Pam Anders
Bad Ass Bass Gal
Cover Recorded: June 2021
Bitch
Original Artist: Meredith Brooks
Originally Released: 1997
Genre: Rock
Composer (s): Shelly Peiken and Meredith Brooks
Song Facts: From Songfacts
This song played a part in re-claiming the word “bitch” as a term of endearment for women. Stevie Nicks sang about life’s challenges in “Sometimes It’s A Bitch,” but Brooks was the first female artist with a hit song where she refers to herself as a bitch, paving the way for artists like Lizzo to wear it with pride.
Brooks did all the guitar work on Blurring The Edges, including glass slide, some e-bow and wah-wah. She said: “If I had listed a guy as a guitarist in the liner notes, everyone would’ve thought that he played all the cool stuff. So I decided to do it all myself just to prove that I could. Now I want all those 13-year-olds – especially the girls who don’t have role models – to look at me with confidence and say, ‘I can do that,’ and go and pick up a guitar. When I was growing up, I didn’t have many female guitarists to look up to.”
Meredith has since admitted that “Bitch” nearly didn’t get recorded until a friend lent her some money to hire a studio.
This spent four weeks at #2 in the US, held off the top spot by Puff Daddy’s “I’ll Be Missing You.”
This song played a part in re-claiming the word “bitch” as a term of endearment for women. Stevie Nicks sang about life’s challenges in “Sometimes It’s A Bitch,” but Brooks was the first female artist with a hit song where she refers to herself as a bitch, paving the way for artists like Lizzo to wear it with pride.
Brooks did all the guitar work on Blurring The Edges, including glass slide, some e-bow and wah-wah. She said: “If I had listed a guy as a guitarist in the liner notes, everyone would’ve thought that he played all the cool stuff. So I decided to do it all myself just to prove that I could. Now I want all those 13-year-olds – especially the girls who don’t have role models – to look at me with confidence and say, ‘I can do that,’ and go and pick up a guitar. When I was growing up, I didn’t have many female guitarists to look up to.”
Meredith has since admitted that “Bitch” nearly didn’t get recorded until a friend lent her some money to hire a studio.
This spent four weeks at #2 in the US, held off the top spot by Puff Daddy’s “I’ll Be Missing You.”
14 Responses
Well done Pam! Great job as usual.
Thank you very much John1
Pam
Very nice Pam…. I really enjoyed the tones of your bass in the mix. You are very good at mixing the video segments to the song, any you played it very well in your audio track. What I look (and listen to) in all cover recordings are the bass notes being in relation to the plucking finger movements. I have always recorded both the audio and video at the same time so that all of my movements are in sync with each other – kinda eliminates the feeling of (like) a “lip synced” song. HOWEVER, if you want to have separately recorded audio and video tracks to sync in a final mix, (I have done this), find the areas where the bass line and your finger movements don’t match up and use those areas to pan to a full screen shot of something (other than you playing) so that viewers cannot notice your fingers not hitting the string on time with the original sound of the bass note from the bass audio recording.
You’ve gotten so damn good since you started doing covers!! Oh,…. and if you’re gonna do a BEAD build, both Laurent and I have done them and posted the process on the forum. Don’t “shortcut” shit when you do it. File your nut and do it right. I used drill bits to file my nut out and made sure that I didn’t go too deep as Laurent did…. I used a sharpie – find the post I made and you’ll see what I did. I love playing my BEAD bass!! Oh, you will have to adjust your truss rod tension and do a light set up for action and intonation (very important) especially if you play normal EADG at and above the 5th fret – I do this a lot….. But, the tones of that B string are so damn cool!!
There’s one weird thing about the way I play, and when I watch the videos of me playing, I notice it. I keep my fretting fingers very close to the strings at all times, so when I fret you can hardly notice it. It looks as if my hand is just gliding up and down the neck doing nothing, when in fact I am actually fretting the notes.
Maybe that’s why you got the impression I was “lip syncing” so to speak.
Thank you very much Bill (Lanny), your comments mean a lot to me.
Pam
Amazing Pam.
another GREAT overall production.
I love how your bass really stood out in this one, I think your tone was awesome and levels were perfect.
Great job, hurry up with the next one, IDK how long I can wait.
Most excellent performance and video as usual Pam. At first, I thought I didn’t know the song but when the she started to sing the chorus, I remembered it. The new bass sounds fantastic, perfect for the song. Great job!
Fantastic Pam! Good job laying the groove down timely and consistently which allowed the guitar to shine as intended. Always impressed with your videos which I know you take pride in.
Another nice job Pam,
Great tone from your new bass, great video as usual, loved the T-shirt, very fitting.
I did notice a little sync issue throughout the song, but it did not detract from your sliding around the fret board,
keep up the good work, looking forward to what you do next,
Cheers Brian
Thanks Brian. As always, I like to pre-record the audio track, and then record a second audio track with the video. Sometimes the audio that I record with the video is perfect, but most times the pre-recorded one is better.
I let my software sync them up, and it usually does a good job. I’m sorry this one seemed to be out of sync to you. I’ll pay closer attention next time.
Great job! I loved the song as well. I remember listening to it many times during my commute from Palm Springs to Orange (the city) during my working stiff years.
Not sure why, but I can’t get the video to play in Chrome. Had to switch to MS Edge.
As always, your production is impeccable!!
Thank you very much Jim
Very great job, Pam! really well done
Thank you very much!