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Road To Nowhere - Talking Heads

Dark end of the street - James Carr

I always wondered if it was a dig as it was the first single post guigsy…

He was great, and loving every moment!

Indeed - that sounds like the sort of bollocks that Chat GPT regularly comes out with, just enough to seem reasonable but not enough to actually make sense.

Cool weekend of gigs. Friday night playing bass with Superbad at the Sapcote Social Club in Leicestershire. Really good turnout, lots of dancing and good sound. Saturday night playing bass with my own band (the Andy Wales Band) at Bar Dos Hermanos in Leicester. We were all knackered and it was a bit ragged and “seat of pants” at times but still plenty of good bits, a decent crowd and some righteous noises were made by all. Gear for both gigs was a Yamaha BB604 and little Markbass traveller rig. Then Sunday, helping our local village guitar teacher with his twice yearly gig for his students (including my eldest lad who’s just discovered Nirvana). It’s quite inspiring to see the youngsters grow as musicians over the few years we’ve been involved. The biblical rain from the morning thankfully stayed away all afternoon and it was a lovely outdoor shindig in his back garden, with me providing the PA and bass gear, being a general helper and being roped in on bass for one song. Gig below from Saturday night and Sunday afternoon’s gigs.

Rudy Sarzo put a shift in like, he was up there for ages.

For a set & forget compressor the Keeley Bassist is a good option. No bells & whistles, just does what you’re after very easily. Drive - well to add in a tad of drive I like the Ampeg Scrambler, as it has a blend you don’t lose low end and it just adds that bit extra to the sound. I have this on my Ampeg SCRDI and use it to just remove the clean sharp edges of the sound.

You're after "natural sounding valve style grind" but play an Ampeg V4 - am I missing something? Surely that and the BDDI has you covered?

Had an absolutely banging gig today down in Poole at Country In The Park with Katy Hurt. We opened proceedings and had an absolute blast. Interesting moments..: I didn’t read the set list so was almost caught out by the first song My (Dunlop) strap lock popped out during the first song so I ended up having to improvise til I could sort myself out (embarrassing photo below) Cris, playing lap steel/acoustic guitar/mandolin kept stepping on my lead so I couldn’t wander the stage as freely as I’d been trying to do. Ironically I drove home via @franzbassist to pick up his Rockboard Tree 3.0 so I can have a bigger board to fit my wireless receiver… needed more forward planning on my part! But on the whole, an absolute blast of a gig. Very hot, very fun, and I hope we made some new friends. Shoes were the lo top Soul Cals again. Me pretending to play djent when the strap popped out: The whole band just having fun:

Just a few bassists from the day...

That's 200 transcriptions since I re-started everything on January 11th. Next big target, the 1000 🤪

Exactly... Doesn't make sense to me.

An old favourite of mine, this is the bass part to the Sting tune 'They Dance Alone' from the 1987 album, 'Nothing Like The Sun'. It was Sting himself who played the double bass on this tune (Tracy Wormworth was the bass player on the tour). Pretty easy read until it gets to the last section but that is easy enough to play as it is standard samba groove. https://bilbosbassbites.co.uk/they-dance-alone-gueco-solo-sting/

Indeed. I love my Ashdown. I just feel something spiritual happens when I play through the Ampeg. It's all personal taste at the end of the day.

Same, I liked that one, though very interesting that the Oasis song with the best bass is one with Noel playing, maybe he couldn’t stand anything he’d played not being prominent in the mix?

That’s a banging rig @Salt on your Bass?

Yeah Alan put it in just in case I change my mind. Honestly can’t see that happening yet but better to have it ready to go than butcher it later

I was there, had a great day! Geezer was amazing, he can still play as fast as he ever could. Ozzy was clearly struggling to talk and move, but absolutely nothing wrong with his will to entertain and belt out the lyrics. Some of the choices weren't great (I could have skipped Sammy Hagar) but overall it was a perfect tribute to Sabbath and Ozzy. Shame Villa Park didn't plan to feed 40,000 people past 4pm and they were struggling with beer towards the end of the day too.

Definitely bringing the Brawley 5 and 4 string basses. Rarely seen in the UK, except at Bass Bashes. Will bring the Roland V-bass system fitted on an HB MusicMan-like, if I still have it. This is huge fun and does a pretty good impersonation of many other basses in a live mix. It's going up for sale next week though.

Frankly, I'd redo the wiring from scratch rather than trying to find the specific problem. The soldering looks pretty untrustworthy in general. You'll probably save time by redoing it completely (it doesn't even take that long), and then you'll know it was wired carefully. I'd reuse the pots, unless you have suitable 'known-good' at hand, they can and do fail, but not as often as what bad soldering does.