“They had to fight to get the bass that high in the mix. I thought it was too much”: How do you anchor a band like Pleasure? If you’re Nate Philips, you do it with a formidable slap technique

American bassist Nate Phillips performs during the 17th Jakarta International BNI Java Jazz Festival at JI-Expo Kemayoran on May 27, 2022 in Jakarta, Indonesia.

At a time when funk had a firm foothold around the Great Lakes, where bands like Parliament, the Ohio Players, Slave, and Earth, Wind & Fire cranked out industrial-strength soul, Portland, Oregon’s Pleasure was happy to blaze its own jazzy dance trail in the Northwest.

“We were sort of isolated up there,” bassist Nate Phillips told Bass Player, “so we just did our own thing.”