All Activity

Yeah, it’s a whole new experience. Mostly wonderful, frequently revelatory, but occasionally puzzling..! The hiss at the end of In the Cage. The remixed vocals on ‘32 Doors’ which totally changes the harmonic centre of the chorus. The completely MIA low synth swoop on ‘…burn it to ash’ on Back in NYC. There’s some strange choices. Otherwise… great.

These look appealing; it just goes to show that white pickup covers can work when you co-ordinate them with the rest of the instrument. £400-450 for the Plus, I reckon, going by another HB "signature instrument with quality appointments" guitar that I bought recently. Tempting... not that I need another Jazz, but you all know what it's like 😄

An occasional charity gig is fine if nothing else on and reasonably local (within e.g. 30 mins drive), but not as a regular occurrence. Re: band member availability, sadly any really decent musicians are likely to be in 1 or more other bands. If only doing 1 or 2 gigs a month it should be possible to schedule for each in advance with shared diaries. If any 1 band is doing every weekend or similar then problems will arise with clashes/availability, unless you use regular and trusted deps.

I know you mention that you've tried Facebook Groups - have you tried these two? https://www.facebook.com/groups/133927049955561 and https://www.facebook.com/groups/567722186694185 both Essex based and cover band specific.

I don't really know what it's like trying to get into a covers band but for an originals band this would be a bit of a red flag, as bands tend to like their musicians to be fairly focused on the style of music they want to play. Certainly when I have auditioned musicians who say they like a very range of music it turns out they might say they like everything, but they have little understanding of the specifics of many genres outside of blues-based rock music and ultimately are unsuitable for the band. If you really do like (and have a good understanding of) a wide variety of genres I would suggest that you do a separate advert for each one rather than trying to lump everything together in a single one, as it has the tendency to make you look unfocused rather than versatile.

Hence my comment re sandpaper and oil earlier. Yes, Bravewood (and Limelight) do instruments that feel very authentic to play, whereas to my mind Fender rarely manage that. I've owned Fender relic instruments ranging from the Flea Jazz to the Jaco Artist (the now stupidly expensive Custom Shop Model) to a Masterbuilt '55, I've never owned a Fender relic that felt like a 60's instrument. Whether this is due to the large scale manufacturing processes of even the small run/niche instruments, to complex business strategy ("we mustn't build new instruments that devalue the 60's instruments on which our legacy is largely built...."), or simply poor luck on my part I'm not sure, because in the grand scheme of things it's really not hard to take a new neck and make if feel like it's been played every day since 1962. Yes, there is mojo in playing a necj that has actually been played every day since '62, but it can be done a whole lot cheaper, and I suspect that in a blind test, few people would be able to distinguish between the real thing worth close to £10k and a well crafted relic worth less than £1k. If I had the money to spare, it goes without saying I'd have a '55 Precision and a '62 Precision (again). But they would be more as pleasurable investments than as instruments

How do we feel about bands that don’t allow/like you to be in other bands? I get it but if said band does 2 gigs a month on average and one band member has “Martini Availability” ("Any time, any place, anywhere… that’s Martini”), that really puts a constraint on that member. Also hypothetically, and this is an endless debate we’ve had many time, what if said band does rather a lot of charity fundraisers without getting paid or expenses. I’ve played a lot of Charity Fundraisers in the past for the likes of British Heart Foundation, Cystic Fibrosis Trust and they pay full function band prices but what we’re talking here is 50 miles each way to play a gig for a small local cause that you’ve no connection with other than the guys in the band are connected to it in some way. IMO, this needs to be something discussed up front before accepting any offer to join.

How was your gig last night? - Mixed. There were good bits and terrible bits as I'll describe. We were playing the St Lucifer 10th anniversary gig and the only band in the lineup that didn't include previous members of St Lucifer. There was a last-minute change of venue due to the place we were originally supposed to be playing being flooded. Luckily an alternative venue could be found so we were upstairs at Gulliver's on Oldham Street in Manchester instead of underwater at Fuel The Music. Apart from having one of the most inconvenient load ins ever - from a narrow street with double-yellows both "sides" so we do get everything out of the car in double quick time, set up and sound check went smoothly. For a change the sound on stage when we started playing was the same as when we sound checked. Everything was going brilliantly with plenty of people in the audience dancing and singing along to our better-known songs. Then during the penultimate song the drums on the backing track cut out. No error messages on the computer which is what normally happens and the track was still playing and outputting MIDI data, just no audio to the PA. We played through to the end of the song without drums which got us an extra loud round of applause, but after that it proved impossible to get the audio to work again. Time was tight and after two unsuccessful attempts to make it work we had admit defeat and not place our last song. Really gutted, especially as up to the point where the backing failed it had been going so well. There were at least two people who'd come from Nottingham especially to see us play and we felt that we'd let the audience down. Of course now I'm back home the backing plays fine with no audio cut outs. Still extensive testing to do before our next gig on Saturday at The Berliner in Beeston as part of the OxJam festival (BTW I've started a thread about it in the gigs section and if any other Basschatters are playing it would be great for you to add your venues and playing times to it). In the meantime here is a collage of photos from the night including one of us while everything was still going well:

Ouch!

Yep, I've driven loads of Land Rovers as I used to work in a scrap yard and used to move stuff round in them and deliver stuff. Normal steering action was the steering wheel would move around 45 degrees from the vertical and you;d still be driving in a straight line. They were slow and used to break half shafts all the time, to such an extent, we used to carry them in the back. Now of course they are terribly desirable and go silly money, especially Series 1's (the headlights are inside the wheel arches). We'd have to set off now to get to Taunton by Oct 12th by my reckoning. Rob

Our first gig for the duo ( since our annual break ) was yesterday afternoon at a local vineyard, playing for a 60th birthday party. Great venue set on the edge of the wolds, overlooking the Humber estuary. Only about 40 guests, and a surprise do for the birthday lady so we played ‘Happy Birthday’ as she walked into the room. Not many requests, but the family were big Fleetwood Mac fans so it gave us a challenge to sort some keys out for a few of the female led vocal tunes, some of which worked and the odd one didn’t! Still, some dancers towards the end of the afternoon so we just kept the well known material flowing, along with the sparkling wine which was delicious! Used the Fender Kingman into my Rumble 100v3 combo, more than adequate in rather lively room - barn like with bare wood everywhere. Home by 6pm, well paid / fed / watered etc. We have 3 more gigs this week, so back with a vengeance!

The word over at Talkbass is that Fender has bought/is buying G&L.

Stupid. They could make 18 if they only used four strings per bass!

I'm liking what I've heard so far. The bass pedals sound amazing.

Colors - Machine Head

Famous last words