sharkboy

I've heard this one used before, successfully I might add - "Don't tell me how to do my job. Do I come down to the docks and tell you how to blow sailors?"

[quote name='SubsonicSimpleton' timestamp='1427728087' post='2733539'] Positive mental attitude is really important when facing health challenges, overdoing it too soon because you don't want to let people down could be totally counterproductive. Invasive abdominal surgery can really mess up your core support, so please don't be tempted to pump yourself full of pain killers and play standing up, or with your bass on a strap - play sitting down on a chair with the weight of your bass supported on your lap and don't try to be a hero. If you can't manage to play sitting down like this without altering your painkiller dosage, you shouldn't be doing the gig - good health is priceless, and post op complications for abdominal surgeries can be very serious, so FFS talk to your doctor/surgeon and accept their advice, in the worst case a couple of cancelled gigs won't damage anyones health. [/quote] Very wise words here indeed. If you can get a comfortable seat/stool that will support you and allow you to play with the bass on your lap with absolutely no discomfort, then it may be achievable. But (and here I speak from experience) if you're going under general anaesthetic, then be prepared to be absolutely shattered for days afterwards, often even longer. After my op last year (a measly thyroidectomy), it was well over a week before I gigged, and even then it really took it out of me to the extent that had I had a gig the following night, I would have had to cancel. Speak to your GP because, with the greatest respect to the wonderful folk on here, we'll always try to find a way to gig, even to the detriment of our health!

Devastating news. I used to find it hard to comprehend that when I played my first gig at age 16, included on the set was a song recorded by a bassist who was almost my age when he laid the track down (Fire and Water, in case you're wondering). A true inspiration and influence. RIP

I recommend the Korg Pitchblack Pro, which is currently selling for around £55 on Thomann.de. Yes, the plastic rack ears are a bit flimsy, but theyve withstood a year of abuse in my rack with no problems so far. The unit performs brilliantly, it has standard or "strobe"style options,includes a built in lead tester and is visually quite eyecatching.

I met my first wife at one of our gigs many years ago. At that stage, we were gigging at least 2 nights a week, but quite frequently we'd do 4 nights (Wednesday to Saturday) straight for around 3 months. It was tiring, yes, especially since we all had other jobs, but boy the money was good! A couple of days after we were married she asked when I was going to tell the guys in the band that I was leaving - this was the first this had even been mentioned! I told her that had she brought that up before the wedding, there wouldn't have been one. The band was there before her, and if she kept pushing it, it would be there after her too. Needless to say, it was downhill from then on, though the money that I was bringing in from gigging did take the sting out of it. My second wife loves the fact that I play in a band. She comes to pretty much every gig we play, and often tells me how proud she is of me when I'm onstage. She'd never do anything to jeopardise my band, despite it interfering with her plans on a number of occasions. That's when you know you've got a keeper!

[quote name='thebrig' timestamp='1424639238' post='2698683'] I like! [/quote] Oh, come on, it has to be Highway to Heaven (or Stairway to Hell)!

Welcome to the Blacksmith club- we really should get jackets made! I got mine several months ago, and it's the best investment I've made in my live set-up. The compressor is brilliant, the tubetone is sweet, and the EQ is excellent. It's driving a couple of Schroeder cabs, one 2x12 and one 1x15. With both cabs, I'm running it at 2 ohms but at smaller gigs with just one cab it goes to 4. I have to admit, it took a couple of hours playing with the compressor to find a reasonable output level that didn't threaten to cause structural damage. It's not an amp that does subtle very well, either in sound or spec, but I wasn't looking for that in my new rig so I'm happy with it!

[quote name='ubit' timestamp='1424288289' post='2694836'] I'm not saying he's talenless, just that I don't like him or his music. I like rap, as said, Cypress hill, Tupac among others. I just don't like Kanye and if someone else does, bully for them. It won't change my outlook on his talent or lack of. I do think he is over rated, but again that's down to taste. What kind of world would it be if we all liked the same things ? [/quote] The thing is, I pretty much agree with all of this! Kanye is, IMO, undoubtedly talented, but his dickishness taints it all for me. Put it this way, if Kanye's music was a washing machine full of white clothes, then that annoying side of his personality is a red sock that has somehow crept into the drum. You just know that as soon as you switch it on, the red sock will appear in the window of the machine and ruin everything for you 😊

But then that opens up the whole "is sampling stealing?" debate (for the record, as long as it's credited then no, it isn't!). Does he have an overinflated sense of self-worth? Undoubtedly. Is he a disrespectful twat by doing what he did to Beck, Taylor Swift and others? No argument here. Is he a talentless hack? Not by a long stretch.

My thoughts on the whole thing are quite straightforward. Kanye did this for one reason - Kanye. He's not anywhere near as untalented an artist as a lot are making out in this thread - he's made a couple of albums that have in no small way defined the rap genre in the last decade or so, and as a producer he is rightly held in high esteem. Just because it's not your cup of tea doesn't make it any less valid artistically! But... He's a dick. And not even an erect dick, just a big floppy dick getting in everyone's face with his dickiness. His argument that he's doing this to highlight racism in the music industry is nonense - he started doing this because he thought that he should have won awards that went to someone else - it was throwing toys out of the pram - nothing more, nothing less. He's stopped concerts because the people that weren't standing on his command didn't let him see that they were disabled and couldn't stand. He's made openly antisemitic remarks. He called his kid North, ferchrissake! Outside of his music, the only thing he has done of any merit was to embarrass Bush about his reaction (or lack of) to the devastation of the poorer districts of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. And for that matter, why has Beyonce not said anything? After all, the man has form after bombing Taylor Swift's acceptance speech at the VMAs. If they're such good friends, why not just tell him to cut it out?

Last night was the third annual Rock for Alzheimer's gig in the Belfast Empire. We had a capacity audience of 500 and, after Ticketmaster took their cut, we managed to raise over £5000 for the Alzheimer's Society. So, a pretty damn good night all things considered!

My favourite comment from a music shop employee was about 30 years ago when my pal was looking to upgrade the stock pickups in his LP copy. A local guitar emporium had a set of Gibson pups for sale, so my mate asked the woman behind the counter "how much are the Gibson pickups?" "The what?" came the reply, so he pointed to the box on the shelf behind her. She picked them down, looked over the box before replying "these aren't pickups". "Of course they are!" he replied. "No they're not! How can they be, they're magnetic!" was the intelligent response.

Considering that as recently as May, Wilko was forced to cancel his gigs as the then apparently inevitable conclusion to his battle with cancer seemed imminent, he could have appeared with a washboard growling Swahili folk and I'd have been well stoked. We lose too many of our heroes each year, and the fact that Wilko could not only shout "I'm still here!", but go on to strut round the stage like he owned it with no less than the incredible Lord Watt-Roy quite frankly made my new year! Who cares if the guitar was a bit out of tune, or the voice wasn't perfect? Hate to break it to you, but 'twas often the case, even before the illness, but that's part of what made him Wilko!

I caught the Plant juggernaut as it swept through Belfast last night, and I can happily confirm all the praise it's been getting here - Percy was in great form, and his band were superb. The support band were The Last Internationale, the new group from RATM/Audioslave drummer Brad Wilk, and they did indeed rock

[quote name='skankdelvar' timestamp='1416256169' post='2608422'] Having been on both ends of the 'corporate event gig' I'd have to say it depends on the corporate event. Christmas parties for small to medium sized companies can be a total hoot. For one thing, most of the punters are decidedly up for it and they aren't paying for the alcohol. Even at so-called 'industry awards nights', the dance floor can end up looking like something out of 'Caligula' with punters stage-diving onto tables while others are bumping uglies upstairs in the gallery. Frankly, some of the best audiences I've played to have been substance-crazed worker drones off the leash with the spouse safely parked back home. OK, some events are a bit dinner / dance with plump matrons in posh frocks and the paternal boss earwigging convos. But the [i]other[/i] kind of corporate gig puts the average club gig well in the shade. The pay's good, too. [/quote] Good point, well made I guess it was the latter type of event that I was thinking about - I'm always up for playing "Caligula" style events!

Interesting debate so far. I take the point about doing it for the love of music but, ya know, sometimes it's nice to get some money doing what you love! From my perspective as someone with around 30 years in cover bands, it's been a long, mostly fun trip to get to the point where we were making decent money. Our first regular gigs were in a town about 40 miles outside of Belfast for the grand total of £70 (back then, we were a 6-piece, since slimmed down a bit to 5), so it paid for a couple of pints and a KFC on the way home. At the peak of Britpop, suddenly every bar wanted live bands and as we were "britpop friendly" in our set, we were gigging 3-4 times a week, every week. Over the course of 2 years I found myself making twice as much with the band as I did in my day job. However, I'm glad I kept the day job as this changed pretty quickly and a lot of bars realised that instead of paying £4-500 for a band, you could chuck some guy £50 to bring his box of records along. Suddenly the choice of gigs disappeared, bars that were once our bread and butter were DJ-only and the money started to dry up. We still had some good regular spots but, and this is the important part for this debate, we never dropped our fee. We knew we were worth it, we had a track record to stand over that and by god we weren't going to compromise. Nowadays, we're still playing and still charging and finally there seems to be a bit of an upswing in live venues again. We're getting interest from venues and towns we'd never played before and we've even started to do an "introductory offer" for anyone who baulks at the fee initially, where we'll do the first couple for a reduced fee on the grounds that if we pull the punters and the bar likes us, we'll renegotiate. Hey, art it may be, but its also an industry so why not use industry tactics? One last thought about the wedding/corporate side - I've never been a fan of these events. We don't do a particularly wedding/corporate-friendly set (mostly classic/indie rock), and when we do do weddings, its on the understanding that they get the same type of material (we do let them pick the set from our list of covers - we're not monsters! - and will try to learn the first song if it's appropriate). If they want the typical wedding songs they can hire a DJ to play them. This seems to work well. Maybe it's the old rebel in me, but corporate events just seem like a sell-out too far

As much as I love The Who, I can't think of them playing My Generation these days without flashing back to the Spitting Image take on the song: "People try to put us down, just because we're still around". There was loads of angsty music back in the 60s, right beside the insipid pretty boy (or pretty girl) pop songs. Same with the 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s and - surprise surprise - 10s. Nothing's changed and I seriously doubt it ever will, despite Simon Cowell's best efforts. Hell, just look at what happened a few years ago when RATM became the Xmas no. 1 single!

[quote name='simon1964' timestamp='1414155258' post='2586509'] +1. We do "By the Way" (Drop D) [/quote] That bloody song is a curse! I've got our keyboard player trained to shout "Hipshot!" in my ear as soon as the song is finished

I was so stoked to hear this news earlier - I had tickets to see the great man in Belfast recently, but it was cancelled due to ill health. Here's to a full recovery and a return to what he loves doing most. Now for my NWR story - don't worry, it's on topic! Some years ago, Wilko's R&B trio were playing in a tiny venue in Belfast. The gig was on the 1st floor, so we were queuing on the stairs before the doors opened, chatting about the impending show. I had heard that NWR was playing with Wilko, and was raving about him to my pal. Just then, a voice in my ear says "Aw, thanks very much mate!". I turn around to see the man himself right behind me, bass guitar case in hand and grinning from ear to ear. Apparently, he'd heard me drop his name, and had been standing there for a few minutes listening in We chatted for a few minutes, then went into the venue to enjoy one of the finest gigs I'd ever experienced - top bloke!

[quote name='Reissueplayer' timestamp='1412611302' post='2570362'] I'll keep an eye out for midgets then. What about Schroeder? I read somewhere they cut through the band noise quite well. They don't seem to get much attention anymore though [/quote] I'm a recent Schroeder convert, currently playing through a 1212L and 15L and it's incredible how the B&C neo speakers cut through the rest of the noisy buggers in the band! I think the lack of attention they get now is because they don't have a UK dealer any more and so aren't as easy to get as before. When buying the last cab, I asked Jorg Schroeder about this and he explained that he had to drop the previous distributor because there were issues about them passing off used cabs as new. It's definitely worth getting in touch with him if you're looking for an extremely lightweight and reasonably priced cab, and he's happy to keep the import costs down as much as possible (he adds with a subtle wink ). There are plenty of custom options available to ensure you've a real one-off cab

Me with the alternative indie cover band My more traditional cover band, The Arms of Venus De Milo, at last year's Rock For Alzheimers charity gig in Belfast - £8k raised so far and RFA 15 booked for 7 Feb 2015. Nothing like a blatant plug for oneself!

[quote name='stingrayPete1977' timestamp='1409603852' post='2541497'] Turn up with a silly haircut, no amp and no manners then be preapred to hear what a clean DI coming back at you via a beer and piss soaked PA wedge from the 80s sounds like [/quote] Now where's that "like" button? I'm happy to let a few friends use my stack, as they know that if they blow it, they pay for it, and they'll owe me some serious favours afterwards. If someone turns out expecting to use it without even having the decency to check in advance, then they'll quickly get very familiar with Mr DI Box and stingrayPete's piss-soaked monitors. We once had a well-known comedian turn up at a function that we were playing, insisting on using our PA only to spend the first 5 minutes of his set complaining about the sound and the mic (for the record, they were both more than fine). Our singer's response earned him eternal kudos in our eyes - he went up, took the mic off him, switched off the PA and told the comedian "looks like you'd better speak up, f#@ker!"

[quote name='karlfer' timestamp='1409563046' post='2540804'] Just a slight word of caution. A lot of us were fit and perfectly capable of lugging 4 x12's, 2 x18's, 4 x 15's back in the day. Now a lot of us are not, due to lugging those cabs up and down stairs 4 times a night for years. Lift properly, learn the lesson us owld gits learned the hard way [/quote] Quoted for painful truth! As a recent convert, I'd second recommendations for a good lightweight 2x12 and a class D head. My TC blacksmith is amazing, though not the cheapest. The RH750 would be a fine substitute, and is versatile enough to cover any sound you might want. There are plenty of good options for 2x12s out there, and if you've enough left in the budget you could always buy 2 for more versatility!