peteb

In my experience, they pretty much always do...!

Hasn't that always been the role of bass in 90% of music?

The rumours are that a new album is indeed on the cards!

Absolutely! All my mates who worked in music shops loved Oasis first time around. They said that suddenly a new generation of 13 year old kids started coming into the shop, wanting to buy a guitar and to learn to play Rock 'n' Roll Star and Cigarettes and Alcohol...

As I understand it, the 'head' is the main theme of a piece of music, which you are likely to return to during the piece. The chart is simply the piece of paper that you have on a music stand in front of you (or these days, a file on an iPad). For example, in Jaco's 'Portrait of Tracy', you get the all harmonics intro, then you play the head (the main melodic bit that you remember about the tune) before a B section and then back to the head for the outro. I'm sure that Rob can correct me if I haven't got that quite right.

I get cramp when I try to play with a pick these days as well. I went back to fingerstyle after playing with a pick for several years because I realised that I was a more fluent and had less limitations using my fingers. I was just a better player that way. I do occasionally meet people who remember me as a pick player. I actually started out playing fingerstyle because of the cool looking, smiling black dude with the afro and P bass in the instructional book I originally learnt from. If he played with his fingers, then obviously I should...!

Yea, but Chris Squire and many others did! Both can be great - whatever works for you...

I originally learnt to play fingerstyle, but a band leader persuaded me to play with a pick (very much a thing at the time), which I did throughout the 80s! About 1990, I reverted back to exclusively playing fingerstyle, which I've carried on with to this day. To be fair, I was always a far better fingers player and these days I very much doubt I could play anything like a full set with a pick!

So, played the Farmyard Party at the weekend - pics above on @casapete's post a couple of pages ago. The Friday was very hot and sticky. As we were staying over, I had to put up a large tent pretty much on my own (the missus is recovering from an operation on her hands) in rock hard ground - hence me managing to look sweaty, pasty and sunburnt all at the same time in the picture of me and Pete above. Great to meet Pete before the gig - I was obviously pretty busy trying to get everything ready for our show, so I only managed to see a couple of songs from his band, but he is obviously a very tidy bass player. There was a bit of a groan from backstage as they played a song on our setlist, but fortunately that seemed to be the only one, so we managed to avoid too many duplicate songs! The gig itself was a bit hit and miss. We had a (very good) dep guitarist and it had been sounding brilliant in the three rehearsals we managed to get in before. However, live there were a few adventures starting and (particularly) ending songs and a fair few missed cues. Endings became a bit of a negotiation between me, the guitarist and the drummer, with the poor keyboard player trying to work out what was happening from the other side of the stage! However, we got a pretty good audience reaction and had a lot of very positive feedback after the show (with a couple of gig offers thrown in), so it can't have been too bad - amazing what you can get away without the audience noticing when playing live sometimes! Gear wise, I was using the 78 P bass and the usual set-up of a Shure GLXD wireless, Thumpinator, Cali76 bass comp and Caveman pre into a Handbox R400 and Berg CN212 cab.

No, I'm afraid that might (marginally) help to keep you fit, but it isn't going to do anything to maintain muscle mass or bone density. The only way to do that is to regularly lift weights.

The jabs work, but they do have side effects and they won't give you too many of them. I had one when I was a teenager and about to do my O levels. To be fair, my hay fever used to be much worse in my teens / twenties

Nice one Pete - I will see you later

This I believe that lifting weights also helps to maintain bone density, so if you slip when you're old you just get up and brush it off rather than requiring a hip replacement.

It's always fun to be part of these big events, even if you're not on the main stage.

Fortunately, the only time I've ever used Preparation H was to put on a new tattoo years ago! Summerfest looks like a great event - shame we don't really have anything similar this side of the pond. The bike rally I'm playing (the Farmyard Party) is one of the biggest ones in the north of England, not quite as big as Stormin' The Castle in the North East, but still about 6,000 people on site. They have a blues tent (stage) for the old school bikers who still like their blues - will probably have a few hundred people or so in there. Maybe a 2,000 for the main stage (that I last played ten years ago with a rock band).