Interlochen

During the summer prior to my senior year in high school, when I attended the Interlochen music camp in northern Michigan, an electric bass player told me, and I paraphrase because his exact words from so many years ago elude me, “I chose to play the electric bass when I realized that it grounded every song.” He meant that the electric bass was the foundation of every piece of music in which the bass was present. I did not understand him at the time, but appreciated the young man speaking to me as if I were a grown-up, he while looking down at me, his electric bass guitar strapped to him, I still an adolescent. For many years now I have understood what he meant, and I like to focus my mind in following along with the bass melody of a song such as “Why Do Fools Fall in Love” by Diana Ross.