Omer Plays Bass . . . Soundgarden - Spoonman (bass cover)
Bass by Ben Shepherd
Bass Used in this Video: Dingwall Guitars Super PJ, Dingwall 35th Anniversary Custom Design Drive Pedal
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A ‘90s grunge classic ‘Spoonman’ played by Ben Shepherd from one of the big three grunge bands of the era - Soundgarden. I always liked this song with a big heavy groove and cool distorted bass tone. Of the three bands – including Pearl Jam, who for me was always like the Bad Company, one of my favorite bands, of grunge - basically a solid classic rock band which I really liked; and then Nirvana who might have been like the 10CC or Badfinger as the pop machine with great melodies and hooks - I know the analogy is not perfect - however I could take or leave them; and finally Soundgarden represented the heavy side of grunge with maybe some of the best heavy grooves and riffs since Black Sabbath.
Soundgarden had a good string of success with songs in the grunge goldrush period in early 90's Seattle before breaking up in ’97 with various reformations through the next couple of decades before singer Chris Cornell’s unfortunate death in 2017 with Ben Shepherd on bass, replacing original bassist Hiro Yamamoto, riffing along with guitarist Kim Thayil who was a rhythm and riff machine on guitar, Cornell, a very good singer with the right voice for the band but who seemed to struggle, as many in the grunge scene did, with success and being famous, and for me the highlight of the band, Matt Cameron, now of Pearl Jam and perhaps the best drummer of his generation – no offence to Dave Grohl.
‘Spoonman’, from the “Superunknown” album, perhaps the high point of Soundgarden's success, with its drop D tuning (SG used alot of drop and alternate tunings that really accentuated the beefy riffs from Thayil and Shepherd), odd time signatures (another regular occurrence on SG tracks) in 7/4 – with the chorus in 4/4 and the spoon solo (LOL never thought I’d be writing that in a bass cover video article) in the middle in 3/4. The part is a real hand cramper with repetition contortion on the part to make it work. My Super PJ is tuned BDAD which makes the bottom end sound so huge. The Dingwall 35th Anniversary Custom Design Drive Pedal gives the right amount of overdrive compared to isolated tracks I found on the Internet - warm and voiced od tone. Overall a cool track. I’m not a huge listener to a lot of SG, but I sure liked this track and I’m a sucker for a big, heavy groove on a song with a hooky chorus. A couple of glitches in the shot where the camera tried to autofocus, but thought the performance was still ok and the tone was pretty good.
Disclaimer: I am not saying this is exactly how Ben Shepherd played this song, but it is how I would play it if I was playing it at a gig.
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