AT ANY GIVEN POINT IN ONE’S LIFE, HE OR SHE
GRAPPLES with justification of his or her age. The young assert
the benefits of vigor, energy and strength. The old maintain that wisdom and
experience supplant lost youth. In 1993 I was 34; not as yet decrepit enough to
deem myself old, yet not an ignorant teen either. I was at that time brash
enough with youthful energy to be able to suggest ludicrous ideas to potential
subjects without the fear of their jaded rejection. Some blew me off , but
others took the bait and collaborated on interesting and fun images.
Fortunately for me, Victor Wooten, one of the hottest young bassists in the
industry, was also brash and energetic, and reputedly would take his young zest
and bravado so far as to perform backflips during concerts. I had come across
this fact either as a matter of hearsay, or perhaps I had dreamed
it—I can’t remember which—but nevertheless, it
was in my mind as I awaited his arrival at our offices. As soon as we sat down
to get acquainted, I pounced on him and announced, possibly a bit overly
enthusiastically, that I wanted to capture the spirit of his generation and
display him doing his backflip in the pages of our magazine to both the Bass
Player readership and the world. In that order of importance.
Victor, being not only one of the greatest bass players alive, but
also one of the coolest, mulled for two seconds and said, “Um.
Okay.”
Please understand that had I asked an older, more mature player, the
answer would have been quite different. A standing backflip, with bass, is not
something for the meek to try at home. Just thinking about it as I am writing
this caused my rotator cuff to separate, and Victor, in an act of flagrant
verve, pulled it off without so much as a grunt.
But how to capture such a thing, you might ask?
Ah-HA! Here is where energy, and experience mingle —albeit a
bit awkwardly, like me at a cocktail party. As a child, I would steal my
father’s Bolex 8-millimeter movie camera and film neighborhood kids
doing absurd things. This technology is, by 1993’s and especially
today’s standards, profoundly obsolete and one that only an
experienced old fart would consider a plausible medium (try asking teenagers
today if they know what an 8-millimeter movie is), but I somehow managed to buy
some film, dragged Victor out onto the lawn, and with the very same Bolex
scrounged out of a box in the garage, captured his magic on 20 tiny frames of
celluloid.
The resulting series of images is, in my humble opinion, beautiful in
its simplicity and reminiscent of Eadweard Muybridge’s multi-camera
motion studies of the late 1870s. In my limited scope of knowledge this may be
the first motion picture ever to appear in a bass magazine, or quite possibly
any print magazine. We have reprised it here for your viewing pleasure. Please
turn to page 12 and flip fan the corner from front to back. I recommend a
packet of microwave popcorn and a oversize box of Junior Mints to enjoy during
the show.