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And a video of my first song with the guys. VID-20250727-WA0006.mp4

Sounds like a break is exactly what you need. Then maybe hire a rehearsal space with lits oftime and no pressure to set up the whole pa from scratch... everything set to defaults before you start.

And allowing pubs to spill put into the street in city centres is one thing, but in an area where there is housing, without the landlord being expected to control rowdy behaviour is another. Having people eating, drinking and talking all week outside your front door is one thing. Having people shouting and swearing is another. Again, it's about what is reasonably expected.

Give me a shout if you haven’t indulged

It's a case of the level of noise that is reasonably expected. If I moved next to a pub that played music, I'd expect music at certain times of the week and at a certain level. Bands are getting louder and venues are staying open later. There are developers that do stupid things like build retirement flats next to music venues, that kind of thing should be thrown back to the developers to fix. But we know developers vanish with regularity for a new company to spring up in their places. It's far more complex and nuanced than; buy a place near a pub and you should expect trouble and noise, just put up with it.

My usual go to for Stingrays is teal, which I love as a colour on most things. However, given… I’d probably go with some sort of burgundy mist to contrast with the hardware.

Firstly, sorry for your loss. These things don’t always hit hardest straight away, my dad passed away in a February and it wasn’t until the September that I really let go of the pent up grief. Talking to your bands mates about is a good step, but make sure you really do take a break of some description, even if it’s just letting someone else do what you do for a while. As always, you know you can come and vent on BC, any sort of catharsis is good.

Difficult one for me on friday evening at the Cricketers in Westcliff. I'm not sure I was mentally prepared for it. For a start the wife and I were away for a couple of nights before for her birthday and a friends wedding (on the same day), and we got back the morning of the gig. We also had a dep females singer with us, covering a couple of gigs for our usual singer. Me and Liam (the other singer) got there in plenty of time, drummer was late, which is logistically challenging to set up a PA around if the drums are not there yet. One of the guitarists was held up on traffic so bad we wasn't sure if he was even going to make it, which would have meant drastically changing the set. Then the dep singer arrived and called us to open the gates - the pub manager had said no more cars in the pub's private car park at this point and to use the public car park over the road. I went outside to tell her only to be met with a very distressed singer saying she's split up with her partner and has everything she owns in the car and can't leave it in the public car park. Thankfully, the landlord understood and let her in. At this stage, I wasn't even sure if she was up for singing, but she insisted on seeing it through. So we finished setting up. Dep singer doesn't like IEM's so we set up a wedge that kept feeding back no matter what I did. really struggled with getting a good in-ear mix. It shouldn't really change by this point, but both singers were using different mics to what we're used to, do gain stages were all over the place. In the end, she said not to worry about the edge and she'll make do with the FOH speakers. Finally finished soundchecking 15mins after we're supposed to start playing - then the drummer says he can't hear his overheads. Getting rather stressed by this stage. Having a digital mixer should make setting up and sound checking a breeze, but we're lacking so much consistency lately with either gear or band members. Finally start playing, Two song in and I notice my E string is massively out of tune. Drummer also says (and he was right) that the bass sounded really 'subby'. Admittedly, I was trying out a new preset I've been using in rehearsals that seemed but, but it sounded really bassy in the room, despite having low cuts on the IR block, mixer bass channel and main mixer outs. I ended up enabling the global eq on my helix and adding another low cut around 85hz! Something definitely weird happening. Felt like we'd settled in after a few songs, until the dep singers wireless mic packed up and we hastily switched her to a wired mic during a song. Kept ploughing through and ended up having an 'okay' night. the heat didn't help matters either. It seemed to sap us all of energy. I was glad to be finished by the end of the night. I felt tired, under the weather and stressed all evening. I had a chat with a couple of my band mates and said I'm really struggling lately. It feels like I'm the one doing most of the work behind the scenes. I've got a lot on my plate with work and family - I have my widowed mother staying with us, over from spain for a few weeks, and I still don't feel like I've properly grieved after losing dad back in February. It's all getting a bit much. Mentally exhausted and overwhelmed - I need a holiday.

Most famously, however he’s played a jazz bass, aria and later in life Yamaha basses.

Oooh how about that rose pink gold metallic shade. Yummy!!

MusicMan have sine some really fun sparkly metallic finishes. I’m very much a natural finish fan for my own instrument but I am a sucker for metallic paint jobs!

So he decides how the bass sounds in each band, rather than the bassists/bands. Not keen on that. Whilst I find gigging that way to be very convenient it’s my choice.