Phil wrote several pieces for the bass guitar using it as a melodic instrument. The first was Second Sight which he wrote for Richard Sinclair in 1982, when In Cahoots was first formed. Although Richard never performed Second Sight on any of Phil’s albums, there are plenty of recordings of him doing so on this website starting with a BBC Radio 3 Jazz Today broadcast in October 1983. I have chosen to use this recording for today’s post but I will probably swap it for a different example pretty quickly. It is definitely not the best example of Second sight which has featured on In Cahoot’s set list so regularly over the years but it is the earliest. Listening to the announcer’s voice alone makes one realise just how long go 1983 was. You can hear Richard playing Second Sight on the Second Sight OPUS page:
27th April 1983 with In Cahoots at the Bull and Gate, London track 6
29th April 1984 with In Cahoots at Le Dunois in Paris track 4.
4th May 1984 at The Milk Weg Amsterdam
11th May 1984 at the Cafe de B in Rotterdam track 3
12th May 1984 at De Piek Vlissingen track 5
1984 at the Universite Villeneuve, Lille in
1984 at the Pijnacker, Netherlands in track 4
8th May1984 on an AVRO Radio broadcast from De Vrije, Utrecht
This was Richard’s last appearance with In Cahoots. He was replaced replaced by Hugh Hopper who played bass on the first of Phil’s albums: Cutting Both Ways.
Hugh was replaced by Fred Baker in 1988 who played on the Split Second and In Cahoots Live 86-89 albums.
Phil wrote his second piece for melodic bass: Bass Motives for Fred which appeared on the 1991 album Digging In. He also wrote Adagio for Fretless Bass, Latino Caribbeano and Out There, all melodic bass numbers for Fred, which he and Fred recorded as a duo, but these compositions, with the exception of Out There, were not released until after Phil died in 2017 when the Double Up two album was released posthumously. Out There also appeared on the In Cahoots All That album that was recorded after Pip Pyle left the band.
Flashpoint, Phil’s final melodic bass composition, came out on the for Conspiracy Theories album.
6. Out There (video)