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Me trying to be Lemmy!!! Charity Night Halloween great night

Until your singer quits the band midway through a song, that song being about halfway through your first ever headlining set, walks straight through the crowd and out of the venue without even stopping to pick up his jacket, to the sound of one scallywag singing "One of these kids is doing his own thing!", while the guitarist (who was so stoned he came up to you before the gig to say he couldn't feel his hands and was slumped over throughout his "performance" on a bar stool on stage, because it turned out he couldn't really feel his legs either) continues to fumble his way through something loosely resembling your music because he hasn't noticed the singer is not only not singing, but isn't even in the venue any more, you haven't really had a bad gig. There's a worse one out there waiting for you. These will make you appreciate the good ones more, so chin up. 😃

You lying sod You knew damn well that was going to fit before you switched the router on Looking very good

You got through it in one piece. Put it down to experience. Learn the lessons and move on.

Have I finally found it? Time will tell but my goodness this will take some beating.

'Raking The Lawn' by Judas Priest

The next bit is even more scary. Taking off the neck jig, I now suspend the body over the cellar floor using only the jaws of the workmate protected by some bits of cork!!!!!! And then rout it!!!!!!!!! And to my great relief and surprise, it fits... ...and more surprising, it even fits in the right place (14th fret): Happy chappy...until, of course, I get to the next scary bit....

Another great experience of service from Chris for me: I bought a used SH receiver / transmitter from a fellow BC'er a little while back as a back up unit and, having quickly checked it worked when I bought it, it had since been sitting in my drawer as the 'spare'. Decided very recently to set up on my home pedal board but when I A/B'd with my existing SH unit I found it to be significantly noisier. Got in touch with Chris - really responsive and helpful. He subsequently took in the unit, diagnosed the issue and fixed it (and wouldn't have charged me a penny for P&P and his time and materials if I had not pressed him and even then was ridiculously modest with his repair pricing). Cheers Chris!

Chronic anxiety and depression means you never feel confident or in control. People have said to me in the past that it’s about being prepared, but it doesn’t matter how prepared I am, the anxiety kicks in anyway. If it was that easy I’d just chuck my meds in the bin, scrap the counselling and samba my way through life, instead of spending most days wishing I was dead.😉

Careful now, look how it can end up! This isn't everything...

No, that's actually Ricky!

Good timing for that observation, if y’all head on over to the recording section , the August composition challenge has just started. Now don’t be shy , you only have to listen to a few of mine to realise it is the taking part that counts, but it really is a great way open the creative musical muscles everyone’s welcome

Is this your sheepdog? Nice hat!

Played at the Rebellion Festival in Blackpool. Our biggest audience to date, not sure how many but the room holds 2500ish and there wasn’t much free space. Played well, sold a load of our new album which we released today, got loads of good comments/feedback. Think the grins say it all.

All done, went rather well hence the silly grins

We discussed ways we could destroy these when we were asked to sell them. F*ckawful nightmares they were. and the ones we did sell, broke. like the Robots, Dusk tigers and DarkFire’s which led to this. All shite. This video does them no favours really. Shame. Like a nice Gibson - it’s like enjoying U2, you feel a bit grubby because you know Bono is a bit of a tit.

I took a detour on my home tonight and dropped in on the Robin. They had another hunt for the cover, and this time, possibly helped by my description, they found it. So all's well that ends well, sort of.

Wasting money on guitars ? I'm sorry, I understand each word, but when you put them together like that...you've lost me.

For about the last six months the new band have been embarking on recording sessions; it's been as weird and experimental as previously...four or five hours a week at times, I'd go in and just record bits, 4 bars of something, another 4 in a different time signature and repeat. Wholly at the behest of the producer/guitarist, no idea what the end product will sound like, I'd wait for him to produce something. A few days later he'd circulate MP3s. So here we are. Jonestown. Link below. I don't actually know who I'm channelling; there's some Geddy in there, for sure. A bit of Stuart Hill. A bit of Le Tigre, NIN. Vocals have been an issue as the singer is flying globally with the new job, so difficult to tie him down. Ahead of whatever qualifies as a release we've circulated this track to radio, BBC Introducing and various music press people. Our singer got this back from a music journalist he sent it to: So anyway, this is where we start:

So I liked the look of these when they first came out and a fellow bassist in my locality speaks very highly of his, and when this one popped up cheap on eBay and local to me I thought why not. Having also recently divested myself of a bass there was space in the stable (which Mrs JPJ would have only filled with household appliances or fitness aids never to see the light of day again) so a cheeky ‘will you accept....’ message later secured this bass for the same money the outgoing bass generated. The bass came without strings (risky I know) but the guy had solid feedback and I collected the bass from his home so I thought it was a risk worth taking. Whacked on a set of strings I had in the house and fired her up. Only had a ten minute play through headphones but it sounded like a Thunderbird to me with plenty of grunt and growl. I’ll add more here once I’ve spent a bit more time with it but first impressions are extremely positive😎

My fault. The reason for this topic resurrection is just too daft for words... You had to be there.

Thd Baree gig last night was great. We played from 6:30-9:30,very appreciative crowd. We put on a good show Got the money Got home safely Blue

They wanted a change from the breathless whispy girl singing some famous hit much slower that they used for every advert in 2018.

'Bill & Ben' theme tune

Thanks for the warm welcome chaps. Off to play in the wonderful realms of Accrington tonight! Have a good weekend folks x

There's a 'technique' section & a 'recording' section?!? Who knew! I shall head there immediately & buy me some of this mysterious 'technique'

... and tyres... 😇 *strolls off, whistling innocently *

Next is one of the scary bits - routing the tenon on the neck and the corresponding mortice on the body. First, I needed to work out the neck angle. Clearly, there are very limited options for adjusting heights on acoustics, so this has to be pretty close before the final hand fettling. In broad terms, the angle is going to be the line from the body joint to the top of the bridge. The saddle will then lift the strings 2-3mm to give the requisite action height. I use an engineers protractor: My routing jig is a rough variation of the OBrien fancy rig, using an old Workmate and templates from G&W. The neck is positioned with some studs that fit in the trussrod slot on a hinged (very rough) plywood board: This board is held by the hinges on the workmate, and angled using a threaded bar/knob/ insert arrangement: The a shorty flush bearing bit, and I get this: The next bit is even more scary...

Apparently a singed person is available for gigging. I wonder if they're planning on covering Hot Stuff?

Apparently so. If you scroll back it seems 90% of the pics are the same 3 people. 😄

Just get one. The Metro's are as good as the NYC's, just a bit heavier, because they aren't chambered. You won't play a better sounding bass.

I covered the preparation bit above, so I won’t repeat that bit. In my case, a few reasons. One, because on the odd occasion where I do enjoy it, it just about makes up for the rest. Two, because I’m masochistic enough to want to put my songs out there, although why, I’m not sure. Three, and probably most importantly, gigs fund everything else the band does, particularly recording. If we didn’t earn money from gigs we’d be struggling to afford to record and put out music, which is my main aim. So it’s kind of a necessary evil. Plus of course, nerves or no, it’s part of the creative process in many ways. Also, as I suggested before, stopping doing it would probably fold the band, and then what I would be left with would be a miserable - but likely pretty short😉 - life doing a job I hate 8 hrs a day and hating myself for the rest. Unfortunately, for some of us, in order to keep moving forward in life we sometimes have to do things that we find difficult, otherwise we have no life at all.

Aha but Lemmy's mole is on his left cheek and you can't see it in this pic. He was jamming in a local boozer with someone else's bass that day

Indeed, but like that all-too-believable chariot race in Ben Hur there's a minor detail that makes it not quite right. In Ben Hur's case it was the alleged sports car in the background - though this turned out to be a myth. And the obvious not-myth thing in the pic is: Lemmy isn't normally pictured with a fan-fret 5 string slung above the waist! This is obviously Not-Lemmy - his evil mole-less jazz-funk twin...

He's readying himself to drive that tractor over a neat row of Firebird X's.

It was always so.This is why an old gibson is generally good. The good ones got looked after, the bad ones got trashed, so the old ones left were the ones worth keeping. From my POV, the way I would get an instrument is if I wanted an Ibanez, I would go online and order one, it would turn up and be fine. If I wanted a gibson, I would go to a shop with a large supply of them and try them all, to see which one was good, and get that one. In certain years they were almost all good (and in certain years they were almost all bad).

I'll go and see if it's impervious to wee... 😃 edit: I best wait until the street light goes out at 12... edit: Dammit, splashed straight back on me and my shoes... bloody Batmobiles. 😬

Basically we're getting back to the model which pertained before the 1960's. Pubs didn't have bands. If they had any music at all, it was a local amateur piano player who knocked out requests and singalong favourites and did it for beer. From the mid-19th century to the mid 1950's there was no commercial 'market' for amateur bands. Professional musicians played in the pit or onstage while amateurs formed choirs or colliery bands or scraped around the edge of the pro-scene. Read: Spike Milligan. Prior to this, we're back in the 19th century and looking at the lost tradition of village bands where a bunch of old boys turn out for weddings, harvest dances and other communal events. Gear? A fiddle, a squeeze-box and (insert cheap instrument here). They'd play for beer until they fell down drunk and everyone went home or ended up shagging someone in a haystack. Further reading: Thomas Hardy. Slightly different in the towns where it was more organised, the middle classes wanted light classics or something to gavotte to. The musicians were a bit more accomplished but still got paid a pittance. Read: Jane Austen. Going back even further, we're basically talking about peasants tootling away on flutes or bagpipes and banging a drum while their in-bred relatives clod-hop around. View: Breughel Local gig circa 1568 So: amateur or semi-pro bands making decent money out of playing loud music at people in pubs is a lost world. Time to re-embed ourselves in our local communities and chop out stuff that punters want to hear - and more importantly - in which they wish to participate, i.e., dancing, singing along. Upside? You might end up getting mullered for free and shagging someone in a haystack. That's got to be worth more than £30.00

At the moment I suspect I have more than 10. But I can't count them, that would be rude, plus if I count them then it becomes real and I would have to accept I had too many.

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One advantage of being a lefty - only a lefty can borrow my bass, and as we all know, we leftys are sensible, pleasant, organised people who are a joy to help... 😆

serious question. Are you wearing ear defenders? If not you should be. 500W into two 12's you'll be pushing out over 120dB where you stand and the rest of the band may be adding another 6dB. Your average sound exposure will be well over the 100dB level. Over half an hour exposed to those sound levels you will be permanently damaging your hearing and it will get worse each time you play. It seems slow at first but the hearing loss will become noticeable and then seem to accelerate. I speak from experience and wish I had used ear defenders earlier. Your guitarists and drummer will all have problems too. Maybe it has already happened and that's why they won't turn down. Maybe it's already why you can't hear yourself playing in the band. On a practical level you could try re-eq'ing if that's a word. You say it sounds nice at practice levels. Do you reset your eq when you play with the band? Most of your amp power is used up by the deep bass, and that can't be heard over the rest o the band. If you reduce the deep bass a little and boost the upper bass and low mids you'll sound bassier in the mix and it'll give your amp more headroom. If you want to be heard over the band then you need more mids generally. These are the frequencies our ears pick up best so if the guitars have all the mids and you have none they are going to drown you out. Bass eq'd for live work sounds awful played at practice levels but it's what it sounds like as a band that matters. Final point, are you actually not loud enough or just struggling to hear yourself? Try getting a long lead and go out into the audience area or record yourselves and have a listen. It's natural in a band to want to be louder than everyone else so you can hear what you are playing. You have a volume war. Nobody wins at war.

I thought that was Lemmy!

Mark K is probably the most capable in the UK in terms of getting people to buy gear. If Status need a cash injection, they release a new take on a King Bass or whatever bass he happens to be using at the time. There will be plenty of middle class bankers, doctors, solicitors queuing up to drop the cash. Hell, that picture above has probably got more than a fair few Level 42 fans suddenly considering Mark Bass. In reality, whatever Mark K is using is irrelevant. The sound out front is processed by the desk and what he is hearing will be coming from wedges - or for those on inears, processed signal in the desk from a DI. The tone of a bass amp is becoming less and less relevant in these kind of scenarios. It’s probably why there’s a load of guys scratching their heads trying to figure out why they can’t cop the same tone down the Dog and Duck... it’s the lack of Digicos, Midas, Allen and Heaths etc which is holding their tone quest back!