MarkW

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1429535935' post='2752344'] I have a lot of time for that film. [/quote] I love that film. My only problem with it is that the actor who plays Jesus Quintana also voices the Francesco character in the Disney film 'Cars'. Whenever my kids are watching it all I can hear is "Hey Lightning! You ready to be f*cked man? I would have f*cked you in the ass Saturday. I f*ck you in the ass next Wednesday instead. Wooo!"

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1429354299' post='2750689']There is a special place in hell for The Eagles though[/quote] I love the scene in The Big Lebowski where he criticises the taxi-drivers taste in music: "Come on, Man. I had a rough night, and I hate the f*ckin' Eagles, man!"

This is just brilliant! I've been laughing my socks off for days at some of this stuff! I have to say I share the hatred for just about everything that has been mentioned, with the exception of Clapton. OK, so Wonderful Tonight is an abomination I'll grant you, but Layla? That opening guitar riff still makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up! That said, I like most of Clapton's stuff up to about 1985, since when it's all gone off the boil. I saw him at the RAH in the early 1990s, and it was all rather tedious.

Anyone who has seen Mars Attacks! will be familiar with the spectacular incompatibility of Martian brain with Slim Whitman's "Indian Love Call". It occurred to me yesterday evening, as I was forced to endure No Doubt's "Don't Speak" whilst standing in the chippy, that there are some songs that have a very similar effect on me. In the end I popped outside to the newsagent to peruse the motorbike mags rather than have to listen to another second of it. I just can't stand it. I can't stand the singers horrible nasal voice, I hate the structure of the song, I hate the silly guitar solo in the middle, and I loathe the lazy 'Ooh-la-la-la' nonsense and the interminable ending. Having to listen to it actually makes me tetchy and bad-tempered. Am I alone, or do other people have songs that they physically can't bear listening to?

I have only ever had two 'compliments' from punters. The first was in the car park after a pub gig, from a man who told me and my band mates at great length that I was 'a f*cking amazing bass player' and that they were lucky to have me in the band. It would have been better if he hadn't been so hopelessly drunk that he fell face-first into a wooden planter and spent the next ten minutes on his knees being violently sick over the geraniums. The second was from a lady at another gig who sidled up to our keyboard player to ask if the bass player was married. Thankfully he said 'yes', because she was of such truly terrifying proportions that she could easily have swallowed Cyril Smith whole.

[quote name='Shedua511' timestamp='1427913263' post='2735860'] I find the six string a very different animal, while the fiver required minimal adaptation from fur strings.[/quote] Same here. I can flit between four- and five-strings without any effort, but the six-string really has me stumped. So much so that I may well sell it - it's beyond my abilities!

Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick, surprisingly - the place erupted! And I know Mustang Sally is irredeemably naff, but we do it last and get a load of pissed punters up on stage to sing it. The results can be err... entertaining

[quote name='Shedua511' timestamp='1427619154' post='2732273'] wouldn't it have been enough to tighten the screws that adjust the height of the mutes to avoid them touching the strings? Just wondering, that's what I do on my vintage stingray... [/quote] Yes indeed, but they were so manky that they would have had to be replaced if I was going to keep them, so I just whipped them off! :-)

I went the other way: I bought an elderly MM Sterling a few years ago that had the individual foam dampers for each string built into the bridge. I couldn't get on with it at all, so I ripped the foam off (according to a MM tech it's the same stuff foam rubber mouse mats are made of, should I ever want to reinstall them) and screwed the adjusters all the way down. Perfect!

Amnesia - you like reading, boobies and motorbikes, appear not to have much time for religion, and come from Stoke. Are you sure you're not me? This is very confusing...

Once, in about 1990, I was kicked out of a band audition with the words "And don't come back until you can play" ringing in my ears. I haven't progressed much since then...

Thankfully there aren't many photos of me playing: as much as I love it, I always seem to look as miserable as sin - like the 'before' photo in an advert for haemorrhoid cream. However, this one was taken at a function a couple of years ago. You'll notice I'm the only one without a music stand...

Spending the long drives to our summer holidays in the mid-80s listening to Elvis and the TCB band is what made me want to pick up the bass. I was 12 or 13 at the time. Finally got to meet Jerry at a gig a couple of years ago and told him his playing is what got me started all those years ago. Top bloke.

Cheers buddy :-) To be fair to our guitarist, I am a crap bass player: I can learn stuff like this easily enough (it's just a bit of pentatonic twiddling) but I can't solo to save my life, and anything by Claypool and co is so totally beyond me that I wouldn't even know where to start! It was a running joke in the jazz band I played in that whenever it said 'bass solo' it would be over to someone else... I'd love to be able to improvise, but I watch those fantastic Janek Gwizdala videos and just feel crushed. In the end I got so fed up with our guitarist making comments about how much better the band would sound with a decent bass player that I left. I'm in another band with him too, and at our last rehearsal his opening gambit to me was that they've got a proper bass player in the jazz band now, and it finally sounds great. I only picked the bass up less than three years ago after not having touched it for over 20 years, and before that I was just a self-taught teenager. I try to make up for the lack of technical pyrotechnics by playing tastefully and musically: more Duck Dunn than Mark King :-)

All good experiences here as well. I only live half an hour from their showroom, and they've always been fantastic whenever I've been in.

[quote name='JamesBass' timestamp='1423180182' post='2682052']Christ some of the vocals on that are strange! The I Need a Dollar one sounds very staccato and just not right! Cheers though [/quote] 'LA Woman' is my favourite - hysterically bad! Some of them are fairly decent, at least for my very basic purposes.

I use Karaoke Version: [url="http://www.karaoke-version.co.uk/custombackingtrack/"]http://www.karaoke-version.co.uk/custombackingtrack/[/url]. You can drop the bass (or any other track) out of the final mix, and change the key. Pretty cool!

[quote name='JapanAxe' timestamp='1422831160' post='2677414'] And did you let her? [/quote] Did I hell! She even had our drummer backed into a corner at one point, and was escorted out of the show ground by security later in the day for 'obscene behaviour'.

We played in the Black Sheep Brewery tent for the three days of the Great Yorkshire Show the year before last. Complete carnage as you'd expect. At one point a paralytic Irish woman staggered up to the stage, looked straight at me and said "Jeez, but you've got nice tits. Can I have a feel?"

[quote name='LITTLEWING' timestamp='1421952850' post='2667093'] Okay, okay. I didn't read it properly. It's just that as soon as I see the words guitar and attic I'm reminded of a mate's Fender Strat which he put up in his loft when he gave up playing for about ten years and when he retrieved it one day it was, well, not very healthy and I found it difficult holding back the tears... I'm back on the right tablets now. [/quote] Ha ha! No worries mate :-) I think I may have been lucky: I moved everything downstairs, and this morning they seemed OK. I'll keep an eye on them as the rest of the house dries out and warms up. Thanks folks!

[quote name='LITTLEWING' timestamp='1421881210' post='2666299'] What the hell is anyone doing storing guitars in an attic anyway ?? Have you been up there in the summer - feckin' hot like an oven, and winter - like a bleedin' walk in freezer. You want to shag your prized instruments to death, then carry on. You've only got yourself to blame when they're split, rusty and warped. 'Kin hell !!! [/quote] Yes, I've been up there in the summer and in the winter - it was my home office for five years before I moved into the local technology park. As I said, it's got central heating and is essentially just another room in the house like any other - neither too warm nor too cold, and my basses have been in there since we moved in nine years ago with no ill effects. Just as an aside, I've owned my oldest bass since 1988, and it still plays perfectly. It may just be that I'm not a complete f*cktard when it comes to looking after my instruments ;-)

[quote name='blue' timestamp='1421874510' post='2666154'] I hope none of your basses are permanently damaged. My advice is a little different than the rest of the responders. I say to everyone, play your basses regularly, don't collect and let them sit and don't leave or store bass guitars in basements or attics. Blue [/quote] They all get played regularly, and all but three of them get gigged regularly too. The attic is a proper conversion with central heating and is essentially another room like all the others - it's just that the upstairs radiators have been removed whilst the walls are plastered, which has suddenly made it very chilly up there. Combined with the extra moisture in the air from the plastering it meant I came home from work to a very unpleasant surprise!

Thanks guys. The problem is partly due to the plastering (a lot of moisture in the air as it dries) and the fact that they removed the upstairs radiators, so the attic is now considerably colder than it usually is - especially as we have a couple of inches of snow outside! What's the best thing to do with my basses? Should I slacken strings or leave them as they are? Really appreciate your help :-)

Hi folks. We're having some plastering done upstairs, and it seems to have caused a massive amount of condensation in the attic where all my basses live. It's all over the ceiling, dripping down the walls - everywhere. My trusty old MM Sterling is soaking wet, and the others are now out of tune with jangly actions. I've removed them all to a dry room, but what else to do for the best? Leave them as they are, or loosen the strings? Help! PS: no idea why the attached image has rotated upside down :-(

The funny thing is I learned this on a 4-string and play it the same way on the 5-string - using the low B to avoid changing position just feels like cheating, and it isn't half as much fun to play. Having a drummer who counts you in way too fast when you're playing live also makes playing along to the original a good bit easier!