Happy Jack

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.

Have you never done it with a lady, then? Nudge nudge, wink wink.

Yup, in the main they are. Far fewer non-driving males than females, far fewer Dads with childcare issues than Mums.

Bin there. Dun that. Bought the full drag outfit. Unbelievable levels of weaponised bovine faeces enter the equation as soon as you start trying to recruit a female singer, and the younger they are the worse it is. I very nearly started (yet another) thread about this after spending SIX MONTHS trying to find a competent singstress who could read. Turned out that none of them could read an advert (or in one spectacular case, an entire extended WhatsApp discussion by the band of the impending gig, for which she arrived at my studio for "rehearsal" just as the rest of us kicked off in front of a live audience three miles away) but ALL of them are very good at reading the lyrics off a sheet of A4 paper which keeps falling off the music stand. "Yes, I know the advert said that I MUST have a car but I didn't think it mattered. By the way, can someone give me a lift back to Woking after every gig?" "Yes, I know I told you that childcare wasn't an issue because my Mum lives close to me, but actually I can't do any rehearsals at all. Not a problem though, because I'll turn up at the gig note-perfect and fully rehearsed." "Yes, I know we agreed to rehearse every week but I'm really busy. October? Does October work for you?" And all that's way before we get anywhere near the ones who can't sing, or stay in time, or recognise any of the artists. "So that one's by ... I'm sorry ... who? OK, how do you spell Aretha?"

I say Length = 100cm and the courier never even mentions it when he arrives. 😂

DPD, always use DPD. They're the only courier who always turn up on time, and whose tracking always works. Others shipping stuff to me use every courier known to man, with entirely predictable (and usually unhappy) results. I've used only DPD for the last five years when shipping stuff to others, and I have yet to encounter a problem.

Paging @Owen https://the-bace.com/ Just saying ...

Picture the scene. It's August 1979, my mate Will knows a dealer who we've agreed to meet in the public bar at The Nashville. We're at one of the chest-high 'planks' that ran along the North End Road frontage with our beers, waiting for yer man to show, and we realise that the place is filling up with tribes. London was really tribal in those days ... punks, skins, Teds, neo-mods, football hooligans on a Saturday, you name it, and the tribes never, ever mixed. Will had the self-preservation instincts of a lemming so he flagged down a passing skin and asked him how come? "Great new band on tonight, mate, Madness. You gotta see them!" Will and I looked at each other. Madness? Never heard of them. We scored half an ounce of Lebanese and left ...

And ... back to Page #1. Here's a review from 1977 (not rock'n'roll but deffo retro doowop):

They were given the whole weekend, so clearly they were still a very big draw.