Happy Jack

Is it sounding any different yet?

Me.

URGENT - Friday morning : someone to sing upbeat Christmas songs at Central Station Newcastle for two hours in the morning whilst we give out mince pies and leaflets. Solo singer/guitarist would be ideal. Electricity available. Budget available to musician £240. Event Timings: 10:00am-12:00pm Event Venue: Central Station Newcastle Please email [email protected] with your links

Step away from that Dremel Multi ...

https://www.joinmyband.co.uk/classifieds/styxx-is-now-taken-t1207694.html

No Chelsea fans around then?

Si's going to spend more time with his bass ...

I bought the ElBee 1210, used it for the first time last night (see my thread End Of A Basschat Era in General Discussion for video). Very happy with it. The strange arrangement of the speakers (lower 12" angled towards the floor, upper 10" angled towards my ears) worked very well and it's definitely easier to hear myself. Even at its first gig and with no 'loosening-up' time it sounds fine, and the fact that it's not quite in the same ballpark tonally as either the Markbass or Barefaced units I've had doesn't really matter since I always put some of the bass through FoH these days. Ergonomically, it's probably one of the best thought-out cabs I've had, small footprint, very smart handle placement, easy to carry with either one hand or two. Once again I'm amused to note that the finish is the same as Barefaced used right from the start, the finish that so many Basschatters gave Alex Claber a hard time for.

On 5th November 2011, the fourth line-up of The Junkyard Dogs took to the stage, playing the George IV in Chiswick. There was Rick on vocals & slide guitar, Paul the Drums (known to many from SouthEast BassBashes), @Happy Jack on bass, and our newest recruits @MacDaddy on lead guitar and @Silvia Bluejay on photography. The new line-up suddenly became the closest thing there was to The Basschat Band. Eight years and 24 days later (and over 200 gigs later too) we played our final gig with that line-up, fittingly enough at the George IV in Chiswick ... it just panned out that way. By now Silvie and I have married, of course, and Silvie has become our sound engineer and videographer, but apart from that nothing has changed - except that we've got better.

I am SO going to try unplugging the E-side F-hole looking for a G-spot.

Sorted - https://www.screwfix.com/p/ratchet-tie-down-straps-5m-x-25mm-2-pack/24567?kpid=24567&ds_kid=92700046638549236&gclsrc=aw.ds&ds_rl=1243318&ds_rl=1241687&ds_rl=1245250&gclid=CjwKCAiA_f3uBRAmEiwAzPuaM3Bodq2Ow887t_RLpBnKOkJL0ICeGxCu4zpzeWsI58g9Cr9Mt8z4wBoCcZsQAvD_BwE

It took me years to realise that I was a P-man and not a J-man, we're talking strictly binary here. Finally accepting the situation has saved me a serious amount of money in Jazz basses that I was able to walk away from rather than pressing the button. If you're strictly a J-man then why bother to hang on to a P-bass? You'll only ever play it out of a sense of duty, to justify still owning it.

Just starting out in 2006, I found a bizarre thing in a Denmark Street music shop ... it was a tiny electronic tuner with a spring-loaded clip which you could attach to the headstock of your guitar or bass! Amazing! Who knew such things existed? So I bought one and it was on my bass when I first played at a jam session. All evening, the more experienced musicians were coming up to me to look at it, go 'tut' and tell me it looked dreadful, then walk away shaking their heads. The following week, pretty much all of them had one on their headstock.

Mine just arrived. Only time for a quick test before heading up the road to Northampton ... so far all good.

Mind you, it's not just the punters. At a very well-known music venue in Dunstable, the owner/manager came over during the break, grabbed the sticks from the snare, sat down and started drumming. Really really badly.

At Ye Olde Swan in Burnham (a pretty lairy venue) I came back from a load-out trip to find a drunk lying down inside the gigbag for my DB and pretending to be dead.

So long as that band is a bunch of 15-year-olds trying to replicate the punk spirit of 1977. Otherwise, some ability and experience might come in handy.

Ray, if you PM your address to me I'll send you a couple of books that I found immensely helpful 13 years ago: Crash Course Bass by Stuart Clayton (a Basschat regular) and Blues Bass by Ed Friedland. It's been a while since I needed them. Jack

A couple of suggestions: Firstly, playing along with your favourite records is one thing, playing in real time with another musician (even just a single guitarist) is a very different thing and a very different experience. If you monitor things like https://www.joinmyband.co.uk/ (other websites are available) then pretty soon you'll find an advert placed by a guitarist or a drummer who is looking for a bass player to jam along with at home. Secondly, once you're up to speed with playing in real time with another single musician, don't be too quick to start applying to join bands. You're very likely to get knocked back for your inexperience both as a player and in band situations, and that can get very depressing. The natural halfway house between quietly jamming at home with a guitarist and joining your first proper band is to spend some time frequenting the local jam sessions and open mics. Your best bet is to find a blues jam, where most of the songs to be played are, essentially, 12-bar blues. How long does all this take? Well I picked up a a bass for the first time on my 49th birthday at the end of December 2005. By the summer of 2006 I was routinely jamming with a local guitarist. Autumn of 2006 I started attending a well-known & well-attended blues jam. Summer of 2007 I joined my first band but by Xmas we still hadn't played a gig. Spring of 2008 I joined another band and I played my first-ever 'proper' gig on 29th May 2008. Best bass-related thing I ever did was to discover Basschat (or, more accurately, one of its predecessors). I would never have been able to make the progress I made as fast as I did without a huge amount of advice and encouragement from this community. These days I play 60 - 80 gigs a year, all for decent money, with a couple of decent bands (see my sig). It's never too late ...

Now in all fairness, that's not my fault. I was perfectly happy with Dancing Spiderman until Ped and Charic stole him.

Sometimes you need to give a big hug to the people you hate. That way you'll know how big a hole to dig.