Len_derby

A hollow-bodied electric bass? Several different shapes to choose from. A Danelectro? An acoustic bass guitar? Have fun in your search!

Saturday night with the covers band Top Deck. One of our regular haunts, The Holly Bush, Marehay, Derbyshire. The crowd was smaller than normal but given the thunder, lightning and torrential rain, fair dooz.

A grateful client turned me into a key ring.

Continuing our program of buying stuff from each other, Tim has just bought my U-bass. As ever, Tim is prompt in his communications and a genuinely top guy to deal with. He’s a highly recommended Basschatter.

Yes. I think it’s a photo of the rehearsal sessions for the L & L album, that were done at a rented house in Farley Chamberlayne near Winchester. The last time I saw Ashley H he was playing a Danelectro.

Great band, Sweet. On those TOTP performances they absolutely nailed the glammed-up bricklayer look. I depped for a band a couple of years ago who did Ballroom Blitz. Really a lot of fun to play and the fact they had a female singer seemed to make the intro even camper. I remember that donkey’s ears ago John Peel played a Sweet B side on his show and challenged listeners to ring in with who they thought it was. Very few got it right, most callers thinking it was one of the well-know heavy rock giants of the day.

This afternoon my recently started acoustic duo, Desperate Cowboys, played a 40 minute set at The Wirksworth Arts Festival. Me and Mick, the singer in my covers band, started the duo as a way to stretch-out and keep busy when we have no band gigs. It was actually our first proper gig, having limited ourselves to open mics for the last couple of months. It all seemed to go well, with good audience reaction but we now need to do some tweaking of our arrangements and song choices. Those things you only discover when you do it for real. Incidentally, it was the first gig for my Taylor mini-bass, recently bought from our own @casapete. Played through my Trace Elliott Elf and Barefaced one 10.

This gentleman came around last night to buy an electro-acoustic bass guitar from me. A pleasure to deal with in the normal tradition of Basschat. He bought the bass, and also gave me a guitar to donate to a local youth project. What a star. Highly recommended.

Friday night my covers band, Top Deck, hosted a charity night at The Three Horseshoes in Ripley, Derbyshire. It was for Derbyshire Autism Services a not-for-profit organisation supporting families with autistic members. It’s mostly run and staffed by volunteers who are generally parents of autistic children. We supplied all the PA, back line and lights. To provide a full evening of entertainment we got another local cover band, Paradox, to do a set at 8.15. Acoustic duo Rue Marillo did one at 9.15 and we did 10.15 onwards. We donated the band fee and with raffle and other cash given we’re touching £750 raised on the night. All good fun, even the bouncers were dancing by the end. Apparently, the landlord of another pub in the market place was heard grumbling that he could have provided a bigger playing area and crowd and why didn’t we play there? Well, if he’d responded to any of our messages when we were searching for a venue we might have done. 😂

I met @casapete in the glamorous location of a B&Q car park, Goole, East Yorkshire today and bought his Taylor Mini Bass. In the finest tradition of Basschat Pete was a pleasure to meet and do business with. Thanks Pete, and I hope we meet again before too long.

Yes. Provided that it’s been looked-after you probably can’t go wrong. I’ve had several Yamaha basses and guitars and they’ve all punched above their price in terms of quality. Good luck on your bass journey.

I found the book ‘How to write one song’ by Jeff Tweedy inspiring for composition. Tweedy is the leader of the American band Wilco but you don’t need to know anything about them for the book to be meaningful.

Hollow-bodied bass? Quite a few choices; Epiphone Jack Casady, Yamaha Bex, Hofner, etc.

Last night was the first proper run-out for my new acoustic duo. The vocalist and myself, from our covers band, have got to the point where we want to gig a lot more than the rest of them. We are both retired with no childcare responsibilities, the rest of the band are younger than us and have either one, or both, of those things to manage. So, we’ve put together a duo for those weeks we have no full band gigs. The plan is to tap unto the micro pub and café market locally. We’ve already got a few in the diary, including an Indian restaurant that Mick, the singer, goes to every week. I’ll be happy to be paid in-kind for that one ☺️. For now, we are just plugging straight into the PA with no monitoring. We will review that as we go along. Our set is unashamedly sing-along covers.

I’m going to guess that many organs, specially those in churches, are increasingly unplayed and therefore not maintained properly. That’s a great shame, although Anna Lapwood is doing her best to increase enthusiasm. I worked in The Netherlands for a while and was able to hear some recitals on the famous Muller organ in the Haarlem Grote Kerk. Immense!

Thanks for the tip! Getting ready for another cover band pub gig tonight.

Thank you! I need to find out, now, if the current filters are compatible with the plugs I had made in 2005.

Has anyone bought replacement or alternative filters for their ACS plugs? If so, where did you source them from?

Bad luck Jack, and all the very best for a speedy recovery. It puts into perspective the blisters I’ve got tonight after digging out a fire pit for a local youth project. As for the road back, I’ve no personal experience but are you familiar with Django Reinhardt? Amazing gypsy jazz guitarist. He lost the use of some of his left hand after a being in a caravan fire. You’d never know listening to his recordings. Good luck.

After last weekend’s fun with the originals band it was back to the covers band, Top Deck. This time at The Gate Inn, Loscoe In Derbyshire. We were expecting to start at 9pm but the pub was very quiet. So, with the agreement of the landlady we delayed the start time until 9.30. This paid off, as the place eventually filled up.

It’s not just Jazz festivals that get up to this. I’ve been to folk festivals where there’s been very little music that could really be termed folk. However, I did once go to a festival where there was country and western.

For the pubs we play at it’s 2x45. They generally want us to start at 9 and finish around 11, with a break in between. There can be a bit more variety for the Sunday afternoon pub gigs, which have become more common in the last 10 years.