bassbiscuits

Motorhead, De Montfort Hall, sometime mid-2000s. I wore earplugs but by the time they got to Ace of Spades, I wanted to hear it in full effect. I took the earplugs out but lasted about 20 seconds. Savagely loud. Various death metal bands in the cellar venue of the old Coach House pub in Swansea throughout the early 1990s. It was the days of white puffy trainers, black drainpipe jeans and Marshall stacks, which is perfect for gigging in a tiny, low roofed cellar bar with bare stone walls.

It’ll be having a party I assume?

I was talking to one of the nursery teachers who knew my youngest lad last year. She was born in 1998. I’ve got t-shirts older than that. EDIT - in fact my dressing gown is four years older than her. WTF?

I read a post somewhere (maybe on here?) that if Back to the Future was made now, the year Michael J Fox would be going back to would be 1991, and he’d be playing Teen Spirit at the high school ball. I started playing bass in 1986 - 35 years ago this year. That means someone starting playing now (a friend of mine’s daughter being an example) would view me as I would have viewed someone in 1986 who’d been playing since 1951. Terrifying!

@LeftyJ true to an extent, but a better cut and fitted nut will make the whole thing play better than a cheaply made, bad one.

I got this before Christmas on this very forum - not my first ever five string, but the first one I’ve kept for more than a few weeks. But it's taken a little bit of a journey to get it sounding and feeling right for me.... So first up it needed a set up/fret dress etc - the original nut slots seemed to be cut quite high, and then restrung with some D'Daddario nickel roundwounds. Result was ok, but still not really doing it for me, so swapped to some D'Addario Chromes - much more my sort of thing. Picked up a secondhand Fatfinger headstock clamp thing, to add a bit more mass and help that super low end. Kind of worked, but still just so-so. But then the plastic nut broke - back to the repairman who replaced it with a bone nut. The result was night and day compared to the original nut - bass now feels more resonant, and the notes tighter, punchier and more focused, especially on the low B string. It feels like the plastic nut was the weak point on this particular one, and changing it for a better quality, better fitting one made all the difference and hugely improved it (maybe stating the obvious, but I've never had a nut replaced to compare before v after.) So after a few teething problems, the bass now sings. I love the overall feel in terms of string spacing, its relatively light weight, scale length etc, so I'm glad i've been able to make it work to my tastes. Haven’t bothered re attaching the Fatfinger so far either as it sounds so full and even now without it. Result I’d say.

Only Francis Dunnery’s (It Bites and solo artist) plectrum from a house gig of his a few years back. It’s not even a personalised one tho - it’s just a Beatles Abbey Road one. I keep it in one my tins of knick knacks and hope it will bestow songwriting magic upon me whenever I’m struggling with ideas. I’ve yet to test that theory tho.

Maybe just get a bigger car and travel with a normal sized bass

That’s ghastly

Ha ha. Nicely done. 👍

I had the, um, joy of seeing a late-era Amy Winehouse at the V Festival in 2009 I think it was. I thought she was dreadful. Also the same festival where I managed to spend the whole of Alanis Morisette’s set queuing for a poo. Good times eh.

Yikes - is that what it equates to now with import tax or something? 20% more than before? Jeez.

@Maude I used to play Another Brick in the Wall with an old band. When the drum intro starts (as I’m hastily dropping my E to D onstage) I was frequently very tempted to start playing Staying Alive instead. It would have fitted perfectly and done everyone’s heads in.

Did anyone else catch the Martin and Gary Kemp’s spoof documentary called Its All True on telly this week? It was quality. Totally taking the p..s out of themselves as a pair of prissy, tetchy showbiz types. Even a cameo role from Guy Pratt in there as a bloke attending a film script read through. Well worth a watch and good on them for totally laughing at themselves. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p087qvkf

As an aside, has anyone else noticed how Sex On Fire and Dakota are essentially the same song to play on bass? Not exactly the same, but close enough that if you did a mid-gig Quantum Leap from one to the other you’d probably be fine...

That’s good going. I reckon he’d still sound better with that low E flat though.. 🙂

I play both the songs the OP mentions in one of my bands. I just manually drop the low E down to D for both and Bob’s yer uncle. It’s easy to do accurately after a bit of practice and you can usually feel thru the neck even if you can’t hear it properly. Or just use a tuner obvs. The same band also plays a number of songs which are traditionally tuned down a half step, so we just pick the nearest ‘regular’ note (ie Boys Are Back In Town in A for example). For the one song I cant get around - Michael Jackson’s “Rock With You,” which relies on a low E flat, I have my spare bass tuned down a half step and just grab it for that song. Saying all of that, I have recently bought a five string with the aim of just taking that to gigs. However I prefer my four strings anyway so will probably still end up taking both.

The jabbing / honkytonk piano middle section of Thunderclap Newman’s “Something in the Air” bears no relation to the song either side of it. No idea why it’s there. Strangely, the intro to Phil Collins’ “Something Happened on the Way to Heaven” also bears no relation to the song, but works really well when it reappears halfway thru the song as well. It’s the best bit if you ask me....

This does look fantastic. I’ve seen quite a few pics of this bass now over the last couple of weeks and it’s very cool indeed.

Bass, (mostly acoustic) guitar, harmonica and singing (if you class that as an instrument). Have got by on cajon for some gigs but it’s not exactly rocket science. But I’ll stick with four based on things I do currently, regularly and to a gig worthy level.

The Animals - We gotta get out of this place. Tough, you can’t until the Government says so.

The Boxtops - My baby she wrote me a letter. Really? How quaint of her. Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Texas Flood. Surely nowadays it wouldn’t matter much if all the telephone lines were down? As long as the WiFi was doing ok. ....and of course being Back In The USSR is highly unlikely.

That neck will need adjusting tho.