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Support Your Local Music Store – Reader Submission from Steve Rosati
Steve Rosati, a Reader Submission
Recently I had I traveled out west to the sunny city of Anaheim, this trip was a great chance to reconnect with friends and companies. I was out here to share a new bass that was built for me by one of my students, it’s a very cool piece and if any of you know me; you’ve seen the progress all over Facebook. However this was not my only agenda, I am on a crusade to return community back to our craft. How do we do this? Well I’ve pondered the inevitable decline of our music stores; instruments and music… This was for most of us our first brush with bass and music.
The Disappearance of physical music stores troubles me. The internet is an awesome way to search out and discover new players and instruments. But without the stores the community connection is broken. I’ve thought about this a lot recently, as a private music teacher who has seen a decline in the student rolls, as well as in the programs in the schools and colleges. So, where have all the new students gone? That’s the big question, well I believe that the breakdown is due to the lack human interaction in the stores, the store functioned as a meeting spot, think pod, hang.
The local hang is so important it’s where you learn about the other players in your area and gigs. The store also functions as the show room to try guitars that may be outside your financial grasp at the moment, but provides you with dreams of one day owning that instrument you actually played. When you buy a instrument on the web(sight unseen) you never really know what you are getting.
For instance kid A buys a guitar, it comes in the mail 7 days later, chances are this instrument is not set up or tuned(why would it be). Kid A plays the guitar a couple times but gives up not having any real instruction on it or input from other musicians.(and I know what you are going to say what about YouTube, but that’s just entertainment, you wouldn’t use it learn to perform open hart surgery.)and so the journey ends prematurely. The Music store is more than just a place to buy guitars/basses it’s the meeting point where you could connect with the community. It’s where I met many new students and it’s where I met my first music teacher, it’s also where I searched for band mates.
The truth is the nature of the web is creating hermits out us, and our craft requires, no demands that we interact with other musicians. I hope that one day we return to having a meeting place where we can trade ideas and stories in a musical environment because the existence of our craft depends on it. Support your local music store.
About Steve Rosati
A lover of fine cigars, scotches and fast cars(not really). Oh and basses, yeah lots and lots of basses. I’ve played with some great musicians and recorded some cool tunes. Life is good!
Cheers
SteveRosati.com
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Photo: Self-portrait by Melissa Auf Der Maur
Melissa Auf Der Maur is a Canadian bassist who played with Tinker, Hole, and The Smashing Pumpkins. She released her own work and is a photographer with photos published in Nylon, Bust, and National Geographic. She released her ‘90s Rock Memoir “Even The Good Girls Will Cry” on 17 March 2026.
KB: Did you always want to be a singer-musician growing up?
I’ve played music my whole life. In school, I played trumpet and sang in a children’s choir, so music was always within me. My mother was the first female disc jockey on the Montreal airwaves; her record collection played a huge role in my inspiration and love of music.
KB: When did you start playing bass, and why this instrument?
When I was 19, the early 90s music explosion began to percolate in tiny clubs around the world. I was lucky to be a ticket girl at Montreal’s underground music club. In one year, I saw Hole, Sonic Youth, Smashing Pumpkins, White Zombie, and The Breeders – all had female bass players. That’s when the seed was planted. By the age of 22, I was the bass player of Hole.
KB: Which brands of basses have you used in your career, and which one are you using now?
The first bass that I learned on was a vintage Squier Precision. Hole was sponsored by Fender guitars, so I upgraded to Fender Custom Shop Precisions. That is all I play, but I have a cool vintage 8-string Greco that I use on recordings to thicken up guitar parts.
KB: What equipment do you use or have you used with your basses?
Ampeg SVT amps and cabinets, a couple of Sans-Amp pedals, and that is it.
KB: How did you become a member of Hole, and what is your fondest memory of that time?
Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins was helping scout a replacement for (RIP) Kristen Pfaff, Hole’s bass player. My band, Tinker, opened for them on the Siamese Dream tour, so Billy had seen me play and could vouch for me. Courtney trusted her talented friend, and that was it. I initially said “no thank you” due to my commitment to my photographic studies and the drama and chaos surrounding the band during the “Live Through This” album release. Courtney took it as a good sign that I said no, so convinced me to reconsider, and soon after, I accepted their invitation, in the name of helping put females in the male-dominated landscape of rock music. My fondest memory is every show we played as a mostly female band, symbolizing what a woman could do in a rock band. Every show had a purpose: get more women to play music.
KB: You are a photographer as well. What makes a great picture? Do you shoot in color or b/w?
I started shooting photographs at age 15. Initially only shot black & white and worked in the art school darkroom. In university, I took a color photography course, and shifted mostly and forever to that, because it was easier to process film on the road when I joined a rock band. I experimented with many cameras, point and shoots, manual, polaroids, medium format, and vintage finds. The trick to a good photograph is to shoot many and all the time – the magic is in the edit and selection process.
KB: Are there artists you would love to collaborate with or wish you had?
??I’ve been lucky to collaborate with some of my favorite musicians in my career. I would still love to collaborate with a new generation heavy electronic artist on an analog bass, heavy electronic drums, and synths collaboration project. Take me out of my usual zone, merging the past and future: my love of 80s dark new wave and new artists exploring that genre. It was very futuristic back then, and we are now, after all, living in the future. I am in the mood to play bass to heavy beats I want to dance to.
KB: What are your 7 favorite bass lines in music across all genres? And why these 7?
“Mountain Song” – Jane’s Addiction (love a rambling, rolling bass line – feels like the ocean waves)
“Black Top – Helmet” (was the first bass line I taught myself)
“Gold Dust Woman” – Hole from “The Crow 2” Soundtrack (it was my first bass line contribution to the band)
“Get Ready” – The Temptations (Motown just feels so good, because of the bass)
“Lucretia My Reflection” – Sisters of Mercy (makes me want to hit the dance floor and play bass simultaneously)
“Be My Druidess” – Type O Negative (full chord bass playing at its best by iconic, demonic, Peter Steele, RIP)
“Romantic Rights” – Death from Above (1979 – unique distorted overdriven tone, combined dance rhythm and melodic intelligence, all in one shot – also! Shout out to a bass & drum only band, which is awesome, and we should have more of, but the bass player needs to be a killer to fill that role.
KB: What are you currently up to?
Releasing my ‘90s Rock Memoir “EVEN THE GOOD GIRLS WILL CRY”. Visceral healing process, it was to get it out of me and write it, but I suspect the real magic will begin by putting it into the world and reflecting with others on what the magic of the ‘90s was all about. Powerful music decade that carried us into what is now a brave new world of digital corporate weirdness – may the past shed a light on our future. That’s my hope for this book release and tour.
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