Happy Jack

But mic'ing the kick is a quick'n'easy way to put a smile on the drummer's scowl. You don't actually need to plug the mic in, you understand; just so long as he sees you putting a mic there, he's your friend for the rest of the evening.

Most interesting thing there is the implication that Late Again was the intended A-side while Stuck In The Middle was going to be the B-side.

Interesting. I never had Pino down as a shrinking violet.

Understood, but if we have a "big central bass zone" then won't the punters equally gravitate according to taste? I get the thing about the side walls, but very few pubs have anything as simple as that. At the George IV for example, on the band's right there are raised seating areas in large alcoves with enormous windows at their backs, on the band's left is a large bar with dozens of people jumping up and down trying to attract the attention of the bar staff. EQ-ing for that space is a nightmare.

Yup, that was pretty much what I was wondering.

NOOOOOOOOOO!!! If you're trying to get back into playing, do not under any circumstances try to start a new band. You will be entering a world of pain, frustration, communication breakdowns, hypocrisy, and total lack of commitment. It will put you off for life. Let some other poor bugger go through all that and set up a new band. Then go and join it.

Bwahahahahahaha!!! I picked up a bass for the very first time on my 49th birthday. I don't think your life is over because you're 45 ... As others have said, get yourself down to all the Open Mics within your range, start playing with other people again, get your face and your skills known. It won't be long before things start to happen.

Don't know if I'm really careful or just lucky, but I've never ever had a bass 'fail' on me at a gig, and my only major problems with amps have tended to be for external causes. Manufacturing standards are just so high pretty much everywhere on the planet that it's quite unusual to find an instrument or an amplifier that lets you down. Pedals, now, ah well, that's an entirely different story ...

One thing we could try next time we play there with the covers band (19th August, so probably half-empty again) would be to put the subs together in the centre, and the tops on poles to each side. Both my main bands are 3-piece so having a great lump of 3'-high speakerage in the middle wouldn't be as disconcerting as it might be for a larger band.

Yup. That was the first time in nearly 10 years that we've played the George without taking the MarkAudio sub-based rig. We knew the pub would be half-empty in mid-July so probably fewer than 200 people in front of us, and the rock'n'roll band really doesn't need that much volume. As we drove home from the gig, we were discussing whether we should revert to always taking the big subs simply because they're so much harder for drunks to knock over.

Picking up on a comment by @Phil Starr it would seem sensible for a bass playing forum to have a section for PA and related equipment, equipment and operation. At least half the bands I know have their bass player either supplying or operating the PA, so it seems to go with the territory. Thoughts?

Bill, my bands play very few gigs where placing our subs 15 meters apart is an option. @Silvia Bluejay and I have accumulated a reasonable amount of PA kit over the years. Our biggest rig uses two Mark Audio subs (each a 2x10 with a 1000W amp), and pole-mounted on top of them either passive GX12s or more recently active Orion 15s by Bishopsound. We're not looking for extra sensitivity ... we have loads of headroom. Question - what 'damage' are we doing to our sound if those subs are just five or six metres apart?

Well that's a nice feather in the cap for Max Greco and [sfx], but he no longer seems to be on Basschat. ☹️

I saw The Who with Pino on bass at the O2 maybe 10 years ago. He needn't have bothered ... I didn't hear a single bass note all evening, the sound was that bad. I thought it was down to the venue (although the Stones sounded OK there) until I saw Fleetwood Mac at the O2; one of the best live bass sounds I've ever heard from Mr. McVie. He had a bloody great rolling rack unit of about 10 Orange amps next to him on stage, which I thought was a fair approach to foldback ...

All good, thanks. @Silvia Bluejay and I are obsessed with lightweight gear and these Bishopsound Orion units tick all our boxes.

London musicians are supposed to speak either Estuary English or Mockney. My Home Counties tones are way too posh for the pubs I play and I have to consciously 'lower' my accent to be acceptable.

Why? He knocked the unit onto me - I wouldn't be covered by PL. If he'd knocked it onto another punter then that's his fault and he gets sued, not us. This is one beneficial side-effect of having video at every gig we play ... there's no 'his word against ours' nonsense, we have actual evidence of what happened. Like most forms of insurance, PL is (in the main) a scam based on carefully-encouraged paranoia and of course a conspiracy against the laity. And no, I'm neither a conspiracy theorist nor a card-carrying Socialist Worker. 😂

Well your tears will come too late ...

"Top horn cut off cause of playing high up" Bwahahahahahahahahahaha ...

Specifically on the issue of driving, what I can attest to - certainly in London - is that getting a driving licence is just not a priority for young people. They can't afford a car, they have widespread public transport, they don't see the need. It's NOT a male/female thing as far as I can see; my son's friends are as short on driving as my daughter's. I find it quite bizarre. I steered both my kids (didja see what I did there? huh? didja?) towards learning to drive as early as possible, then bought them each a banger as soon as they passed their tests. Both of them have found car ownership a career essential and extremely valuable socially. Their friends, who for years largely relied on them to provide the transport, never seemed to 'get' just how dependent their lack of a licence made them.

WTF? 😂😂😂 I never said dem fings ...

It's a stock single-button response. If an item on Gumtree appears on your Facebook page and you click on it because you want to know more, the most common single-button communication that you're offered is: "Hi, is this still available?". It's just a suggested way of starting a conversation/negotiation, nothing sinister.

Not to worry Tom, apology accepted.