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Well done, if you can do one gig, the next will be easier.

No red flags to me. Maybe he's right about the lack of soul funk groove players in Devon. What in particular is making you feel wary?

It's not wrong, it's different. Unless you are trying to be a Black Crows Tribute, and even then I'm not sure that it matters much. If the whole band play it "Perfectly" as per the CD then you might as well stick the CD on.

Glad you got into hospital, that can turn nasty if not caught quickly. Now get well!

I've been very happy with using a Turbosound ip300 powered PA speaker instead of a bass amp for double bass - I go through a mute pedal and a valve preamp and it sounds great to my ear. Bigger gigs seem to work fine just DI into the PA.

Yes, this is how i feel, and quite often i dont reach perfection but don’t really worry about it. I think iconic bits should be played, but it will depend on the song i guess. Id never even try any Jaco etc stuff, but I’ll try and learn the whole song if i can, not just a couple of bits and make the rest up because the audience wont notice etc. As a bass player i can normally get very close to the tone on a recording, so just because the singer might not sound the same doesn't mean i don’t need to worry. If you can do it, whats the issue with doing it, especially if you are getting paid to do it. I learnt loads of songs quickly back in the day, and over the years ive gone back and fixed them. When i find im playing something wrong ill try and fix it, not just go ‘meh, the audience are still dancing so how cares’ etc. For me its about self pride. There is no reason on earth not to try your best at anything you do. Worst case ive witnessed is a band i auditioning on keys last year. They were doing Crazy Little thing call love. The bass player played just repeating root notes for each chord, instead of the walking bass line. When i mentioned it (as diplomatically as i could), it turned out they have been doing it this way for about a year, at gigs. No one had ever complained or commented at gigs, although they realised it wasnt right. The bass player ‘just didnt have time to work it out’ I walked away from that one.

Funny old thing, just a week after tentative return to gigging post-stroke with my old band (just for a short sax set at a local mini-festival) I got an urgent call from them to play a private party not far away for a full gig - their replacement bassist couldn't make it... I spent an hour the day before playing along with an Audacity recording I'd made of the band, sort-of got my fingers and brain working together again, so it was off to the gig yesterday evening, fingers crossed! It actually all worked out OK, a few dodgy moments that didn't seem to be noticed in the new numbers introduced by the band since my hospitalisation, but I managed to stay on point and upright for two one-hour sets (thank you, Red Bull!) and got nicely paid, so in all a good way to ease back into gigging, with the promise of some more to come. Must say though, I was cream-crackered today...

Sort of like the Typhoid Mary of the bass world. 🙂

A skilled luthier can fill the holes in the back and you should be able to colour match the finish pretty well. Barring any major horrors under the scratch plate it’s probably all good. Reckon it could be a cracker. If not, you’d make it back selling the parts.

I'd like to think so mate

I bought a 2000 Warwick Thumb in 2006, surprisingly cheaply, and had the baseball-bat neck reprofiled to the same dimensions as my JD Thumb and defretted. Some years later, I had the unfretboard replaced with a slab of ebony by Jon Shuker. This is it with the initial defret:

Our regular pub / club gigs are cash too. The blues trio only do pubs where this is the case, although AFAIK there aren’t that many places around here that insist on invoices / delayed payment anyway. Private functions / weddings etc for our duo are usually paid via bank transfer, BEFORE the gig!

Glad you like it Tony, it did play really rather well, Precision necks work very well on a Jazz body, and John Shuker certainly knows how to build a Precision neck 👍

This. If he's local, it's only a couple of hours out of your life. There could be some pink, potentially red, flags. The main one for me is that there are plenty of good soul/funk bass players about, but they usually know their worth and expect to be paid. The word "collective" does smack of no money, hippies, etc, but there's only one way to find out and it's easy enough to make your excuses and leave if he turns out to be another Walter Mitty.

It was actually listed in this book about an adult tackling a challenging classical Chopin piece. https://www.awesomebooks.com/book/9780099554745/play-it-again/used?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=22269009095&gbraid=0AAAAADocATCnalkwXsqdFAmiW5lnRd5EE&gclid=CjwKCAjw6ZTCBhBOEiwAqfwJd0iXgKCff0acdbiLGdATRlVoT1fIrbofB-tFEuikFJ1F2nwXjD__ExoCbWYQAvD_BwE I’ve finished the book (a signed hardback copy) and would happily send it to anyone who wants it. There’s some really interesting stuff in there (as well as some eye rolling at just how cultured the author is). Worth a read.

A brace of Warwick Thumbs:

Wow that’s fantastic. Thanks for sharing 👍