chrisba

1 minute ago, Burns-bass said:

 

 She's working 24 hours for about £15 an hour which is fair enough. She's exchanging her labour for a ticket, which is part of the ethos of the event, all good.

 

But I still think artists there should be paid. Won't clog up the thread anymore.

Do performers get a ticket too ??? I assume they do.

My daughter is working at her third consecutive Glasto, having failed to get tickets each time. My understanding is that the event is 8-10 times oversubscribed, and if just a small percentage of those unsuccessful applicants are prepared to work in exchange for a ticket, then the event is cheaper for everybody. She works for a charity ( firstly Wateraid and now Oxfam ) , who presumably get paid for providing staff ( toilet cleaner first time, now marshal/steward ).

In return for a number of hours work ( 4 x 6 hour shifts, I think ) she gets full festival ticket, exclusive camping area with showers, access to staff bars and food for each work shift. If they fail to complete the work aassigned to them, then they have to pay the full price for everything provided, and will never get invited again. Almost never happens. Apparently, there are many people who do this every year, and the charities tend to look favourably on applications from previous workers. Usually, they are expected to do another festival too, to get into Glastonbury.

This year, she's been invited to go early ( she went down on the previous Saturday ) and do all her shifts before it all kicks off on Friday. She was well chuffed about that, but it means spending 9 nights in a tent !

6 hours ago, Jean-Luc Pickguard said:

I used to know a band called Party Seven. There weren't seven people in the band though.

I hope they made an album called "What Knees ?"

When we came up with our new band name, we checked everywhere we could like Spotify, iTunes, Twitter, Soundcloud and MySpace and eventually found a party covers band in Worthing or somewhere that had the same name and a page on Facebook. They didn't seem to have had any activity for 5+ years, and as an indie originals band in Reading, we were unlikely to cross paths, either in real life or online.

As coming up with the new name had been a long and occasionally fractious process, we decided to stick with the it. No regrets.

Sit Down by James.
 

I was sitting in a pub watching a couple of mates playing acoustic covers, sitting around a table. The bass player wandered off to get the beers in, and I picked up his bass and asked how to play it.

3 notes later, I knew I had to get one of my own and learn how to play it.

The rest, as they say, is his story.

3 hours ago, Pea Turgh said:

I’ll post you my old one if you like!  My new one arrives from Amazon this afternoon 🤞🏻

Thanks, but I think I'll just get some lead-free solder instead.

On 07/01/2025 at 20:45, Pea Turgh said:

Somehow I’ve turned in to the bloke who fixes stuff amongst my circle of musicians friends.  I have an old soldering iron that doesn’t seem to get hot enough for modern lead free stuff, so I need a new iron.

I've got the opposite problem. I lent my ( very ) old soldering iron to my boss, who, rather inconveniently, died before returning it. I didn't feel it was appropriate to approach his widow for it's return, so I bought a new one.

This is obviously designed for modern, lead free solders, but I've got a massive reel of the old stuff. The new iron seems to practically incinerate it rather than gently melt it. I guess I need to get some new solder to match.

Dropzone played the Purple Turtle in Reading last night. Much bigger crowd than I was expecting for a cold Monday night in December.

Lots of cheering and dancing, and good feedback afterwards. Hopefully will get some more gigs there soon. ( We've played in the rather dingy basement before, but this was our first on the main stage )

I used their house Blackstar bass combo, I managed to make it sound like I wanted fairly quickly, but I'm pretty undemanding in this regard.

I have seriously considered making a 3 string bass, as I rarely use the G-string on my P bass.  Pickups would be an issue, thought about using half of a 5-string p-bass set, but they are expensive and would force me into quite tight string spacing.

4 hours ago, WalMan said:

I think the boot is a great look. I need to get one myself. Perhaps two.

16 hours ago, Hurricane Jimmie said:

 

And now I'm looking for a chance to use 'Tight Gits' in polite conversation... although I'm only guessing what it really means.  😁

 

 

Well, Git is a general purpose insult for somebody ( usually male, I think ) that you don't like. Tight just means mean, miserly, parsimonious, very unwilling to spend money or use resources.

Yeah, I'd do it if I was really keen to get the gig and it was genuinely important to look a certain way to get it ( and keep it ) . I wouldn't do anything permanent, like a tattoo or a facelift, but fllers, make-up , hair cut and dye, yes.

Don't want to open can of worms, but I assume the OP is male ? How differently would a female think ? My guess is they wouldn't think twice.

Played at a private party at a friend of our singer/guitarist, who has a house with a garden that runs down to the Thames and it's own private island. Every year, he has a mini festival over a summer weekend, inviting friends and neighbours , of which he has lots  ( inviting the neighbours gets around the noise problems, but the pub next door complains if they play after 11pm, ironically )

"Stage" is on a patio, that normally has a sail cover over it, but as it was a beautiful evening, and we were on first, it hadn't been rigged. Amp was basically in the flowerbed to give me room to stand. Played a hour plus set, split in half by some great homemade curry being served.  Lots of dancing and good feedback from the small but lively crowd. Mrs B enjoyed being pampered. I think there are about 6 more bands over 3 nights in total. Lovely, generous people.

2 hours ago, SumOne said:

I'm on the side thinking pull up banners look like you're at a corporate event (possibly fine for function bands playing at corporate events, not very rock n roll though). 

 

We've got a thick vinyl 2x2m (I think 3m long x 2m high might have been better) with metal rings and use big re-usable zip ties. It means a bit of clambering about at setup/down but we're yet to play a venue where there isn't something to tie it into behind the drummer. 

We're similar. About 2m x 1m, with metal rings in each corner. We bring a lot of bits of string ( reasonably thick and decent quality, I think it's old tent guy ropes ).  Never failed to find something to hang it from, usually try and loop the string over something and tie it lower down for a quicker removal.

I was in Corsica last week, and as we walked back from the beach, there were 2 accordianists playing typical French music in the town square, with loads of people sitting ouside the bars under the shade of the trees listening to them, some of whom were drinking pastis, and the rest of the square was taken up with people playing boules. So staggeringly French, it almost felt like a theme park. Adored the place, and sad to be home.

This looks useful, but I've yet to use it in anger...

https://www.looptube.xyz/

I used an image generator to help create our last album cover.  I asked for 4 men facing a setting sun in the style of Claude Monet. Chose this one from 16 options, some of which had 5 people. Our singer sometimes wears a hat like this. Had to remove a hat from one of the other 3, changed the colours completely by converting to b&w then recolouring the sun,  and did some other tweaks. Added the text myself ( used Gimp for all the manipulation )

That's exactly what I started with about 15 years ago. ( OK, mine was red ,and the Rumble only a 10 )

Not got far from that really. Learned enough in the first few weeks to bluff my way through a gig or two, probably done about 50 more since, sometimes where the band has outnumbered the audience and sometimes to several hundred.

Replaced the Squier with a Fender MIJ P-bass and bought an Ashdown combo for gigs. Still use the Rumble for practice ( which I don't do much now )

Good luck with everything...

....and , they've gone again...

They are back.   Very tempted...  https://www.thomann.de/gb/harley_benton_mv_4msb_seafoam_green.htm

We use BandHelper . Been using it for years , and it does everything we need. Does lyrics, set lists and autoscroll.  Available on Apple & Android.

1 hour ago, lozkerr said:

Never knew Solaris ran on PCs though - I thought it was SPARC only?

No, Solaris ran ( runs ) on x86 as well. Common code base for vast majority of it, and a pretty similar release cycle.

Still some supported versions, I believe, although it's all owned by Oracle now, who have other fish to fry.
 

( I was a Sun / Oracle for nearly 20 years. Sun was the best company I ever worked for. Oracle definitely weren't )

3 hours ago, Happy Jack said:

Ahem ahem ...

 

 

 

Happy to be corrected here. My requirement for this has gone away, so I haven't kept up to date with what's available now.

2 hours ago, Angel said:

@chrisba You are doing the Roland Bass Cube a dis-service there! It is an excellent sounding mini amp! I tried other mini bass amps back in the day and they were all poor and yes, tinny, but the cube was poles apart. I'm on my second one, used the first at home until it eventually died, just HAD to get another.

 

I bought a powered speaker for home use, a secondhand Headrush FRFR 108. Not cheap but I'm loving it.

 

 

Well, I tried one ( the old, 4 speaker one ) and didn't like it at all. Didn't suit my p-bass, not enough low end. Not tried the newer 2 speaker version.