KevB

Only saw him once, mid 80's in a tiny dive of a club with Norman on bass (though I did see DF without Wilko). Not particularly my first choice of music but it was slick and professional and he had charisma. A mate of mine loaned Julian Temple a load of rare DF memoribilia to use for the 'Oil City Confidential' documentary. RIP 'Mr Johnson'.

Personally I wouldn't spend a tenth of that on any bass anymore no matter what but if someone thinks that's what they can get for it then fair enough. In the current economic climate i think it might hang about for a bit. Anyway, here's Jim playing with the band If from 1971

If I 'd been able to make it i would have sneaked down for that. I still got to see them supporting Deep Purple in Birmingham though obviously with a reduced set list.

Yes I think the plan was to start the tour earlier but travel restrictions made it unfeasible.

Marillion last night in Sheffield were pretty good, though I don't feel as 'connected' with the band in the last 20 years or so. Looking forward to Sunday - Uriah Heep 50th anniversary show with Von Hertzen Bros as support, could be a belter.

Bowed out of the trio on Saturday night with a pub gig over 60 miles away, I won't miss that sort of travelling for little money upfront. Fortunately we made an extra £50 in tips on top of the fee so the petrol money was covered. Punters seemed to like us and though a rather sweaty night (plus I had a heavy cold) we got through without major incident. This leaves me with no ongoing music projects which should free up some time to get work done on the house and sell some surplus gear off (anyone looking for some Roland PK-5 pedals?) with a view to jacking in the day job next year and moving to the South West, it'll be an adventure. As most of my posts tend to be on this thread then I will probably have an even lower profile in the coming months. Cheers guys. Post script - turns out it was more than a cold, I've just tested positive for covid despite having 3 vaccinations. Oh well...

The scratch plates on the 4 stringers look OK but the ones on the fivers are a bit of an abomination.

Penultimate gig with the trio on Friday night, nice easy biker club rally over 2 days with camping etc (not that any of us stayed over). We did the Friday then another band headlined Saturday. The monitoring is still ropey (they provide all PA) but FOH sounded fine apparently. It was sweltering on dance floor in front of stage yet some folks were still up and grooving away both sets which was nice. Having gigged so little i was concerned I'd get cramp in fretting hand (it's happened before after a lay off) but sailed through it no problem, got some good feedback from punters. I think the other two will probably carry on with another bass player but gigs have been very sporadic and the other 2 have now gone on to other side projects so that's not going to change.

I was hoping to contribute to this thread in November about Kansas but they've just finally cancelled their 2022 European dates having postponed them twice since initially getting the tickets in 2020. What makes it worse of course is you only get face value refund and the extra add-ons (non negotiable) were particularly steep so no thanks to Gigantic you greedy gits.

Hardly gigged at all in months, hence few posts from me recently as they are mostly in the 'how was your last gig' section. Gone from being persuaded a few years back to join a 3 piece to do bike festivals in the summer along with my already existing band (who werent gigging much either) to being nudged into dropping the main band in favour of the trio which got quite busy then the pandemic hit and we've never really picked it back up. Main singer/gtr had a financial issue and late last year said after next months gigs he'd been advised by his accountant to keep a low profile so couldn't see it carrying on. I then worked out my priorities and decided I'd be jacking it in then as well. Subsequently the PA gear that the singer/gtr sold off has been replaced by new gear. I believe he unexpectedly came into some new money from a bereavement and he's constantly posting on his FB page about the solo gigs he's doing (he's always done this as a sideline but said he was getting very bored of it and preferred the trio). The drummer has now joined a second band as he wasnt happy with the low number of gigs, despite him saying how many gigs he could find for us, we've hardly done any biker stuff apart from 1 venue. It's become totally disfunctional and not remotely the set up I was originally asked to join (I was personally approached, didn't audition for it or was looking for it). In truth my personal circumstances have changed a lot since I joined the band (met a wonderful lady last year and things have got very serious very quickly, we're not kids so time is of the essence) and I really don't have the time for the band just now and won't be looking for a new band once I stick to my original plan and leave at the end of July. I think the other 2 guys will probably bring in a replacement and keep the band going in some form whilst predominantly doing their other stuff. The trio has become a sideshow and I'm not bothered about it anymore, time to move on. I will probably be moving over 200 miles away in the next year or two so no point commiting to any local bands at this point, maybe look around for something once I'm settled elsewhere with my partner.

Think it's still Neil Fairclough on bass?

Fair play to Macca if he's really going to do a 2+hour set at his age.

Not a festival goer but been persuaded to go to Chagstock this year. It looks small and friendly enough to be enjoyable and Kula Shaker are headlining one night, like a lot of their stuff but I don't think I ever got to see them so I can tick them off the list.

Really sad to hear this. I tried learning Greek a few years back (unsuccessfully) and part of the course was we had to do a little presentation so I picked Vangelis. Have all the J&V stuff and some Aphrodites Child too along with the odd solo album. He auditioned for Yes after Wakeman left first time and eventually they picked Pat Moraz instead. Apparently Vangelis spent more time playing drums at the audition than keyboards, bit of a character by sounds of things.

Whitesnake supported by Foreigner and Europe. Going to wave goodbye to dear old David Coverdale tonight as he brings his touring days to an end, it's forty years since I first saw him on stage. Should be a decent night.

Not sure if they would qualify as a 'house band' or not but The Feeling started out playing covers in ski resort hotels I believe.

I won't be watching it as I will be out watching mates play a pub gig. Feel a bit sorry for any of the artists not representing Ukraine as they can kiss goodbye to any notion of winning the thing. However since for years there apparently hasn't been much correlation between quality of songs and who wins as a result of political voting then it's pretty much as you were, except the slanted voting will be more obvious from the off.

I have met Dave (sprocketflup) after a few CB gigs and can verify he is just as nice a bloke in real life as he appears from his posts here. I have no idea about his political affiliations though 😄

Whilst Del Palmer has guested on some special shows he is not the regular bassist in Cloudbusting, one of our own basschatters is though 😉

Von Hertzen Brothers next up for me in a couple of days. The support Ethyrfield sound pretty talented too, should be a good night.

I only originally had a matching TE combo and matching extention 4x10 because they were bought together at a knock down price. I soon realised that humping the 4x10 up and down stairs for gigs wasn't something my back relished so I bought an SWR 2x10 ext cab and that has remained my gigging rig ever since, it's almost become my signature I guess as I've never seen anyone else use exactly the same combination in a pub. It will probably finally get sold off in the next year or two as I will be dramatically downscaling for future plans, including instruments.

When I first saw the title of the thread I thought the BBC had gone very niche and were having night cams on the poor old rocker with Chris Packham pontificating on what he might be up to.

Saturday night. Back at the pub we did last year where you get a very small amount up front from the venue but then they pass round a collection each set to bump up your takings. It's a nice set up (not much space but OK for a trio) with their own PA and monitors which actually work properly and landlady is very helpful with soundcheck (they have to be careful with volume levels). Main drawback is it is a 60+ mile trip each way and with petrol prices being what they are it is borderline as a financially feasible venue now. Went down well though, landlady was happy and had good feedback from punters who upped the total take for the night to close to what we would normally get anyway especially the gigs via an agent taking 15%. They want us back later in year anyway so can't have been too bad. I got cramp in my fretting hand halfway through final encore, had to improvise using pinkie only but don't think it was too obvious.

Saturday night should have been good but marred by the venue themselves. We were told we were to use their PA but 'needed to be there at 6 to set up' which slightly set alarm bells off. The PA itself wasn't great and I don't think the venue know how to operate it properly. The monitoring was shocking to the point all I got was a spluttering distorted mess when we set off playing for real. The line level check seemed OK but at gigging volume it just gave up. I suspect they haven't got the monitors properly linked to the necessary auxillary channel from the desk. It threw everyone out so it was one mistake after another, even the gtr/vox who is very exprerience was flustered. To cap it all I asked when they wanted us to finish and they said the bar closed at 12 so I suggested, because the first set was so ropey we would do an hour instead of 45 min second set and play 10:30 until 11:30. Venue organiser agrees to this. We get to 11:20ish and organiser rushes to stage saying 'this has to be final song'. Turns out their performing licence runs out at 11pm and they were immediately getting complaints from local residents soon after, they didn't even know the rules they were supposed to be running under. We weren't even that loud from some footage sent to our facebook page later but it was impossible to tell as you got nothing back from the FOH PA (long thin room) and the stage sound was beyond sh!te. We've had good gigs there before but something isn't right with their set up now and it leaves me not looking forward to when we are supposed to be going back in the summer. Think I will be taking my own monitor as a minimum. The old stripey strides got another airing at least.

Pub gig on Sat night, via an agent. Actually as it turned out via about 3 agencies playing pass the parcel. You never know quite what you're going to get. On the plus side they had cleared the tables away in advance from an area which was then strictly cordoned off as 'band only'. Wish a few more places were as obliging as this. On the down side not really 'our' kind of crowd though we can tweak the set on the fly to put a few more 'low common denominator' songs in which are still reasonably fun to play. We had a few dancing by set 2 so I guess all in all could have been much worse. A couple of altercations between the house security and a few lary punters but nothing requiring police intervention. Decent work out after NYE and a more high profile bike club gig next Sat.