Bass On The Broadband

Truth be told, I was a little ready to dismiss this streaming radio station as a great idea, just not my kind of thing. Acclaimed bassist Brian Bromberg started the channel as a showcase for bass-oriented music, and it does address that, to be sure. It's just that the first couple times I tuned in, the music was rather . . . smooth. The songs all featured famous bassists quite prominently, but there wasn't anything I felt particularly attached to. The third time I tuned in, though, I joined right in the middle of Willie Weeks' solo in Donny Hathaway's "Voices Inside (Everything is Everything). And it went from there into a great Esperanza Spalding track. So the station redeemed itself there, and I've been tuning in every so often since then with (for the most part) good results.

The franchise names are there, to be sure:

• Marcus Miller
• Ron Carter
• Victor Wooten
• Stanley Clarke
• Bootsy Collins

But there's been plenty of stalwarts you wouldn't hear on a . . . smooth station as well.

• Damien Erskine
• Adam Nitti
• Yves Carbonne

And they've got a Bryan Beller track playing right now, in fact. No real shows to speak of, just wall-to-wall music with a Sunday feature on classical bassists (just like terrestrial radio putting their "public service" programming on Sunday?). So I'm happy to call this a decent resource (especially in the jazz and fusion genres, where bassists liked by bassists tend to live, I suppose). I'm not sure how much exposure this will give the artists on the channel to non-bassists, but for those of us who tend to be a little obsessive, it's great. Just remember that this is a stream, so there's no rewinding or downloads or anything like that. That said, no commercials, either.

EDIT: Just realized that I'd like to hear more stuff from artists like Matthew Garrison, Thundercat, as well as folks like Steve Lawson. I'm guessing the music is on the way, though, since this just started up.