Forest: Cuba

Here is Cuba.

Cuba

It's one of the few guitar+bass tracks on the album where the timing wasn't a complete mess (except at the beginning and during a couple of the breaks). It's also one of the few tracks where listening to the backing vox doesn't cause me physical pain.

I think Thom was planning to do the solo on guitar, but I had been noodling around with some Latin stuff on bass and we thought it might fit. The main bass on Cuba was my old Yamaha TRB-5p, but I played this solo was on my Steinberger XL-2A. I had the Steinberger strung up tenor (A-D-G-C) in those days because I was trying to learn Monkey Businessman off of Michael Manring's Thonk album, which had been released in 1994. Between the high tuning, the EMG pickups and the SansAmp, that bass cut through the mix like a buzzsaw. When I later replaced the TRB-5p with the TRB-JP, I was able to do both bass parts live on the same bass.

Thom played the mando himself on the track.