"The Bass Is a Harsh Mistress" The Abridged Biography of Marc Nelson
On May 19, 1982, Marc Linden Nelson was born into this world, kicking and screaming, in Easton, Maryland. He enjoyed his first few years in the relative safety of a loving and attentive family. In elementary school he took an interest in science, particularly human anatomy, often reading through his mother's nursing school textbooks. He was an awkward kid: flat-footed, skinny, all legs and bony knees that seemed somewhere in the clouds or somewhere out the window, as evidenced by his frequently bumping into things and tripping over untied shoe laces. Sports were out of the question for a young lad of such spindly composition. Though he tried his best to run, hit, and play like the rest of his peers, the results were often discouraging and embarrassing. All the while, our subject met these setbacks with a typical air of absent-minded indifference.
As he entered adolescence something miraculous occurred. Due to constant hormonal encouragement, he discovered young women and normal social behavior. It was a life altering revelation. Almost simultaneously he discovered the joy and power of rock music. The first time he heard Hendrix wailing through "Voodoo Child", screaming over-top Mitch Mitchell's manic drumming and Noel Redding's booming bass, he knew he had found his calling. "Forget about earning a six-digit salary as a surgeon." He thought to himself, "I need to learn to play guitar and get into a band". He began jamming with his friends, experimenting heavily with new styles of playing, eventually leading to an interest in jazz. He already loved Les Claypool's bizarre and percussive bass techniques that colored his favorite band Primus' records, but now he was also hearing the bass guitar as a featured instrument by jazz-fusion greats as Jaco Pastorious and Stanley Clark. On his thirteenth birthday he asked for a bass, and received a road-beaten Fender P-bass that would change everything. If his parents only knew the arduous path of poverty and debauchery they were inadvertently laying before their once promising son, they would have left that bass in the callused hands of the man who sold it to them so cheaply out of financial desperation.
A few years later, he was playing music with anyone and everyone who needed a bass player. He was in every form of band his high school offered, even playing upright bass in the pit and concert bands. He graduated and went to college, only to quit after two years to tour Alaska, Europe, and the South Pacific through Armed Forces Entertainment with his current group the Niki Barr Band. Marc Nelson has also played and recorded with folk legend Don Drehoff, producer/guitar-God, Cinema 8 band-leader Michael Sauri, Everything drummer Nate Brown, and experimental rock band, The Dopamine Project. He is now 21 years old, teaches students in his spare time, and is determined to make a living out of his art: the art of playing bass and making great music Wish him luck; he needs all he can get.
Written with the highest standards of journalistic objectivity and accuracy in mind.
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