uk_lefty

Depends how thin you slice them

We have either had rooms provided as part of the function, slept in cars or tents, had a "family room" at a hotel and hoped that the ratio of beds to band members who want to sleep Vs those that want to party is correct, I've slept on the drummers lawn, and a few times just bit the bullet and driven an awful long way home after the gig aided by red bull and resisting alcohol.

"Alive" by Pearl Jam is a cover band classic, a great song, and a great way to get used to fretless without having to do anything too difficult. There's also a hal Leonard instructional book on Fretless Bass (I think it's called fretless bass techniques and one of the contributors is Bunny Brunel... I could be wrong I'll edit when I get home if I need to) and that book has some great exercises for tastefully applying slides, vibrato etc. As others have said fretless is not a different instrument, you don't have to slide and vibrato all the time and you can just play anything on it... It is fun to whack in a sliding harmonic every now and then though

Screwing a goose would probably land you in more trouble.

Best thing to do would be to buy everything you're thinking about on the second hand marketplace and resell what doesn't work for you. There will be soany other factors in your set up and preferences that affect whether the pedal does what you need it to that you have to experiment. Buying off the marketpt you probably won't lose money on anything other than postage and for the cost of one brand new pedal you can probably keep two but have tried three or four others.

The Battalion has EQ shaping for the drive which gives you loads more control so you can get more flavours from it than the Soul Food. I didn't like using the Battalion with an active bass though. I wrote loads about it in a thread comparing the Battalion to the Hartke VXL. thing is I'm not a big drive/ distortion user so I don't have an "always on" drive or whatever, and at the time I had mine I had three passive basses but got myself the first active bass that I could actually get on with but didn't invest the time to figure out the pedal for both active and passive. In a one line comparison: the Battalion does more and can get in to your low end which I couldn't get the Soul Food to do.

I had one, did a review on here. If you like the Soul Food I think you'll like the Battalion

Doctor Doctor... You don't mean Bad Case of Loving You by Robert Palmer?

I think there is the difference! Are you reinterpreting a song to add a new angle to it.... Or has the band gone "sod this, the solo is too hard will just bluff something much simpler"

Haha it's true, sometimes people over simplify stuff to the point of annoyance. But you ask a non muso if they know there's something missing or something different... And also sometimes you have to accept if your watching a gig for free in the back room of a pub in the derrière end of nowhere you are watching amateurs, you can't exactly expect a superb and completely accurate performance I suppose.

I get so sick of some songs I don't listen to them, don't rehearse them and then you hear it on the radio and realise that you've gone so far from the original it's time to rehearse it again!!

I know lots of venues where I'm sure that sort of thing happens regularly judging by the smell and the sticky floors.

Ask him which one of the Police he thinks is the biggest cnut. That might set him off for a while!

Be careful with all this honesty business. My wife came with me to Denmark street on December. A bit of thinking time later and I've got a brand new Stingray with her blessing. I then felt guilty about the cost. I'd traded in my Mexican jazz against the Stingray, I sold almost anything that gets little to no use. I then sold my Sire fiver and put a drop tuner on the Ray. I've trimmed down the whole works... But I have this nagging feeling I will never buy another instrument again!! It was all a clever trap.

Here's the plan... We group together in tens based on geography. Each of us throws in £150. Or more, whatever. We buy two or three basses and share them round between us. That way it really does appear as if we are "looking after it for a mate" when someone comes to collect it for their turn... OR we get together in groups based on geography. We decide a list of one bass each we all want. We buy it, BUT here's the clever bit .. we keep swapping them round between us! Oh the red one?? That's Mick's, he's collecting it next month... Oh why did he drop off another? He wants me to fix something on it, won't get to see him for a few months though... Etc.

A little unfair. About four of the presets were usable and the rhythm track thingy was ok. And it worked as a DI. But yes, lots of headache inducing weird crap from it and no intuitive way to edit them. Put me off multi effects for many years.

Depends. When it's the fourth song about the same girl ignoring you at high school in the same key then it is self indulgent. Something I find a lot of solo acts suffer from.

Damnit I was learning that... Because our guitarist now has an Egyptian girlfriend..... Oh yeah, and we play lots of 80's songs. But mainly because of the guitarist.

My last audition was almost three years ago, still in the band now and enjoying it. What I brought: Knew almost all the songs on their list for the audition, Was warming up in reception playing scales, Had both Fender jazz and Fender P, A firm handshake, Similar aims to the rest of the guys, Backing vocals not great but better than the guitarist, Honesty - in terms of commitment, what I want out of the band, how much of a part of my life I'm prepared to let it be.

There's five in my band... Our set list would be a lot shorter if nobody had to play a song they don't like. I don't mind the odd one or two as long as the audience likes it. If a guitarist wants to play another flipping twelve bar blues so he can have three more boring solos when our audience loves our 80's song-and-dance along numbers then I put my foot down.

I understand the OP's reservations on those songs, but I hope you are pleasantly surprised. Slither is a massive song, it's one that anyone who likes rock music should recognise. Whole Lotta Rosie is probably in the set for the crowd participation "Angus! Angus!" In the intro. Lenny Kravitz goes down well, it's not just a guitar womble people will dance to it if it's played well. That's just my opinion, of course they have to fit the rest of the set, the general vibe of the band and the venue/ audience... But they're good songs that I hope go down well for you.

I have to play Parklife by Blur. I hate it but the audience sing along and seem to like it. I have no idea why. I get paid and go home.

But it does say "in Birmingham they love the governor. BOO BOO BOO" which doesn't sound very supportive of the governor to me. I'm happy playing it every gig and if I felt it racist (or enough people pointed out racist things I wasn't aware of) I'd go nowhere near it.

Just listened to You Oughtta Know. Wow. My memory of that song made me think "no way has that got flea and Dave Navarro on" but when you listen to it it's unmistakably Dave Navarro but Flea is let loose to play with a different style and tone to his RHCP work but keep it funky. It works really well and there's a female fronted band I sometimes play with, I want to play this with them!

Agree it's the way things are put sometimes. There's five in my band. We all feel free to be brutal with the lead guitarist because he's thick skinned and he takes it in, and he is usually better off for listening. For the singer we need to tread on eggshells. I got criticized for my timing in the intro of one song a few months back, I didn't even know it was a problem but the singer must have been fuming for months because he's so non-confrontational but he made a joke of it and at the next gig when we played that song he whispered "f'ing perfect" to me I guess as his way of saying 'thanks for listening'. I really don't like being criticized but I think if it's done in the right way everyone should listen and try what the other person is saying before they dismiss it.