{"id":697,"date":"2021-06-20T03:44:18","date_gmt":"2021-06-20T03:44:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/williewaldman.com\/?p=697"},"modified":"2021-07-27T21:03:41","modified_gmt":"2021-07-27T21:03:41","slug":"rob-wasserman-space-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/williewaldman.com\/index.php\/2021\/06\/20\/rob-wasserman-space-island\/","title":{"rendered":"Rob Wasserman &#8211; Space Island"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Right off the bat, as the initial faux country chords from &#8220;Wildside&#8221; wobble in and out of phase before a delectable, backwater-bar groove rumbles into place, you know you&#8217;re in for something a little different, something special. Bassist Rob Wasserman, a longtime musical partner of Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir and creator of a much acclaimed trilogy of collaborative recordings (<em>Solo<\/em>,&nbsp;<em>Duets<\/em>, and&nbsp;<em>Trios<\/em>, involving artists as diverse as Aaron Neville, Rickie Lee Jones, Lou Reed, Bobby McFerrin, Bruce Hornsby, and Branford Marsalis), here ventures into new and richly satisfying musical terrain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Playing a futuristic, six-string upright electric bass, Wasserman teams with producer Dave Aron to create a savvy, rhythm-heavy buffet of unexpected sounds, cross-pollinating dance, pop, jazz, even folk. Wasserman&#8217;s bass and Aron&#8217;s drum machine-sampler are responsible for almost every sound on\u00a0<em>Space Island<\/em>\u00a0(a vocal-free effort except for a few shrewdly positioned cameos by Wasserman), and their fanciful concoctions are a treat. Highlights: the growling groove that undergirds Wasserman&#8217;s laconic, grinning melody in &#8220;Wildside&#8221;; the clever blend of hip-hop rhythms and jazzy urban cool on the title track; the edgy, scratched-up &#8220;Feel the Bass&#8221;; the amber waves of gently grooving grain in &#8220;Prairie Song.&#8221; Best of the bunch: the irresistible, radio-ready &#8220;Hillbilly Hip Hop,&#8221; where Wasserman&#8217;s silly-but-articulate rap exhorts us to &#8220;Flap them arms around a lot&#8221; and to &#8220;Dance profoundly, not unsoundly.&#8221; Not everything works (&#8220;Ipanema&#8221; and &#8220;Nu Ballad&#8221; go nowhere), but the disc&#8217;s hits far outweigh its misses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-amazon wp-block-embed-amazon\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Space Island\" type=\"text\/html\" width=\"1080\" height=\"550\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen style=\"max-width:100%\" src=\"https:\/\/read.amazon.com\/kp\/card?preview=inline&#038;linkCode=kpd&#038;ref_=k4w_oembed_NuC0m8Jsi7b4Mx&#038;asin=B00004VX8P&#038;tag=kpembed-20\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-spotify wp-block-embed-spotify wp-embed-aspect-21-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Spotify Embed: Rob Wasserman\" width=\"100%\" height=\"380\" allowtransparency=\"true\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"encrypted-media\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/artist\/4tbbrHi36Qp5zErYaV0aUJ\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Right off the bat, as the initial faux country chords from &#8220;Wildside&#8221; wobble in and out of phase before a delectable, backwater-bar groove rumbles into place, you know you&#8217;re in for something a little different, something special. Bassist Rob Wasserman, a longtime musical partner of Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir and creator of a much [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":698,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[55,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-produced","category-rob-wasserman","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/williewaldman.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Rob-Wasserman-Space-Island.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/williewaldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/williewaldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/williewaldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williewaldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williewaldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=697"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/williewaldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":737,"href":"http:\/\/williewaldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697\/revisions\/737"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williewaldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/williewaldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williewaldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williewaldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}