Deal or No Deal or Kim Deal?

I  am in bed right now staring out my window and trying to fall asleep because I have to go to work at 5:30 tomorrow morning. I have a song stuck in my head. Well, actually it's just the bass line of a song. And it's a bassline that only has, like, four notes over and over and over. Imagine that your little brother/sister/niece/child is sitting at a piano, and they only know the first two notes to Fur Elise, and then imagine that you are trying to focus on ANYTHING else with that happening, really loud, right in your ear.

It doesn't help that I don't even want to go to bed. Because several of my friends are at The Radler right now, probably eating this really good cheese & crackers app that they have and drinking the bar's eponymous beverage, a mixture of grapefruit soda and hefeweizen. And my girlfriend is on a farm probably eating smores or reading Wendell Berry by a roaring fire. And I am laying on a cold mattress that is about a six-feet-even when I am six-foot-five, and I have to get up at five thirty and trudge across a cold urban expanse to stock                                                                             shelves at a glorified 7-11.

Kim Deal is probably my favorite bassist evr. She does this thing where she writes a bass riff based on two or three notes in a verrry simple progression and then plays the rift REALLY loud, loud enough to make the strings my that clattering sound against the neck of the guitar. Then Pixies put her at the forefront of their music and you suddenly have this catalogue of songs that are immediately identifiable by the bass riff, even though the riffs are basic enough to be played expertly by a bass novice. Most of her riffs are just sequential quarter notes, too. Not a lot of syncopation, scales, or "groovin," going on.

Because there are other songs that are very easily recognized by their bass riffs. She's Not There, by the Zombies. Soul to Squeeze by RHCP. Ramble On, by Led Zeppelin. Far From Me by ol' Nicky Cave. All excellent bass lines that are very recognizable outside of the context of their songs.

BUT KIM IS DIFFERENT.

Even if the only Kim you're familiar with is the one who brought her crying brat to a fashion show yesterday, you've probably heard Pixies via this movie. And that song is a great example of Kim's brilliance, to be sure, but it's also a song that has been burned into our collective consciousness through a clever bit of conditioning by David Fincher (gritty, visually arresting film -> legendary plot reveal -> flood of catharsis for the protagonist and the viewer -> iconic closing statement/visual image....cue music). For a song devoid of pop culture addendums, listen to anything off of the album Doolittle, especially Debaser  or This Monkey's Gone To Heaven. Also, have you seen this commercial?  This song features Kim's magnum opus about a magnum phallus, Gigantic. Sounds even cooler on a stand-up bass.

Kurt Cobain was a big Pixies fan, and Kurt Novoselic of Nirvana did some cool things with Kim's bass methodology (he also wrote some pretty groovy, complicated riffs that were very uniquely Nirvana). Hey, listen to this Kim Deal Inspired Bass Riff Playlist and let it lull you to sleep.

Ranging from "Obviously Inspired" to "Loosely Inspired," descending order:

I Bleed - Pixies
Sliver - Nirvana
Only in Dreams - Weezer
Evil - Interpol
Apartment Story - The National
Cannonball - The Breeders (Kim Deal's band after Pixies)
Fun - Speedy Ortiz
Are You Okay - Dum Dum Girls
Afraid of Heights - Wavves
Coast to Coast - Waxahatchee
Tiny Cities Made of Ashes -  Modest Mouse
Here Comes Your Man - Pixies

Spotify link, out of order.