[liff] My Musical Goal This Year: 5 Memorized Bass Lines

2301.One goal I have this year is to learn how to play my bass guitar and commit to memory five bass lines. It's not a maximum, and it's not necessarily a minimum, but it's a target. Here are the five, not necessarily in order, but in countdown format.

<Kasey Casem Voice>

At number five on the countdown, this Scottish troubadour formerly of the band "Stealer's Wheel" scored an iconic hit with "Baker Street" from the same album. Here, at number five, is Gerry Rafferty with an underappreciated gem from the amazing 1978 album City To City, and "Home And Dry".

Now, clocking in at number four, this California-based singer/songwriter would go on to movie soundtrack megastardom, but at the time, he was still coming up from his long and famous association with fellow folk-rock artist Jim Messina. That's right, it's Kenny Loggins with his 1979 charter from the similarly-titled album, "Keep the Fire".

At number three, with two left on the way to number one, is a song made famous by a America's first fictional family of song between the years 1970-1974. It's The Partridge Family, with "I Think I Love You":

Now we're at Number Two, and we go modern for this song. He started out as in a punk band as a drummer, became a comic, and now dominates the late-night talk show stage. It's Craig Ferguson with "The Late Late Show Theme".

And at last we come to Number one. This band hailed from Sidney, Australia, and even though they hit it big with one song and might seem a one-hit wonder to us jaded Americans, they were hugely popular in their native Great Southern Land, releasing a string of popular albums. But, to break into the American market, they enlisted the help of John Oates (of Hall and Oates) and crashed the charts – Here, at number one, is Icehouse, from the album Man of Colours, with "Electric Blue".

And that's the countdown. I'll be trying to memorize the bass lines of each of the above songs, which in a way are the soundtrack of a life.

So, keep your feet on the ground … and keep reaching for the stars.
</Kasey Casem Voice>

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