The most recent issue of Bass Player Magazine (Holiday 2008) has some amazing quotes that I desperately need to get written down. Some of them have been literally transforming (#1 for example) while others simply inspiring. Either way, here they are.
"...when five people are having a conversation, usually one person speaks at a time while the other four listen. When five people are playing music in a conversational manner, everyone's speaking and listening all at once. You have to listen more than you play to make sure what you' re "saying" fits in with the conversation as a whole and provides both relevance and consonance." "...music occasionally allows itself to be channeled by certain members of society for the betterment of the whole." - Richard C. Cushing, Memphis, TN
"The bassist is the lighthouse AND the sea." - Joe Iaquinto
"...bass players have the unique opportunity to live inside the song: really listening to what's going on, reacting to the chords, applying thought, partnering with the drummer." - Steve Peete, Chandler, AZ
"I know very few bass players now who have weak personalities. Cats playing bass are pretty outspoken human beings!" - Will Lee
"(in the next 20 years)... an era of threadbare culture, already descending, will worsen. Case in point: the appallingly corrupt American Idol and Making the Band (where there is no "band" and the "singers" - few if any of whom can sing without the intervention of AutoTune - are clearly unconcerned about music only the thrusting asses and spastec dance steps) point to a future that will worsen before it improves." - Anthony Jackson
"We need to communicate a need for sincerety, depth, and originality, and we can do this by simply being those things." - Tal Wilkenfeld
