Happy Jack

So basically he's pre-plopping the Festival Site. I like a man who thinks ahead ...

I'm down 24 gigs so far, with at least another dozen guaranteed to be cancelled, possibly more like 50. I think it's safe to say that I've missed each and every one of them, and I'd start gigging again this Friday if it was an option. It's not that I'm desperately bored or short of other stuff to do ... Lockdown unexpectedly turned out to be one of the busiest periods I can remember. But I took early retirement largely so that I could play more gigs, and I'm feeling pretty frustrated.

Nobody else using Castrol 10/40W then? OK, it's just me.

Yup, things sure are different over there.

The two bands that Brett references there are actually mine! "The Bulldogs" is his attempt to remember The Junkyard Dogs (70s covers), and "Damon & The Dynamites" is a much better stab at Damo & The Dynamites (rockabilly).

I use three of their Vocal FX pedals. As others have said, the Mic Mechanic is a genius piece of kit, a complete no-brainer. https://www.thomann.de/gb/tc_helicon_mic_mechanic_2.htm?sid=ff967fac4f3e0d4153656bbc9f6d772d When I'm mainly singing BVs in a 3-piece, I tend to use this instead: https://www.thomann.de/gb/tc_helicon_duplicator.htm Basically it's a Mic Mechanic with the Wet/Dry control replaced with ADT to thicken up my voice. With my rockabilly band, where I frequently have to do the whole Jordanaires thing, I use this: https://www.google.co.uk/shopping/product/10836893526893741269?lsf=seller:291943,store:17486815475102514008&prds=oid:9052323143970673685&q=tc+helicon+harmony+singer&hl=en&ei=UYfoXp2SMJKp1fAPyfCI0As&lsft=gclid:CjwKCAjw26H3BRB2EiwAy32zhT9lJ5x6XCQFak-py0xPN-cXmpT9Wki50qatAAYt2L_pvWfkF7kuNBoC2a4QAvD_BwE Those big VoiceLive modules assume that you're happy to fiddle with the knobs or scroll through a tiny LCD menu between songs. I know that a lot of people are very happy to do just that, but I'm strictly Fire & Forget ... for me the pedal is either on or off. The closest I get to knob twiddling is on the Harmony Singer, where I'd love to use the input from the bass to provide the key automatically but playing double bass live in rockabilly leans towards dodgy intonation, and dodgy intonation with one of these harmoniser pedals has to be heard to be believed.

Blimey! Motorway Services car park deals that I have known ...

Bizarrely, the second-biggest area for Lemonrock (after London & the Home Counties) is the SouthWest. No, me neither. Go to Lemonrock, go to Band Search, choose (say) Truro as your location with a radius of 50 miles, and you'll get a couple of hundred bands listed. My guess is Yes, they have music in the West Country.

The longest instrument I own is my double bass.

It will give Peter Jackson more time to re-make the film into three 4-hour epics laden with pointless CGI effects.

In all fairness, the headstock says quite clearly (in two places) that it's a Fender but entirely fails to mention Squier. They've had 50 years' experience of devaluing their own brand and this is just another example ...

Hey ... I'm just sayin' ...

Which bit is it cracking?

Chris Squire or Bob Birch?

Honestly, using his thumb to fret with, the boy's a fool. I have to say, the basses he brought along to the studio were impressively filthy ...

I can remember genuine US-made Musicmasters being described to me as "cheap copies" of the Mustang ...

Steering away from Fenders is of course a matter of taste - I did the same for years but I still can't offer any advice since your taste is unlikely to be identical to mine. As to what 'lightweight' means, a typical Fender Precision comes in around 9.5 lbs. It's a bell curve, and you can find P-basses that weigh 11 lbs and P-basses that weigh less than 8 lbs, but IME that 9.5 figure is where the great majority of them sit. In my 20s I would have thought of that as a lightweight bass. Now in my 60s, that's pretty much the top end of my range. A typical Fender Jazz is substantially heavier than a Precision - that offset contoured body is way bigger. My feeling is that anything under 8 lbs can fairly be described as 'lightweight', but don't forget that balance is crucial to the equation, and that your choice of strap is also very important. You can often save weight by going hollow-bodied or semi-acoustic ... a genuine German-made Hofner will usually weigh around 6 lbs, a Fender Thinline or similar (e.g. the Grosmann Classic Semi-Acoustic currently in the For Sale section) will be around 7.5 lbs. You can also save by going futuristic and minimalist ... check out Steinberger and similar. Above all, never lose sight of the fact that bad posture does WAY more damage than the weight of your bass ever could do.

Outstanding, and such a great photo too. You're dressed for jazz, but the line-up implies something else?

Kinell Roger ... is that really you?