rushbo

Another lengthy story - this time about my stint in a proper, leather trouser wearin', rockin' band. It was a Tuesday night and probably drizzling outside. Not that we would have known as our lock-up was untroubled by natural light…or ventilation. But we liked it that way. We were halfway through one of our thinly veiled excuses for a wah-wah freakout, when in runs the owner of the lock up in a state of high excitement. He told us that a band had pulled out of a gig at a local venue that very night, and that there was a big rock audience there just waiting to be entertained. Excited by the opportunity to play to real people, we loaded our gear into the back of the van and set off. We pulled into the venues' car park which was FULL of expensive and opulently chromed motorbikes. While we unloaded the van, we noticed that no one seemed to be having a lot of fun – in fact there was a really sombre air in the place. Wait a minute…why are all these guys wearing black armbands? Yep. It was a wake. We’d been tricked into playing a bikers wake. No wonder the other band had pulled out. Nervously, we set up the gear. Occasionally a glass smashed and voices were raised. This was not going to be a good night for anyone, especially us. I dutifully set up my trusty bass, taking care to put it into dropped D tuning for our first, epic number. Satisfied, I left the stage and hid in the toilet for about 20 minutes. It was in there that I heard the sound of music…not ‘Led Zeppelin IV’ which had been playing on a loop since our arrival, but a Bluesy jam. I left the safety of the urinal, only to find three bikers had ‘borrowed’ our gear and were jamming away in the key of A. All apart from the guy on the bass – sorry, MY bass, who was looking bemused. I jumped on stage and told him the Bass was in a weird tuning and maybe I should carry on from here. I strapped it on and ploughed through ten minutes of aimless twelve bar noodling. After that, we had a few minutes before showtime, so I raced to the bar to get something to steady my nerves. It was there I met the erstwhile Bassist who told me the back story to the gig. Apparently, the wake was for a biker in a local chapter who had come off his bike in ‘dubious circumstances’. ‘See them?’ he pointed at a group in the corner. ‘They reckon he was killed by them’. He pointed to an equally dour looking bunch. ‘But they…’ he pointed to a third group ‘reckon it was them’. He pointed to a fourth. ‘So why aren’t they beating each other up?’ I asked, nervously. ‘Truce’ he replied. ‘Until midnight tonight’. I checked my watch. 10.50pm. Yikes. I quickly shared this information with my bandmates and we ran on stage to get this over with. We waited patiently for ‘Stairway To Heaven’ to finish as we thought we’d be beaten up if we interrupted that. Finally, we caught our breath and lurched into song number one. And so it began…. The first song had a great ‘car crash’ ending where we all played the final chord over and over, finishing off with a highly choreographed KA-BLAMM! accompanied by a heroic, Iggy-esque leap into the air. One person clapped. It was the bloke on the sound desk. We raced through an hours worth of material in 50 minutes. It was at this gig we realised that almost all of our songs had the words ‘Death’, ‘Ghost’ or ‘Murder’ in the lyrics, which were hastily changed on the fly by our quick thinking and terrified lead vocalist. After a few songs, even the sound guy stopped clapping and the only noises we heard between songs were the gritting of teeth, glasses breaking and the odd scuffle…and the occasional muted sob from our drummer. At 11.45, we finished. As the last chord rang around the room, we started yanking out jack leads and tossing equipment into the back of the van. As we were frenziedly throwing stuff off the stage, a large biker collared our drummer. He gesticulated sharply to the aged piano to the right of the stage. ‘Ay mate, d’yow play piano?’ Relieved that it wasn’t a death threat, he smiled and shook his head. ‘Y’ow can’t play the f*ckin’ drums either’ came the less than friendly retort. I have to admit that even under the shadow of doom, that made me laugh…under my breath, of course. By 11.58, we were all in the van, bloodied but unbowed and we raced out of the car park. It was a while before anyone could speak, so the usual post gig autopsy would have to wait until another, less stressful night. About two miles down the road, we passed a fleet of Police cars racing in the opposite direction, blue lights flashing. I checked my watch. The time was 12.04.

How true. In the mid nineties, I was a member of Britain's third most popular pagan rock band (stop sniggering...) and we played a cute little festival on a farm in Bridlington. All the power came via a single extension cord which had to be plugged into a barn owned by a neighbouring farmer who had wisely buggered off for the day. We had a power breaker, but as the barn was going to be locked once we'd plugged in, if the device tripped, we'd have no electricity. And just to make life interesting, it had been raining and although we were playing in a "covered" outhouse, there were holes in the roof large enough to land a helicopter through. So, everything was wet, or at the very least, moist. The sensible option would have been to crank out the acoustic guitars. We didn't. By a miracle, no one died, but two members of the band had to sleep in the van as their tent (and pretty much everything they had bought with them) was absolutely soaked/ruined. Top gig tho'.

Sorry, this is a bit of a long one, but it is eventful... It’s 1990 and my Birmingham based indie band thought it would be a great idea to travel up to Bolton for a gig, on a Thursday night in January. When we set off, a few non-threatening flakes of snow pitter-pattered on the windscreen, but spirits were high. We got to the venue, climbed the stairs (of course) to the stage area and got busy setting up. Eventually, we caught sight of the landlord of the pub- a pimpled youth who looked too young to get served in a bar let alone run one. He was accompanied by an elderly lady we took to be his mother and a barmaid in her early twenties. After a while, Andy, our lead singer/guitarist went up to the baby-faced barman and asked where the PA was. Babyface pointed to two speakers, suspended from the ceiling. ‘Those are speakers’ said Andy, confused… Babyface was adamant that we should have bought a PA amp and stomped off to try and find us something ‘from out the back’. After about twenty minutes, he emerged with a desk mounted microphone about the size of a telephone directory with a curved horn protruding from it…the kind of thing a 1920s taxi controller would use. When we pointed out that Andy would have to lie on the floor and sing with one finger on the ‘talk’ button, Babyface seemed to think this was a viable option. After a while he came back with the kind of microphone that came free with a 1970s music centre. The lead was about five feet long and held together with sticky tape. To make it work, it had to be plugged into the spare input on Andy’s guitar amp which gave the vocals a certain ‘Stephen Hawking’ timbre. We also had to gaffa tape it to a cymbal stand. It was at this point, I decided to drink heavily… We struggled through our hour long set, said ‘Thank you Bolton and goodnight’ and I trotted off to see Babyface for our fee. ‘You ain’t finished. Play for another half hour or ya dunt get paid’ came the reply. I relayed this information to my colleagues and unsurprisingly it was greeted with less than joy. After a brief discussion, we decided that rather than repeat numbers we had already played, we would play the Velvet Undergrounds’ ‘Sweet Jane’ for 30 minutes exactly. I decided I needed something to make this ordeal slightly more palatable and marched to the bar and ordered two large whiskeys which I downed in about 20 seconds. Now, I was ready. Andy decided he was just going to sing and left his guitar on the stand and improvised often profane variations on one of Lou Reeds’ finest works, whilst glaring at Babyface, who seemed oblivious to it all. By now, I was steaming drunk and barely capable of playing the incredibly simple bass line. Occasionally, I would stop to steady myself on the drumkit or reach forward and steal the drinks from the table of two nice young girls, who looked at me like I was a basket case. Our drummer and guitarist diligently plugged away with murder in their eyes. Half way through the song and feeling slightly unwell, I decided I needed a rest and found a suitable place for a lie down…a ‘bench’ about 18” wide. Perfect! I gingerly manoeuvred myself into a horizontal position and continued to plunk away whilst grinning inanely and looking at the ceiling. Something felt wrong…and then it occurred to me that I was lying on the railing at the top of the staircase and to my immediate right was a thirty-foot drop to the ground floor. With all the elegance I could muster, I got back into an upright position and after EXACTLY 30 minutes, in the middle of a chorus, Andy yelled ‘STOP!’ and walked straight over to the bar for the fee. But Babyface was nowhere to be seen. Andy asked the barmaid where he was, and she opened the door to the stockroom…there was Babyface in the middle of a passionate and noisy clinch with the woman we took to be his mother. It was at that moment I decided I needed another drink. Whilst at the bar, I was slapped hard on the back by a drooling drunk – obviously feeling I was a kindred spirit – and with his face about an inch from mine he yelled that we were ‘the best thing he’d seen since Hendrix!’ Given that he looked about 30, he was either a precocious gig-goer or, more likely, King of the B*llsh*tters. Anyway, he bought me a drink and then fell down most of the stairs. The journey back was hell. At one point, three of the lads decided they needed a toilet break. Rather than pull into a service station, Andy immediately wrenched the van to the side of the road and flung open the doors. By now, the light scattering of snowflakes had turned into a blizzard and we were ankle deep in white slush. On leaving the van, the three intrepid travellers had to go down a fairly modest incline to get to the nearest tree to relieve themselves against. All well and good on the way down, but due to the weather conditions and the inebriated state they found themselves in, no one could get back to the van. They would get halfway up and then slip down like contestants on some unholy episode of ‘Total Wipeout’. I was alerted to their plight by the screams and profanities which shattered the peaceful night air. I fell out of the van to see what the commotion was, to be greeted by the sight of three soaking, mudsplattered figures yelling at me for assistance. I am not proud of this, BassChat, but I laughed so much at their condition, I was completely incapable of reaching down and pulling them up. Eventually, they scrambled back to the van and one of them punched me. Mercifully, I was the first to be dropped off at home. So, at six thirty in the morning – half an hour before I had to get up to go to work – I extracted myself woozily from the van, steadied myself against a rather lovely Oak tree on the traffic island in the middle of my street and puked over my Chelsea boots. Full of self loathing and feeling like I had moments to live, I brought my gaze upwards from my ruined footwear to be greeted by the faces of the postman, the milkman and my next door neighbour, just arriving home from the nightshift. That’s showbiz.

A close friend of mine (cough, splutter) once did exactly that. £100 later, I have it on very good authority that he never wound the truss rod like a m*****f****r ever again. Now every time he gingerly inserts his Allen key into the appropriate slot, I - sorry - "he" holds his breath a little bit and pulls a face.

Yep - I'm happy to do the basic stuff. I've replaced a fret or two, swapped pickups and a few other more "serious" bits and pieces, too. My basses are far from "boutique," so I'm happy to wade in, knowing I'm not going to slash thousands off the kids' inheritance if I put a dink or a scratch on one of them. I think it's more to do with having the confidence to do it, than having the skill.

In the days when I used multiple pedals, my annoyance with my set-up was driven by my overwhelming desire to fiddle with stuff. I was never satisfied with the functionality of my board, which even at the height of my madness, was never more than 8 or 9 stompboxes nailed to a plank. I was frustrated with the lack of uniformity, which meant that every time I did attempt to find the "perfect" combination and signal path, I had to prepare myself for a long and dreary game of techno-Tetris, which I never seemed to win. I love the idea of having a board full of weird and wonderful novelty boxes, but in practice, it was detrimental to my mental health. And my bank balance. I now use a modified Zoom B3* which ticks all the boxes that I need to be ticked. I can tweak it on the fly if I want to. But I've never wanted or needed to. And the fact that I can't shuffle gizmos about on a daily basis is incredibly liberating. Your Mileage May Vary as they say on the internet. Sadly, my DIY patch changing pedal seems to contravene a lot of rules and regulations outlined in this thread. Do I have to pay a fine? * And a Behringer BDI21. Sorry.

A few years ago, I was putting up the bands backdrop prior to a show, while perched precariously on a bar stool in my Cuban heels. Inevitably, I fell off, fracturing a bone in my right arm. Thanks to adrenaline and stupidity, I managed to get through the gig, but I spent the next week in a cast. Rock and Roll?

These are great basses. I've had one for about 10 years and it still gets gigged. Of course, I had to tinker with it and I pulled out the active stuff (and sold it to a lovely chap on this very forum) and replaced it with a pair of passive Entwistle pickups and it sounds gorgeous. The neck is lovely - somewhere between a P and a J. They only lasted about 2-3 years in production, which is a shame. They don't go for much money currently, so someone might get a bargain.

I had to google "kimble gun." Now I want one. Thanks, Bunion.

I bought one of these from Thomann, a couple of years back: Pop your combo on this and hey presto! - it's off the floor, and the noise it makes is closer to your ears, so you can actually hear it, without having to crank the volume up to Lemmyesque levels. It's perfect for those gigs where it's impractical to bring another cab to stick underneath your amp and has made a huge difference to my onstage volume. Because I'm a classy chap, I bought a couple of metres of cheap black fabric to cover the legs as although the unit is incredibly sturdy (the spec says it'll cope with 136 kg and I don't doubt that for a moment), it does look a little like you're balancing your priceless Mesa Boogie combo on your moms old coffee table, otherwise.

I do like a reliced bass. There - I've said it. However, the relicing should bear some relation to natural wear. I have no idea how a musical instrument could end up looking like this, unless it's been used as an oversized spatula to ladle heavy duty lubricant into the mouth of an over-aggresive, robot shark. Once, in the not too distant past, that was a nice looking instrument. Unfortunately, following its recent "customisation" you now need rubber gloves, full body PPE and a tetanus jab just to look at it. Shame.

Could it be a jack socket issue? It's worth trying your bass with a lead you can trust, if you haven't done that already.

Sorry, can I have it back now, please?

Jinkies. I thoroughly enjoyed those - thanks for sharing. Like a lot of these "isolated bass" dealios, it's quite surprising how loose they are when you hear them devoid of everything else. Tighter than a very tight thing on the records tho'. "Killed by Death," "Overkill" and (especially) "Stay Clean" are tons of fun. A neat reminder of how Motörhead in their prime, were a force of nature with their own gravitational pull and the power to bend light. They existed in their own world and defined a genre, in spite of hating what it was called.

...but "the back looks amazing and is fantastic shape." So that's all right, then.

The description on the website is priceless. (When I read it, the voice in my head was that of Apu from The Simpsons and now I feel like I've committed a hate crime...)

I use one of these: https://www.gear4music.com/PA-DJ-and-Lighting/Sennheiser-XSW-D-Pedalboard-Set/2S55?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI3ZO1htnW8wIVkt1RCh18_ASvEAAYASAAEgINpPD_BwE I've been using it since March this year and it's coped with numerous rehearsals and about 10-12 gigs, flawlessly. Having the receiver double as a tuner is a genius move. It's also built like a (very elegant) tank. I don't use it as a bug as I've designed my own bespoke (read "home made") connecting system, which is secured neatly to my strap. Before that, I was a very satisfied Smooth Hound user. I had that for years and it did a great job. Personally, I never had an issue with latency. No one in the band used in-ear monitoring which can be a factor, apparently, and although it was used alongside my trusty, digital Zoom B3 multi-fx, it always sounded fine. If there was any delay in the signal, I, anyone in the band and the numerous sound engineers I worked with, never noticed it. Once again, I never used that as a bug as there's a neat little adapter dealio that you can get from Chris at SH for a few quid. Well worth it, I'd say. I'd still be using it, if I hadn't reduced the size of my board, and as the Sennheiser does the job of two pedals, I sadly let my SH go. Before that I had a Line 6 G30. My experience was not good.

The 02 in Brum is one of the weirdest places for acoustics that I have ever been to. If you're in front of the stage, downstairs then its normally pretty decent, but the minute you venture to the side of the venue (towards the bar) or upstairs, the sound just turns to mush. I'm not an expert in acoustics (and my ears are a bit knackered) but there must be some natural bass traps in that building.

Yep. Very much this.

Sort of related: the first Roxy Music album still sounds like it was dropped from outer space. It's retrospective and futuristic at the same time.

Nothing dates music more than keyboard sounds and production tricks. When you listen to music from the eighties, the reverb, the enormous drum sound and the ubiquitous DX7 are all over a huge chunk of it. That's not to say I don't like a bit of that wide screen glossiness, but it absolutely nails that music to that decade. Timeless music - that's hard to find. Maybe pre-"Judas" Bob Dylan. Or The first Violent Femmes album. Or stuff that is so far removed from everything else that it exists in it's own world, like early Devo or the first Van Halen Album, maybe - although they're not truly timeless as they couldn't have come much before their time, but they could have been from any time since, if you can follow my logic...

There's a special place in Hell for ANY musician who noodles away aimlessly at soundchecks. How long does it take you to get a noise you like? Is the minuscule performance area in the Dog and Trumpet significantly different from the minuscule performance area in the Dog and Trampette? You may need to do a little low-level tweakage, on your gizmos and doodads, but there's absolutely no need to whizz through all four sides of "Tales from Topographic Oceans" just to check your delay repeats, while the rest of the band glare at you with murder in their eyes, hoping that the Grand Lord of Electricity gives you a potent, but non-life threatening reminder of your selfishness and mortality.

I did this a few years ago and it makes life loads easier. No arguing over who's identical black lead is who's and no scrabbling for black leads in the inky black darkness of a rock club stage. Having coloured leads on stage might not be as slick looking as basic black, but I'm happy to make that trade.

That is the definitive answer, really. I vacillated between MFX and individual stomp boxes for years, before I settled on my minimal Zoom B3 + BDI 21 set up. That's all I need. I use maybe 4-5 pedal sounds and I could use stomp boxes for those, of course, but I like the fact that there's not much to go wrong with my set up. And if it does all go 'bang!' at a gig, the world wouldn't end if I had to bypass them completely. Collecting pedals is fun, but when it comes to people really noticing different sounds, unless you're using filthy drive noises or ultra-wobbly chorused sounds, you might be the only person in the room that hears the difference.