timmyo

Ta - yes I'd heard they were well thought of and not that common. I may do that BassTractor - it seems slow getting the hang of Good Times lol

Ooh it's lovely (not that I am well placed to judge - returning to bass as a previously failed beginner It looks great, feels nice, but doesn't seem to know many songs

As a previously-mostly-guitarist I recently had a bif of an epiphany* and needed to buy a Bass, and cutting a short story even shorter shelled out for a used SUB Stingray online. It will arrive in a few days - I bought it based on a couple of pictures and a vague memory of the USA Subs being well thought of (and a quick confirmation of that memory with a bass-playing friend) , so now I'm filling my time waiting by imagining how bally wonderful it is going to be and thought I should track down the thoughts of those more experienced. Sooo, anyone here got or had one and care to pass comment? ta Tim * - I've been playing guitar less and less, and listening to basslines more and more, and have always been a rhythm junkie (I'm as likely to be caught listening to 'Everybody Dance' on a loop for the bass, or a Stanton Moore album for the groove as anything else)

I just wanted to say thanks for the info in this thread, and for the Blog posts - damn good stuff :-)

[quote name='SteveK' post='1285116' date='Jun 28 2011, 11:38 AM']Oh dear, I do seem to have ruffled your feathers! [/quote] I'll concede being a bit of a dick over this - I appear to be in a less than entirely positive mood this week Tim

[quote name='SteveK' post='1283841' date='Jun 27 2011, 10:54 AM'] Wasn't aware that I had made "a very bold statement"[/quote] The one about dead children? Yeah, silly me. [quote name='SteveK' post='1283841' date='Jun 27 2011, 10:54 AM'][i]classic passive-aggressive behaviour[/i]?? [/quote] If you can't see it, again in those posts, then yep, that's funny.

[quote name='SteveK' post='1283450' date='Jun 26 2011, 10:34 PM']Yeah, you've got a point. Not knowing a young lady called Angie is really quite similar to never having experienced the appalling, brutal treatment of African Americans. Kinda feels to me like saying to someone who has lost a baby in the most awful circumstances, "I know how you feel". Fact is, most of us don't have a clue. Anyway, I didn't want to make a big deal of it. As I said in post #22 it is only my view, and having discussed this subject with many musicians over the years, I am fully aware that I'm in the minority. [/quote] Making a very bold statement then drawing back with 'I don't want to make a big deal' is classic passive-aggressive behaviour - do you want to discuss it or not? For the record, that doesn't kinda feel anything like similar. I just find the whole "white men can't sing the blues" argument to be a silly one.

[quote name='skankdelvar' post='1279811' date='Jun 23 2011, 04:53 PM']You touch upon an area which has energised me for some time. IMO there's nothing more perfectly buttock-clenching than watching a plump white-collar middle-aged Englishman singing about 'his' experiences on a chain-gang in 1930's Alabama. It's just [i]silly[/i]. Parchman Farm. Don't go there. Not sure that it's [i]wrong[/i], though. If someone wants to cover a song they like and with whose sentiments they sympathise, then it's between them and their audience. But I think they're missing the point about da Blooz, which is that it was - originally - mostly about personal or contemporary 'issues'. Problem is, people deliver the old songs without really understanding what they mean. The words are just sounds that they're trying to reproduce. For me, performance is about engaging minds as well as feet. So blues without meaning - and I don't mean this unkindly - is lacking in foundation. If one wishes to more fruitfully engage with the blues, it might be more rewarding to update and more precisely localise the message. This entails re-writes or originals, which flies in the face of certain audiences' expectations. It's not easy. Equally - given that much of the blues canon was informed by then-prevailing social and political circumstances, it's difficult [i]not[/i] to step on someone's long-dead toes. Even though the motivating social deprivation is entirely unarticulated, one might argue that "Saturday Night Fish Fry" or "House Rent Boogie" or "Born under a bad sign" should be equally off-limits. At which point the pool of available covers would shrink by an order of magnitude such as to clog setlists with even more renditions of the 'same old songs'. Back to the drawing board.[/quote] I'm going to register a big fat "disagree" with this Similarly unless I really have been shook all night long, is ACDC off limits? What if I don't know anyone called Angie? Stones denied? Piffle. Enjoy the music. If you can feel the groove, and plant that in your audience, get on with it. If you can identify, with any aspect of a song, even in a fairly oblique sense, and it helps you put that song across even better, then that's fantastic. But nothing is off limits on the grounds of 'credibility'.

Recently bought some PA gear from Martin - nice easy transaction and the gear was in top condition, he even threw in some cables that hadn't been advertised as part of the deal. Thanks Martin, Tim