Happy Jack

Just in case you’re wondering what other earth-shattering events took place on that fateful day, here you are: Key Events & Themes: Austerlitz Reenactment: Thousands gathered in the Czech Republic for the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Austerlitz. Ebola Discovery: Scientists identified fruit bats as animal reservoirs for Ebola in Gabon and Congo. China Tax Abolition: China announced it would end its national agricultural tax in 2006. Hurricane Epsilon: Became the 14th hurricane of the record-breaking Atlantic season.

I’d fallen out of love with pop music in the mid-80s and simply stopped listening. Until my daughter started playing ‘her music’ in the car on long drives, I’d never heard of Nirvana or Red Hot Chilli Peppers or Lenny Kravitz or … or … or … But that’s OK. I’ve spent the last 20 years playing almost exclusively the music of 1955-85 and I’m really very happy with that. I haven’t yet played my 1000th gig but it’s getting closer – two or three more years should do it. It’s hard to over-state the impact that Thursday afternoon was to have on the rest of my life. I didn’t have a clue at the time, obviously, but that decision to go up to my daughter’s bedroom led to a new interest and obsession, an entirely new friendship group, a divorce and a re-marriage, early retirement and a new career. Oh yes, and Basschat.

December 29th 2005 was my 49th birthday. I took the family out to a nice restaurant for a celebratory lunch, had rather too much to drink (yes, we walked back), and by mid-afternoon I was sitting in my study when I remembered the bass. I played honky-tonk piano as a teenager and the cowboy chords on guitar, sang in several choirs, so the musical background was there but it was all 30 years in the past and included no bass EXCEPT I’d always sung along with the bassline of songs. While my friends were miming Paul Kossoff’s string bends in the solo to All Right Now I’d be going “ba-bum da bum-bum bum-bum bum-bum” with Andy Fraser – stop laughing, you know the bit I mean. The bass was a Dean Edge that my daughter chose at Macari’s in Charing Cross Road – I took her there specifically because of the Beatles connection. I remember almost nothing about it because I traded it in p/x for a Hofner 500/1 1963 Re-Issue within a few months. The practice amp was a generic, lightweight thing with (IIRC) an 8” speaker. At the time, and in my tiny study, I was impressed with how loud it was. The tuner was one of those Korg plug-in types that everybody used in those days and carried on using until a year later, when the clip-on tuner exploded onto the scene. And the teach-yourself book? Well that was by Basschat’s very own @Stuart Clayton … Crash Course, and I can still remember (and play!) that very first bassline. My intention was solely to be able to play along to my favourite songs, especially Macca’s basslines for The Beatles. I had genuinely no interest in playing with others, still less being in a band and performing live on stage. I hadn’t been to see a band play live in years at that point (family, career, family, career) and the only pubs I ever went into were the newly-invented gastropubs for the occasional Sunday lunch with my family.

Twenty years ago today, pretty much to the minute, I started playing bass guitar. I went up to my daughter’s bedroom, picked up her bass and practice amp, guitar lead and teach-yourself book, and carried them all down to my study. Plugged it all together, tuned the bass, opened the book to Lesson #1 and started. Just like that. There’s a back-story. Obviously there’s a back-story. As a pre-teen, my daughter was one of those annoying people who could learn any musical instrument without any apparent effort. She was also even lazier than me and would abandon said instrument as soon as anyone suggested she put some work in and get really good. By the time she was 12 she had already been through flute, piano and guitar and then she announced that what she really wanted was to play bass. So I tole, I dun TOLE that girl, I’m getting fed up with this and I won’t keep doing it … if you do the same as you always do then I’ll come and take that bass and I’ll learn to play it myself. You know what she said? “Yeah right, Dad, like that’s gonna happen.” So she played the Badass off that bass for a couple of months (Blink-182 and Green Day, mainly), then put it on its stand and abandoned it. That would have been about October of 2005.

Any excuse to re-post this ...

But why on Earth did he play something different in a different style for the second part of an A/B test?

Mind you, alternatives to a Prog Xmas are available:

... it still sounded like Chris Squire.

I've mentioned this before but during Covid I had to take a bass down to Laurence Dixon. Opened the door to the 'showroom' and there were maybe a dozen DBs lined up on the floor, just in from a big London orchestra for fettling and/or repair. Every single one of them had faint but clear pencil marks on the neck where the dots would be ...

Fascinating stuff, but presumably this only really works when you're playing acoustically?

I am SO looking forward to the Ten Items Or Less checkout at Sainsburys in an era of blockchain for everything ...

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Back in my biking days the Online Groups I belonged to were filled with people boasting that they'd saved 6oz (on a 350lb motorbike) by replacing the front disk caliper with titanium or whatever. I always used to post that you could achieve the same by going to the bog before riding ...

As a direct result of watching that video, the next Junkyard Dogs gig will feature me turning to the drummer and saying, "Paul, the next song should be played as a Scotch Snap". I will then repair to the nearest A&E to do something about that drumstick ...