The trailer for Geddy Lee Asks: Are Bass Players Human Too? Sets very little expectation as it states, “Welcome to a different kind of music show.”
Furthermore, the series title sequence narration shares, “I’m Geddy Lee. Bass player in the band Rush for almost five decades. But also, a bird photographer, a wine collector, baseball aficionado, you know, a nerd! Which got me wondering whether my fellow bass folk are more than just the shadowy figures we see skulking around the stage. I wanna know, ‘Are Bass Players Human Too?’”
This miniseries, produced under the MTV brand for Paramount,+ is four, under-30-minute episodes. The brevity allows this show to be wonderful and fresh, like a solid bassline, without allowing it to get stale or repetitive.
The series gets to the heart of the question, “Are bass players human too?” and answers it with four excellent examples, each with vastly different affirmative answers. Episodes feature Les Claypool, Robert Trujillo, Melissa Auf der Maur, and Krist Novoselic.
You don’t have to be a bass player to appreciate this series. In fact, you don’t even have to know who Rush is or who any of Lee’s guests are. Geddy covers the context of the importance of each of his guests within each episode, but it’s what these guests do outside of their respective fame that makes them human.
Whether it’s clearing a brush pile using heavy equipment with Claypool, watching Trujillo surf, touring Auf der Maur’s event space, or canning with Novoselic, it’s a humanizing look at musicians who are often only regarded at all “bassed” on their music.
That may be the most endearing part of this series. All four of these bassists are more than just their musicianship. They are entrepreneurs and community leaders, artists outside of the audio space, and men who enjoy relaxing as any other might: by fishing, hiking, eating, cooking, or performing any other everyday task where joy can be found.
As I said, this is just a four-episode miniseries. Given the length of the episodes, watching the entire series is less of a time commitment than your average Hollywood blockbuster these days.
But there is one thing to note. This series was made for someone like me, and I stumbled upon it by complete accident while absentmindedly scrolling through Paramount+. I’m a Rush fan, and a bass player, and I didn’t discover it well until a year after its release. To me, that shows it was created for the almighty content machine that consumes us all, but that it was not promoted well.
As someone who is online more than I want to be, I would have known if this show had it been given any kind of media push based on how much the algorithm should have found me.
This is a note to say that there is still some good content being produced by the big streaming services. They just don’t promote it very well! Heck, when this came out in December of 2023, I was in Paramount+ almost daily as I continued my Star Trek journey at the time with Star Trek: The Next Generation, and I still didn’t know about it until now!
I’m passing that discovery on to you! If you were to ask me, “Are Bass Players Human Too?,” I would say that we are, and I would offer this series as Exhibit A.