louisthebass

Remember buying this on CD when it came out - great album. The bassline is very Francis Rocco Prestia inspired.

Looks good! Subscribed 🙂

Sad news indeed as Licorice was there at the start of Rock & Roll in the 1950's. He was part of Marty Wilde's Wildcats who backed Eddie Cochran on his ill fated 1960 tour of the UK:

Licorice and Brian Bennett with Eddie at the NME Poll Winners Show February 1960:

I used to have one of these, but definitely a "bass of two halves" for me. One good, one not so good.

I really loved the sound of the MM p/up soloed. Downside for me was the balance - definitely neck heavy, even with lightweight tuners. The top horn being extended would have helped with that. Apart from that, it's a good bass, and you got that for a steal!

On 03/09/2020 at 07:39, police squad said:

I was lucky enough to play in a Jam tribute for a bit. I realised then how much of an influence BF was to me. Most of the fills I would do were very similar to Bruces.  

 

Like it - I've never been able to play with a pick...

7 hours ago, police squad said:

one of my biggest influences

Same here - learned a lot of his lines from The Jam records over the years. 

Met Bruce at the 2013 LBGS on the Rotosound stand. Very humble guy, definitely not a "pop star". 

6 minutes ago, steantval said:

😀😀😀😀😀 and she calls Eric’s music mediocre, I suppose she has her opinion.

 

Not for me I'm afraid, but if someone likes it that's fair enough...

2 minutes ago, Grangur said:

All a bit like McCartney really - did some great songs in the past, but now we have the co-writer of Sgt Pepper and The White Album, is now writing "Silly Love Songs" and "The Frogs Chorus"!!

Maybe they get complacent and don't really care, or maybe the passion has gone and it's now about the bank account maintenance.

Agree. I wonder if the "creative juices" just get lost in the need to churn out material to either keep the bank balance going, or to satisfy the record companies...

EC without a doubt, has been among one of the most influential musicians this country has produced in the last 50 odd years.

The only problem is that a lot of his material post "461 Ocean Boulevard" has sounded pretty much the same. I think the only good album he did in that period was "From the Cradle", where he went back to his roots in the Blues.

This is just my opinion, but his best work was with John Mayall, Cream, Blind Faith, and the Derek & the Dominoes period.

And I have absolutely no idea who Phoebe Bridges is...

On 30/07/2020 at 11:41, Newfoundfreedom said:

This came up on another thread and I though it was an interesting topic for discussion. 

If a venue where you played regularly asked you to play for free, given that the current social distancing measures make it difficult for any venue to make money, would you do it, at the risk that without your support the venue may have to close for good? 

I haven't read all the thread, but this is my take on things; when (or if) things go back to the way they were, I suspect pubs will not really have the financial freedom to pay bands on the previously agreed figures. The most likely way a band will get anything close to "a fee" will be the old passing the hat / jug around, but as people's livelihoods have also been affected, there won't be a huge amount coming out of anyone's pocket.

Like others, I feel that if you provide a service, you should get paid something, but I really miss playing live and doing rehearsals at the moment, so I would feel very tempted to literally play for nothing. Judging by the way things currently are, I'm not even looking at going back until 2022 now..

I still think this lady is one of the best Soul / R&B vocalists to come from the UK.

Recorded in Muscle Shoals 1969; Barry Beckett (keys), Roger Hawkins (drums), David Hood (bass), Jimmy Johnson (guitar), Duane Allman (slide guitar):

Joni Mitchell (Max Bennett, Jaco Pastorius, Larry Klein)

Suzanne Vega (Mike Visceglia, Tony Levin, Bruce Thomas)

Bonnie Raitt (Freebo, Hutch Hutchinson)

Aretha Franklin (Chuck Rainey, Tommy Cogbill)

Melissa Etheridge (Kevin McCormick, Pino)

Suzy Boggus (Lee Sklar)

Kirsty McColl (Guy Pratt, Chucho Merchan)

2 hours ago, martthebass said:

Not sure how this 'live music outside' is going to work.  The information around these parts that is coming back from venues is that the audience has to be seated and you can't have 'lively' music that would encourage dancing and/or loud singing.  That pretty much rules us out then until some level of normality for inside gigs can be resumed with minimal risk. 

27 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

Yeh, that would rule us out too, we are a band to dance and sing to, without that what is the point?

Hmm.. maybe time to start a new prog band..

Saw on Facebook that Beverley Knight's outdoor "Drive in" gig has been cancelled. I hate to say it but I don't think gigs in earnest are gonna happen until Level 1 / Vaccine / C-19 magically disappears. That won't be until maybe middle of 2021 going on the way the UK is working through the threat levels (in my estimation).

I had a WhatsApp discussion with the singer in one of my bands, and we agreed that C-19 is forcing people to think more creatively... By that, I mean people recording remotely and putting cover videos out, or maybe even going back to writing their own original material and putting that out into the world. It might be a leveller for all age groups to do this, and we may even get back to a stage where some really great and new material comes to the fore.

53 minutes ago, chris_b said:

My school band opened the first set with Last Night and the second set with Soul Finger. Stax is imprinted on my soul.

I envy you! One of the things I would love to do before I stop playing is to play in a really good soul band with a horn section. I'd thought about trying to get a section attached to one of my current bands, but that's quite difficult as they prefer written arrangements etc...

9 hours ago, chris_b said:

The Mar-keys were a bunch of school kids, including Duck Dunn and Steve Cropper. They made a record, Last Night, which we did in my school band.

I thought the Bar-Kays were Otis Redding's touring band.

Yep, Otis Redding's backing band was indeed the Bar-Kays ("Soul Finger" being an instrumental hit in 1967), 4 of whom were tragically killed in the plane crash later that year. 

Duck toting a Jazz Bass with The Mar-Keys:

This thread would not be complete without this:

21 minutes ago, chris_b said:

If you can carry off a busy bass playing style then good for you. There are players who can do that and styles where busy can fit, but most busy players seems to be of the "look at me and my clever playing" school.

"Less is more" is a way of dropping a gentle hint that someone's "incredible" playing is really a pile of shite, the bass equivalent of verbal diarrhoea, and that their busy and inappropriate lines aren't making it.

+1 There's a lot of good bass players out there who know "when to keep their chops in their pocket". Guys like Pino, and Mike Visceglia (Suzanne Vega's bassist) are a couple that spring to mind. 

Every band I've played in whether it be an originals or a covers band, I've gone in with the mentality that it's mine and the drummer's job to make everyone else sound good. If I've played my part in that, then I'm happy.

31 minutes ago, chris_b said:

Have a listen to the other bass players working in the various studios in the southern states; Tommy Cogbill at Fame, Mike Leech at American, David Hood at Muscle Shoals and Vernie Robbins and George Allen at Malaco, and all the other guys. They were fantastic exponents of the "less is more" school of bass playing.

I'd probably throw in Jerry Jemmott and Norbert Putnam into that mix as well. I think JJ did sessions at Criteria in Miami and NP was also at Fame? Leroy Hodges is another one as well - he's on some of Al Lee's classic tracks.

52 minutes ago, Chiliwailer said:

Bought my first bass there.

Same here, there was an afro-caribbean girl who played saxophone with a popular London based Jazz outfit based on Art Blakey's Messengers sold me my bass, and also told me the story about Mark King working there for a time.

40 minutes ago, chris_b said:

If you strip away the various levels of my bass playing that have been laid down over the last 50 years or so, you'll find Duck Dunn at the bottom, the foundation to everything I play. Sadly I never got to see him live.

Same here, but I was fortunate enough to see both Dunn and Cropper play live. The Blues Brothers Band did a gig at Hammersmith in about 1988 (I think) and it was great just to see those two legends on stage. Alan Rubin and Lou Marini were in the horn section, Danny Gottlieb was on drums, and Matt "Guitar" Murphy was on guitar. Eddie Floyd was one of the guest vocalists.

Oddly enough, the support band that night was "The Boogie Brothers Band" who were pretty much a Blues Brothers tribute act, but I think they had to be a bit careful about what they played that night...

One of my bass playing heroes and one of my major influences - remember hearing all those great Soul records when I was little as my brothers were really avid collectors of Stax back in the day.

This book is definitely worth getting:

11 hours ago, toneknob said:

Now is the perfect opportunity to avoid tab and go straight to reading music.  If I was to give one piece of advice to me starting out 100 years ago, it'd be try to avoid tab if poss. 

This - wish I'd learned to read years ago too. Would've taken me on a very different career path. There's a keys player in one of my bands who does pit work occasionally and he said he'd take me on for the pit band, but the only thing that lets me down is that my reading chops aren't great ☹️