peteb

7 hours ago, dmccombe7 said:

Have to admit i'm always impressed when i see the twin necks out in mates Zep tribute band and on occasion a Rush tribute will have them. They do look good. 

 

It's a bleedin' horrible thing, always going out of tune, etc (apparently, Page hated his as well). But, it's part of the show and people get excited when you whip it out, as it were...! 

7 hours ago, dmccombe7 said:

Must be great playing some of those Zep bass lines Pete. Nice set up you have behind you too.

 

Yea, Zep have always been my favourite band since I've been a kid, but I didn't really play many Zep covers before I joined the tribute. When I had to figure out the bass parts, it was uncanny how much JPJ had influenced my playing without me consciously being aware of it, or having purposely copped his lines!

The set-up is a Handbox R400 into a Berg CN212, lately with a Caveman pre before the amp. The bass is just a 2015 American Std Jazz. 

7 hours ago, dmccombe7 said:

Singer looks like a young Coverdale in that pic LOL

 

He's not that young these days! In person, I always think that he looks more like Jerry Sadowitz (although he does get Brian May a lot, just because of the hair)! I used to be in a band with him in the late 80s - he always had a Plant-esque delivery, as well as being a massive fan. Getting him and the new keys player in the band has really lifted things to a different level. 

After a couple of gigs with the new band last week, it was back to the Zep tribute on Saturday playing a relatively local gig at Studio 5 in Keighley (or K-town as it is known in these parts). 

A good gig all in all, with a pretty decent turnout (always a relief when you are playing locally). The only issue was the guitar players Helix multi FX playing up when he changed guitars (he had to turn it off and on again) to the double-neck! It's funny how that guitar got a cheer all of its own when it was brought out, a boo when we thought that it was the guitar playing up and Chris would have to use the six string, and then another cheer when he realised it was the Helix and plugged the double-neck in again! 

Next gig in Llandudno in North Wales on Saturday. 

A bit late, but my new blues band played our first couple of gigs a week or so ago (Tapestry in Bradford on the Thursday & Venue 23 in Wakefield last Sunday), supporting Mick McConnell's (guitarist from Smokie) new blues rock band at both gigs. 

It all went really well for our first gigs and went down very well. It looks like it's going to be a good band with some top players. Just need to get some more gigs booked now... 

Their website is pretty awful and has been known to show gear that they sold months ago! However, they are good people to deal with, but I wouldn't do so online. I would strongly advise you to give them a ring and have a chat about what you are interested in. 

2 hours ago, TimR said:

 

Tribute acts are going to be different and I'd be surprised if people have come to see you specifically that they'll not ask for me.

 

If you know there's a curfew at a pub then probably so do the locals. Usually the bar manager will be indicating when to stop. We play to the curfew, if there's calls for more after that, yes, it's up to the bar manager to say yes or no. So that's the get out.

 

I just find it's a bit cliché, same with introducing the band members and giving them a little solo. Some bands carry it off, others, it just looks odd. 

 

You have to judge at each gig rather than setting out - this is what we do.

Don't get me wrong - if there's only two men and the ubiquitous dog there and they've been ignoring us for most of the night, then we won't bother doing an encore. However, that never happens on the tribute circuit (and to be honest, hardly ever on the pub gigs I generally do). The fact is that if people have paid to see you, then they want to feel that they're getting their money's worth and they want an encore. Of course, we want to keep the punters (and the promoter) happy to ensure that we get a re-booking, so we play one!

It's all a bit of a game really, and yes, sometimes the audience will hardly shout for more because they know that there will be an encore anyway. But that's showbusiness for you! Similarly, manipulating the audience by holding certain big songs back (among other things) to keep their interest is also part of the game. If you learn how to do it properly the you will always get a good reaction, which will also allow you to challenge an audience a little and get them to listen to something a bit more obscure. At the end of the night, we thank the audience, introduce the members of the band and take a bow. You might think that some of these things are a cliché, but if you know how to do them properly then they will work and help the audience to enjoy themselves as well as appreciate your craft! Which is what it is all about really... 

2 hours ago, TimR said:

The audience has to earn an encore. 

 

Tell them it's the last song and then stop. Bass comes off and is put onto stand, if there's no immediate shouting for more. Then the amp goes off. 

 

I've seen a few bands hovering around expecting to be asked to play more. It's not a good look.

 

 

The fact is that, these days, the encore is part of the show (whether you like it or not). Especially at the bigger gigs, where punters pay to see you, not doing an encore (assuming that there is any sort of audience reaction) makes you look unprofessional, or even worse, like a diva! 

For the tribute gigs, we always play one three song encore and that's it! In fact, more often than not, it ends up being a two song encore because the singer has had enough and wants to protect his voice. In a pub band, we will play until the punters stop calling for more, or (more often) the barstaff want us to finish so they don't get in trouble with their neighbours / because of their music licence curfew / they want to finish up and go home! 

12 minutes ago, Reggaebass said:

Same for me too, I like the 38-40 ish, my AV62  P is 44 which is ok but I prefer slightly less 

Given the choice, I would prefer a 41 neck, but I'm not too bothered. I'm taking a 5 string out to a gig tonight as a spare to the 78 P, so a 44mm neck isn't going to scare me too much! 

32 minutes ago, ossyrocks said:

The nut width would be a deal breaker for me I'm afraid. Mine are all around 41mm.

 

I had a 57AVRI P bass with a 44mm neck and it was far from unplayable, it played really nicely in fact. It just made trying to get that Eb harmonic in Portrait of Tracy a bit more challenging...! 

4 minutes ago, OliverBlackman said:

For me, its value would depend on if it plays well and sounds good. From this era there was just as much rubbish as good.

Yep, I've owned two P basses from that period - one great, one pretty poor. The good one, I bought twice...! 

26 minutes ago, briansbrew said:

My 77P is 42mm so possibly a mistake on the listing

My 78P is about 41mm, so it could be a slight over measurement.

Still, it seems like a reasonable deal - I paid £1.6k about three and a half years ago, but mine didn't have the original bridge and needed cleaning up a bit, so £2k doesn't seem to be a bad price. 

1 hour ago, Baloney Balderdash said:

Isn't that exactly why you should focus on training your ears rather than theory?

 

If you can't hear what you play, your can't play it properly.

 

Yes, I would agree that having good ears is by far the most important factor. But, if you have a working knowledge of musical theory then it makes playing by ear much more powerful and straightforward, not to mention making it much easier / quicker to learn new songs, etc. 

For example, I play in a Led Zep tribute band, and when I had to learn the San Francisco section of the live version of Dazed and Confused, there is a lot of nice but pretty busy bass playing that sounds quite complex at first. However, when you realise that he is playing over a repeated Em > C lydian phrase, then it is a lot easier to work out what he is playing and to work out what the right part should be. But if you don't know what a lydian mode is, then you could take forever learning it and still not get it right! 

By the way, I have had next to no formal musical training and still get the names of the modes wrong sometimes (I double-checked that I had got correct mode before I typed the above paragraph), but it is understanding and applying the concept that is important. 

3 hours ago, Owen said:

A poor picture of my 73 A neck bitsa. An A neck is where it is at. 

Now that looks like a proper Fender! You say it's a bitsa, is there a story behind it? 

7 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

 

Only 1 in 10 of our gigs would be further than 15 minutes. 1 in 40 would be almost an hour. Don't think I have ever done a gig more than an hour and a half away. We are purely local!

I've actually got a gig 15 minutes away next week, with two about 40 mins away the week after. These will be the only local gigs I've done in months! Most are an hour or two's drive at least (last one was just over 200 miles away). 

3 minutes ago, NancyJohnson said:

 

These were simpler/happier times.  My first bass had a grounding issue; I quickly worked out that by connecting a bit of twisted wire from the pickup selector switch to the spring on the back of the G-string saddle solved the buzzing, so that was the fix and that's how it was until I sold it.  Nobody died.

 

 

 

 

They may well have been simpler and happier times, but they weren't necessarily better!

I remember a rehearsal where there there weren't enough plug sockets, so the guitarist took the plugs of two amp leads, wired them together on the same plug, then we used them like that for the rest of the evening. Nobody died, but they could have done...! 

At the last gig I talked to a few punters, packed the car up, said goodbye to the promoter / stage crew and then drove to the Travelodge around the corner. 

4 hours ago, nilorius said:

Hmm....looks like most of You pretty much like to get lost as soon as possible 🤪

It depends - usually I'm driving, but if not I will have a couple of beers while packing down and talking to punters / promoters, etc. The last couple of gigs have been as above, but the one before that we were hanging out in the hotel bar for a couple of hours until it closed, chatting with the rest of the band and any punters still around (including a drunk Scottish couple, both ex-military, neither of whom we could understand except that the bloke kept telling us that we were 'magnificent' in an extremely thick Glaswegian accent). 

4 hours ago, ossyrocks said:

I know the seller. Graham is a lovely and very honest guy, I've known him for over 30 years. Deal with confidence.

I'm not in the market, but in a couple of years time,who knows! If I was, then this is the sort of bass / price point I would be looking at.  

Fender Precision Bass, sunburst, m/n, 1976

https://www.facebook.com/commerce/listing/278741381841522/?media_id=4&ref=share_attachment

3 hours ago, King Tut said:

We’ve literally just left Greystoke on the road to Kinross. We decided to break the journey there and have our meal and breakfast  rather than post gig tomorrow - was lovely. Had a look at the band area and it’s going to be very intimate! Who did you play at Greens with?

Led Into Zeppelin (obviously a Zep tribute). 

Just played the Black Frog in Chelmsford last weekend and Nick (the promoter) was talking about JV and Del having played there (recently I assume), so presumably with you. 

On 18/03/2024 at 20:43, King Tut said:

I’ve got three gigs coming up with The Verity Bromham band. On Thursday we’ll be at The Red Arrows Club in Ramsgate. Saturday we’re at Backstage at The Green in Kinross, then on the way back on Sunday we’ll be stopping off at Penrith for a 4 pm gig at The Boot and Shoe, Greystoke.

We did Backstage at The Green in Kinross a few weeks ago (both the the Friday and the Saturday). It turned out to be really good weekend. 

I played at the The Boot and Shoe in Greystoke a few years ago. A tiny pub, but quite good fun in the end (and a great Sunday lunch after the gig)! 

8 minutes ago, chris_b said:

Some people make bad decisions.

 

I'd take someone back if they were very good players, a nice guy and promised to make better decisions next time.

And sometimes people make decisions that make sense at the time, but things change and they then make different decisions. 

11 hours ago, Mickeyboro said:

If you have experience of re-enlisting a former bandmate, please feel free to share. 

All the time. 

Musicians drift in and out of bands all the time, for a variety of reasons. Generally situations change over time and what was an issue might not seem a big deal a couple of years later. If you need them, they can play and are not complete d1cks, then why not? 

1 hour ago, rmorris said:

 

So I don't want to put people off doing what they want to do - but isn't a "Jam Night" often more accurately a "Clique Night". And often conflated with an "Open Mic".

Last Open Mic I did with a singer songwriter type I know was going okay until someone running it decided my bass was too loud and turned it down.

Top Stuff 🙄 Now I can't hear myself and the singer's "loose" sense of time means I can't compensate. Magic 😳

There are jam nights and jam nights, often confused with the dreaded open mic nights. 

To me, a jam session should be where you get a group of musicians together to play through a song or musical idea that someone has that hasn't been rehearsed before. The idea is that you don't have a firm arrangement or know exactly where it is going to go, but you follow whoever has an idea that might take it to different places. Therefore someone might extend a solo (hopefully not too long), then give you a nod when they want to finish, someone might want to bring it down or even to try to a reggae feel over a middle eight or whatever. It encourages people to listen, support whoever is soloing and get used to busking. Of course, if you have guys who are not used to doing stuff like that or even being onstage, then it's about helping them get through the song until the end. Obviously, it's not going to work every time, but often it can be great as well as give you new ideas and improve your playing. 

2 hours ago, StingRayBoy42 said:

The drummer in my Jazz band stood in on a gig with Noel Redding.

So I've played with someone who played with someone who played with Hendrix.

How's that for tenuous?!

Tenuous maybe, but still pretty cool...! 

35 minutes ago, casapete said:

That’s the shop! Just opposite a railway bridge. Mainly brass instruments in the window, and just a few

guitars and amps at the back. I saw the Marshall and he wanted £45 for it. Back then cheque guarantee

cards were only good for £25, so I had to write him two, one for £25 and one for £20. Turned out to

be the best purchase I ever made.

Yes, although there were usually quite a few electric guitars among the brass instruments. 

Ray was a bit of a 'character', rather seedy older guy with a flair for being economical with the truth. Nearly every guitar or bass in the shop had once belonged to Paul Kossof or Jack Bruce or someone similar! Even at thirteen, none of us believed him. He had a habit of over-pricing his better stock, so it never he sold it. I remember that he had an old red semi-acoustic Gibson bass hanging on the wall for years - I considered putting in an offer for it when the shop eventually closed down. I wish that I had done, probably worth a bit now!