KingBollock

This seems such a shame, but I understand some of the cruel treacheries of the human mind. Is the lead up to the event the only thing making you want to quit? If you have made your mind up, then I apologise for this next bit, because I can’t know your precise problem and so throwing different, possible solutions at you may not be welcome. Have you considered counselling/therapy/hypnosis? I don’t imagine you’d be able to get it on the nhs, and I don’t know your financial situation. I have no idea how much such an option would likely cost. I think someone has already suggested virtual recording. Do you play any other instruments? Could writing music be an option? Do you have to be in a gigging band to play? I, personally, would be perfectly happy just to write music and rehearse it once a week with a band, with never having gigging as a goal. Just to play with other people would be enough. Recording would be cool, too. One of my biggest regrets is having to walk away from a whole circle of musicians and never being able to find my way into local music scenes since. I miss playing with other people so much, and I have only ever played a handful of gigs. But, the most important question is: Will, you be sticking around BassChat? I hope so.

Find some musician friends that have nothing to do with your current band. Get them to form a folk band. Get them to ask her to join as lead singer, on the condition that she leaves the current band. Get your current band a new backing singer. Dissolve folk band (unless it actually works out…).

Probably Neperia. Quite a recent discovery for me. Sort of like a cross between early Nightwish and early Opeth.

Only one of my basses is fussy about string gauge, my BC Rich Warlock only likes 40 - 100s. Which is a bit inconvenient, as they can be difficult to get in the brands that I like (it currently has D’Addario NYXLs on it because I couldn’t get Elixir Nanowebs), but it makes such a difference that it is worth persevering. I have tried alsorts of other strings, brands and gauges, with proper setups, and it just don’t like it. I’ve also got a Dean Cadillac guitar that only likes 10s, but it’s not a bass so blah!

Ah, now if it comes to (electric) drums… Since April I have bought an Alesis Nitro kit, two thrones, four extra cymbals and a new snare. The parts to make a junction box (so that I could plug extra stuff into the module). Two (yes, two) whole racks (the Nitro rack is non-standard and rather crap). And a 9 pad thingyummie that I can also plug cymbals and extra pads into. Along with several pairs of sticks (to find out what would work for me as I am new to drumming (unless you count my bongoes and bodhran)). Some of it was secondhand and some of it returns. None of it particularly expensive (the non-Alesis stuff is Millennium from Thomman), but it does add up. I am really enjoying it and play every day (I started mostly to help with fitness and joint problems), but there has been a couple of things here on BassChat that I might have bought otherwise. A lovely Cort fretless bass and my dream amp, a Laney Nexus.

I was going to mention my Epiphone Thunderbird here, but then I remembered that it came a couple of days before the year started. So the only things bass related that I have bought are new machine heads and knobs for said bass. Oh and some black acrylic sheet to make new scratchplate and a truss rod cover for it. Many of my other hobbies have been getting most of my attention, I haven’t even played bass since April (when I, coincidentally… bought and electric drumkit). I haven’t play with other people for over twenty years, and I have kept up playing regularly all that time. But more recently there has been interest by musicians and things started looking up. But things are going so slow that it’s drained my inclination to play.

In 1987, 12 year old me wanted nothing more in all the world than a Tamiya Lunchbox radio controlled monster truck. My dad, however, had other ideas… He was a mug for get rich quick schemes (some of which are illegal now), and he decided he could get rich managing a band made up of my brothers and me… For some reason he decided that I would play the drums. I wasn’t going to let him get it all his own way though, and being a huge Motörhead and Iron Maiden fan, bass felt more “me”. Besides, I knew some guitarists and drummers, but didn’t know a single bass player. So I figured that I would always be in demand (which I was, until things went tits up about five years later…). I suggested my playing bass to my dad and he went for it, having not even considered bass. One of my brothers was a natural on guitar, he kept going for a few years but, in the end, I was the only one of the four of us that kept it up. And I was the only one that ever played in bands. I finally got my Lunchbox a couple of years ago.

I never stopped listening to Skunk Anansie, but I only ever played the first three albums. I think that’s when they took a break, and I just didn’t catch up when they got back together. Then, last year, I came across An Acoustic Skunk Anansie - Live In London on YouTube. There were a few songs that I had never heard before, so I ended up getting all the albums I had missed. Though I have to confess that my favourite album of theirs is now the recording that came with the Acoustic dvd. It has most of the best songs, and they’re done brilliantly.

Quite enjoyed this. It’s got a bit of a Strokes/Avenged Sevenfold feel to it.

Cool, another excuse to post these photos of Angelbane! I have some cool stickers waiting for the right bass or guitar to come along. But I don’t like the idea of wasting a cool sticker on a naff bass, or covering a cool bass with any stickers at all, so they’ll probably be waiting for a good, long while. With the exception of Angelbane up there, of course, but those stickers were designed specifically for that bass.

I know it’s not really the same thing and I have no idea how you might even implement such an idea with a band, but… When I worked for a mobile disco in the early 90s, there were often fights (oh how I hated doing weddings!). Sometimes during the disco but often afterwards. A decade later, my wife and I out a mobile disco together (so I could play with the pretty lights!) and there was only ever one fight (in a different building. It was a wedding reception held on a farm, where the disco was in a stable block, away from the main house where the fight was. Anyway…). I mainly put this down to my wife’s brilliant idea of playing Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life as we started packing things away at the end of every disco. It never failed to have people singing along with it as they left the venue.

For a very long time the only strings I used were Rotosound, because they were the only bass strings sold by the guitar shop I worked in when I was a kid. I wasn’t really aware of other brands. Eventually, once I owned more than one bass, I just bought the cheapest strings I could find, and found I rather liked Dunlops. Then I entered a thing that was linked to on BassChat and got sent a five string set of Elixirs. I love ‘em! I’d have never considered spending £50+ on strings before. So they go on my main basses, unless I can’t find them in stock in the gauge I want, in which case I go with D’Addario NYXL (which is what goes on my electric skinny string guitars). My other basses either get used handmedowns or Dunlops.

Damian’s version of The Time Warp makes my eye twitch. The song is bad enough, but he is the cause of everyone, everywhere, that has gone to a wedding reception in the last 33 years, getting the dance wrong!

I love all the Cradle of Faith covers, including Devil Woman. Their version of Stay is particularly good, as is their version of Iron Maiden’s Hallowed Be Thy Name. I genuinely can’t wait to see what Cradle and Ed Sheeran have cooked up.

I was in a band in about 1988/9 that did a cover of a Zodiac Mindwarp song. I have never heard the original and I never really knew what the song was called. It’s been bugging me for years! This is the first time I have ever come across anyone that even knows of the band.

As much as I adore Motörhead, their covers of Metallica songs are terrible! Much worse than the Metallica covers of Motörhead, which ain’t so good themselves.

That’s the only Slayer album I have ever bought. I find the vocals very difficult to hear. It’s the only album where the “Karaoke” function on my stereo actually completely got rid of the vocals.

Oh my giddy aunt! I had forgotten about that cover of Weak. I love me some Skunk Anansie and I’m rather partial to a bit of Rod (oo er..), but… I went and listened to it after reading your post, thinking that I hadn’t heard it. That is until the chorus came in and I realised that I had indeed heard it before. Hopefully I can forget about it again!

Not sure if these count… I love Skunk Anansie, but my favourite album of their’s is An Acoustic Skunk Ananasie - Live In London. Absolutely no filler and it sounds amazing. For a long time, instead of listening to the Guns & Roses’ Appetite For Destruction album, I would listen to a cassette that I recorded from a gig I saw on the telly, Live At The Ritz ‘88. Even though I had to record it using a very crap microphone pointing at the TV speaker, and going into one of those cheap, mono cassette recorders. AND my parents came home half way through My Michelle and you can hear our dogs barking at the door! I still listen to that gig now if I fancy some Guns & Roses.

I’d definitely want: Motörhead - Killed By Death John Denver - Sunshine On My Shoulders I can’t decide on a third. Possibly Simon & Garfunkel - Hazy Shade Of Winter, or Cradle Of Filth - Cruelty Brought Thee Orchids.

A more believable photo than the time the local paper came to the college where I was learning electronics. They chose me as the poster boy, for some reason (probably my long, flowing, blond locks). When I was approached by the photographers, I was soldering something to a pcb. But when they asked me to pose for the camera, they didn’t like the soldering iron… So they got me to do the exact same pose, but holding a pair of pliers instead… I ended up on the front page looking like that! Oh the shame!!

Ok, this doesn’t really fit the inappropriate category, but it was a bit odd… My first ever gig was with a school band. It was for pensioners from some old-folks homes, held in a church hall. I think they called it a chicken and chips dance, or chicken dinner dance. Something like that. Our school orchestra was playing, but my music class only had five people in it, and so we made up our own little band (piano, drums, bass and two singers). We were to perform three songs during an orchestra interval. I can’t for the life of me remember what they were, except that one was The Locomotion. The other two would have been something from the charts around the same time. We played them and it went ok. But the old folks loved it and wanted more! But we only knew those three songs. They didn’t care, they said we should play them again! And so we did! Some members of the orchestra were quite miffed…

I know this isn’t exactly what was asked for, but… This was while working with a mobile disco. We did a huge Christmas gig at a very posh/expensive hotel, for 300+ Travellers (gypsies). The boss had decided to do the lights (it was normally my job. He was useless at it), which left me taking the requests. There weren’t any that were inappropriate, but when taking requests from the kids, if the song was not played immediately, they’d start shouting that their dad will “Kick my fookin’ ‘ead in!”. Which I felt was inappropriate… We did a corporate Christmas gig that had this one bloke who appeared to have turned up drunk and got pister n pister*… No one would go near him. He was demanding UB40, and his request got more and more menacing as the evening wore on. He was getting really angry and I was having to deal with him (I was only 16). Eventually the DJ took pity on me and played a UB40 song, which cleared the dance floor. This bloke stood in the middle of the dance floor and went nut! He had a very long scarf that, when hung around his neck, both ends brushed the floor. He started flinging this scarf around, and used it to rip ALL of the Christmas decorations off the ceiling! As soon as the song finished he asked for another UB40 song! *Sorry, that’s an in-joke, just ignore it.

I wish I’d known that when I was a kid! I was in a band with musicians much older than me, so they often hung out together outside of the band (they ranged in age from 18 to 29. I was only 14 and couldn’t get in the pub). The rhythm guitarist and the drummer decided to leave and do their own thing, rather than try to sack the lead guitarist and singer, so the band split up. I knew nothing of any of this. Then I got asked to join with the rhythm section and I said yes. Later the lead guitarist asked if I’d join him in a band, and I really wanted to, but I told him that I had already said I’d join the others. Guess which one went on to have successful music career…? Ironically, it was the lead guitarist that gave me the message that I had a phone call (I was at work, in a guitar shop), which turned out to be the rhythm guitarist asking me to join him.