called it ‘Goa Trance’ since it supposedly originated in trances that took place on the beaches of India), I quickly got behind the scenes and started throwing parties in SF warehouses and throughout the beaches in Santa Cruz. I was working with hundreds of other people, this was not a lone wolf thing… there were multiple communities, simultaneously pushing the boundaries further and further and I wanted to be at the core of all of them, working with all my heart to contribute. (I am tempted to start listing names of people who i worked with but the list could get long, maybe in another post, i can tell a better history, with more details).
I remember in early 1996 when I realized that all a DJ was doing was playing a record. Before that, I had thought they were *making* all those sounds live… I found a pair of turntables at a friends house, and after a 20 minute lesson I gave it a try and seamlessly beatmatched the two records (her name was Bonnie, she was a SICK downtempo DJ out of San Jose) …I remember laughing out loud, partly because it was so much fun, but also because it was *SO* painlessly easy. Years of drumming had prepared me and I thought that since I was already throwing ill parties, why not play at them as well? Until that time I had never considered being a DJ (although I was taking the Electronic Music minor at UCSC and playing with tons of amazing gear). I was mostly focused on making events happen, and making music, in addition to going to school (I majored in “Community Studies” at UCSC, and also minored in Education)…
One Sunday morning, a few hundred friends and I were deep off in the boonies on a beach outside of Santa Cruz. We had been there all night absolutely raging, and as the sun rose over the water and illuminated the beach I noticed another sound system and group of people way, way down on another side of the beach. I was usually the sober guy who would go talk to the cops if they came to bust our fun, or to basically handle whatever needed to be handled, so I started walking over to this other party. Halfway there, I met one of their representatives, a small guy who looked kind of like an Ewok. He introduced himself as “Brother” and explained that his group (they were called “Spaceship Gaia”) had noticed our party and wanted to come make friends… Brother was (and is) a huge influence on the early Santa Cruz full moon collective scene, and also one of my favorite DJs to this day. One time he gave me a sticker he made that said “Butterfly Beings Drink Bass Nectar” and as soon as I saw it I thought that if I ever made a band again I would name it “Bassnectar”…
That is the long and short of it. I can tell you more about the hippy commune I grew up in, or the death metal scene in California in the early 1990′s or the illegal warehouse raves or working as Barney The Purple Dinosaur at little kids birthday parties while I was in college… Or I can tell you how the sounds and styles morphed from the 1990′s through Y2K and into the present day, but this feels like a good place to stop for now.
Bass Head
Bassnectar Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Bass
Bass head
Bass
Bass head
Bass
Head
Bass head
Bass head
Bass
Bass head
Bass
Bass head
Bass
Bass head
Bass
Head
Bass head
Bass head
Bass
Bass head
Bass
Bass head
Bass
Robot bass
The lyrics to Bassnectar's song Bass Head might seem repetitive and simplistic at first, but they are actually quite profound in their own way. The repetition of the phrase "Bass head" and the word "Bass" creates a hypnotic, almost trance-like rhythm that is very fitting for a song about the power of bass music. The lyrics seem to be an ode to the bass heads, the people who love and live for the subwoofer-shaking, earth-shattering lows that give electronic music its unique energy and intensity.
The phrase "Head" that intermittently follows the "Bass head" refrain could be interpreted as a nod to the mind-altering effects of the music, as well as the intense focus and attention that true bass heads give to their passion. The whole song is a celebration of the sensory experience of bass music, the way it can vibrate and resonate through your body and take over your consciousness. The final line, "Robot bass," adds an extra layer of futuristic, otherworldly flair to the song, emphasizing the way that electronic music and the culture around it have become a kind of technologically advanced, cybernetic organism.
Line by Line Meaning
Bass head
I am deeply passionate about the presence and intensity of bass in music.
Bass
The low-frequency sounds that are a fundamental component of electronic dance music and integral to my enjoyment of it.
Bass head
Again, I am expressing my intense love for the experience of hearing and feeling bass in music.
Bass
Once more, I emphasize the importance of the low-frequency sounds that I crave in my musical experiences.
Bass head
My identity as a passionate music lover revolves around my appreciation for and obsession with bass.
Bass
Without bass, electronic dance music is incomplete, and I cannot truly enjoy it.
Bass head
I am reminding myself and others of my fixation on bass and how that defines my relationship with music.
Head
Short for ‘drumhead’, this refers to the membranes or skins stretched across a drum that, when struck, create an impact or reverberation of sound.
Bass head
Again, I am reinforcing my love of bass in music and the profound impact it has on me.
Bass head
My obsession with bass is so total and complete that it consumes my entire identity.
Bass
I cannot emphasize enough how crucial this sonic element is to my enjoyment of electronic dance music.
Bass head
Yet again, I am stating my passion for experiencing the full power and resonance of bass in my music.
Bass
The importance of bass in my musical preferences cannot be overstated.
Robot bass
A reference to the synthetic sound of electronic music, wherein the bass is often heavily distorted and modulated to create a futuristic, robotic effect.
Lyrics © O/B/O APRA AMCOS
Written by: LORIN ASHTON
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
Chlo Chil
This is the song that makes you weird and love yourself for it, misalign your neck & realign your back, while continuing to play bassnectar’s eps so you can do it all over again!
....On to SLATHER!
Thank you Lorin for it all brother! Bass in my FAACCEEEE all day (never next/change a nectar song..EVERRR) 🤗🥳😘 That was fun (just literally head banged all over the house while carrying my speaker then interrupted my boyfriends movie by twerking right in his face after the hundredth time enjoying this masterpiece🍑. Never gets old!)
PS Bassnectar’s NYE 360 2016/2017 changed my life, indoor arena hands down bassheads..no other way to do it!
Okay rant done ✌️
Young Gnome
2023 and I still find myself coming back and melting my face to this absolute banger every once in awhile
Mikesters
Same
GM Raleigh Burrito Shak
Same here
SolidPancake
You shouldn’t be
Naisu
word
JustA SaladBro
Same
qualich
this song definitely has an important place in the history of bass music
Kyle Diablo
I remember listening to this at full volume driving through the desert of Eastern Washington at night in the summer of 2010 going 80-90 mph with all the windows down watching the lights on the rows of wind turbines flash on the horizon. Talk about a sensory overload.
Jk
Get off the mollys!
Brittany Wood
Similar experience. & We will never be that happy again.😂