All Activity

Received a message from my sister in law asking me to email as she wanted me to do a favour. I replied positively, and then received this. It immediately smelt a bit odd, then I discovered my wife had also received the same email (allegedly from her sister) Contacted her sister, who told us that she'd just discovered that everyone in her address book had just received the same message 🙁 Be careful out there.

Yes there are some 'genre' tributes but I think it can be trickier to pitch. For instance, if you did a Britpop show, you would somehow need to differentiate your act from a thousand pub bands knocking out covers of Oasis, Pulp, Blur etc. It's important to have a unique selling point (USP). If all this sounds very business-oriented, that's because it is!

Let Down - Radiohead

@Woody1957 any progress?

To add to this and illustrate just one of the points above, you don't necessarily need to "tribute" a specific artist, there are two (that I know of) acts out there in direct competition that tribute the genre that is the punk and new wave scene (1976-83), there's Punk Off! and rePunK'd. In some cases they play the same venues but well spaced on the calendar. Both have well-produced showreels and they are very savvy with social media. Ticket prices get up to 35 quid for theatres and the amount of graft that goes into the production, planning and stagecraft exceeds that of a function/covers band by an order of magnitude. There's up front investment as a business proposition long before any profits of ticket sales come in and at that level someone needs to be "on it" pretty much full time.

Fretless Wal custom biased to the bridge pickup into a small, clean sounding and mid rich pjb flightcase with flat eq. Sounds like a stoned Percy Jones doing a jaco impression. A have a fretted warwick that sounds completely different and keep intending to gig it .... but then just take the fretless instead. More than one bassist has stopped playing a Wal as the sound is distinctive and detracts from their own sound and the music... not me, I love it.

If you’re ok with regular Guinness then give it a try, I used to drink it whenever I could get my hands on it - only place I could find that sold it regularly was an offie at Apex Corner, Edgware.

Be aware that is a long and expensive road. You need to pick an artist with enough well-known material (with maybe some album 'deep cuts') to fill a 2-hour show, and a strong enough base of diehard fans and/or well-heeled (usually mature) punters to pay for tickets. Some acts really require lookalikes as well as soundalikes. If the material is heavily produced/orchestrated, you may need synched tracks to fill out the sound. Then you'll want a professional-quality showreel for you or your booking agent to send out to venues. If a venue already has a tribute to your chosen artist, they may not wish to take a chance on an alternative. Just some things to think about...

It arrived today. Connected my phone to the audio and midi bluetooth connections and streamed music. Plugged my iPad in with the usb-c lead from the KG. Just used the built in camera app to record video and it worked perfectly, bass and streamed music both recorded. Maybe you could try a firmware update, or play with the USB settings?

Yeah im going to head across, watch footy, eat food and "admire basses" (gotta keep up the illusion im here for bass shit). Youve worked in IT for 20+ years at a uni and are denied a mod postion. That sucks!

No, no, no! Coil over your hand putting a half twist into each loop so they are all completely limp. Thus is how I was taught to hank a rope. Minimises tangles, as used by seamen for generations. Then velcro, rather than securing with a loop round and through.

I think this could be a good shout. If you go down this route my advice would be to make sure you have your key ingredients in place early. I spent 4-6 months (with a friend) rehearsing, planning and putting together an Aerosmith tribute and we were so keen and over the moon with the guitarist chemistry, drummer, band name and sound that we were ploughing ahead without the crucial ingredient, Tribute Steven Tyler. We auditioned a lot of singers (male and female) and we always thought that it would just be matter of time, we never got there and didn't have a Plan B. We could have taken one of the auditioned singers and easily done something else very good but all of us were fixated on Aerosmith. We found out the hard way why there aren't many Aerosmith tributes around. I would drop everything to be in a good Aerosmith tribute (sorry, current bandmates). I'd also love to do a Pearl Jam tribute, I'd get to wear Vans and play my Hamer every gig. Having an idea of what tribute you'd like to be in and knowing all the obvious bangers off pat gets you off the blocks.