Honoring the eclectic nature of this series, this week’s video is a sharp turn from Evan Parker. 🙂 Actually, without this being the intention, it ties loosely ties together a number of previous posts.

In early 2007, when I first stumbled upon those Marcus Miller videos I posted a while back, I came across another version of “Run for Cover” by Lydia Kaboesj. Lydia is a real solid Dutch bassist who posted a series of homemade solo videos to YouTube in 2006-07. (She’s a professional musician in Europe, but this series is how I came to know her.)

Although there are a number to choose from, my favorite of the “Lydia On Bass” video series is her cover of Musiq Soulchild‘s “Just Friends (Sunny),” itself a play on Bobby Hebb’s iconic pop hit “Sunny.” (The lyrics are by no means deep or profound, but the overall song is catchy.) She’s definitely a one-woman band featuring bass guitar, voice, and beatbox. Despite a vocal hiccup, this is an impressive little performance. Below Lydia’s performance I’ll also post a nice live performance of the same song by Musiq Soulchild, a video I immediately tracked down after finding Lydia’s. One thing I really enjoy about Musiq’s performance is his use of a full soul band, unfortunately a rarity nowadays.

For fun, here are some traits this post has in common with some of its predecessors, making it the rug that (kind of) ties the room together thus far.
1. I found Lydia via Marcus Miller’s “Run For Cover,” which was featured here.
2. “Just Friends” is a contrafact of “Sunny.” Though that’s a term generally applied to jazz, it’s suitable here. The Liebman performance I posted here features one of his own contrafacts.
3. Musiq Soulchild’s performance comes from his appearance on Later…with Jools Holland. Bon Iver’s performances, posted here, came from the same program.
4. Lydia’s performance is solo, the only other solo performance I’ve featured thus far is last week’s Evan Parker post.

Lydia Keboesj:

Musiq Soulchild: