NancyJohnson

It's 8.20am. I'm working from home today, starting at 9.00am and I'm still in bed. My wife doesn't sleep well at all (awake from about 4.00am today, which isn't unusual) and is presently next to me rolled tight in the duvet, fast asleep. She's doing this shallow snoring that I find very comforting to listen to. 😊

It's extremely difficult to quantify the nuances of tone by application of verbs; somewhat akin to trying to describe colour to a blind person. Interesting an earlier post alluded to Alice In Chains. I remember listening to Dirt years ago and thinking (at the time) that Mike Starr's tone was quite dark, without any context as to what dark actually means. I suppose it's simply heavy on bass frequencies, plus a bit of overdrive. In truth it's really not that different to the tone Steve Priest was using during the golden era of The Sweet (Sweet F*nny Adams/Desolation Boulevard), 20 years earlier. As time has gone on - and given how businesses like Darkglass have curated and developed circuitry to create extremely 'dark' tones - Starr's tone has become less dark. This is much like how what passed for heavy metal in the 1970s could now pass as radio friendly pop/rock. About the only terminology that hits home for me is something I started using a few years ago. Ponk. It just seems to sum up the burpy/muted tone that extends from Motown through The Carpenters and even the baritone of Wichita Lineman.

I was given all the tracks nearly a year ago. Like a good little worker bee, I learnt everything. Never really felt the line up was particularly cohesive; never felt that the three musicians had a voice on equal to the singer.

Me and the drummer left about a day apart. The prospect of going through the whole process of having a new drummer and relearning the same 12 songs with him (or her) was a prospect I just couldn't face.

I was with the last band for nearly a year. Just sick of rotating the same dozen songs, the vetoing of new material, not jamming etc. Suppose this is what it must be if you're just a backing musician. Interestingly, the singer has lost his whole band in the last ten weeks. This probably says a lot for what we were sold Vs the actual reality.

Well, all my basses are now away. We've got friends coming over tonight and my wife just went, 'Can you get all this stuff out of the hallway?' Seemed as good as time as any. I spent a bit of time doing a bit of sorting out, giving them a little clean, making sure each case contained the correct strap, a headstock tuner, a couple of spare picks and closed each case. I suppose, that's going to be it for the time being.

Aah, to be old enough to remember when discussions about Fender's 70s QC always achieved consensus that a high percentage of their basses were dogs. Not the dogs. Now they're considered vintage.

The marketplace is an odd one. From a guitar perspective, I see an awful lot of very similar kit - dozens of posts for Fender Precision and Jazz basses, along with a proliferation of Stingrays; it's almost like it's getting to the point where there needs to be sub-forums by manufacturer! The trends within the Basses For Sale threads as well...there'll be nothing for sale made by (for instance) Lakland, then there's a few for no reason. Almost as if one guy decided to sell, them several other people see that and decide to follow suit.

It's not just basses, remember. MM prices are ridiculous generally. Fell in love with the St Vincent HH guitar a while back, retail of the production model 3 x mini-bucker model is now ridiculously nudging £3.5k (and this coming from someone who paid nearly £4k for a Gibson Theodore). I asked MM if they could do one with a single humbucker and just a single volume control - less work for them, just take it out of the router earlier, eh? - eventually got a reply, over a grand mark up. Bonkers.

First and foremost I'm fairly picky about the basses I've bought (one or two clunkers, but hey-ho), so wouldn't necessarily buy anything that doesn't fit my needs. Upgrade routes? Always put Dunlop Straploks on everything and with the old Thunderbird basses I'd always swap the bridge to either the Hipshot or Babicz replacements. More recently I've dropped John East circuits into my Lulls. They just expand things, give them a bit more oomph. That's all really.

After some distinctly odd weeks, I left my current band at the weekend. By way of background, while there was a handful of high-points, although some ten months in and I don't honestly believe we'd progressed that much from our first rehearsal. Tired of being a backing musician to a singer that wasn't a musician. Detest playing covers (even if those were part of the singer's pro-career). Got zero credit, reprimanded for having the wrong attitude because I hadn't learnt Suffragette City, moaned at if I played something wrong, the endless repetition at rehearsals (running through of the same twelve or thirteen songs a couple of times), the constant vetoing of ideas and new material (which also sucked out any desire I may have had for songwriting as well). Jamming was actively discouraged. Little band chemistry. Being told what to wear at gigs and being told which bass I should be using from a front man that doesn't actually play an instrument, were many of the straws that broke the camel's back. Right now I'm genuinely untroubled at not being in a band; I couldn't feel any less inclined to travel three hours to play 45 minutes to an uninterested group of ten people and then do the return journey home. I'm not on cusp of giving up as such, but I'm certainly giving some thought to having a Grande Sell Off at some point. I don't know if I'm actually bothered about being in a band any more.

I think the standout thing from your post is the idea of going through an EQ pedal first. I'm not a fan of stomps per se; it was fine when my old Sansamp BDDI or RBI were just being jacked into a power amp, but beyond that, they just get in the way. Of the main instruments I use regularly (I tend to rotate basses), three have John East circuits retro fitted and the other is a Spector with a stock Tone Pump. These circuits should (in theory) give me enough front end tonal options. At the end of the day, still feel the AO900 is an amp that you need to curate; it's a very fine line between all or nothing tonally.

I'd forgotten these three completely. I was at the Hammersmith for shows that became CD3 of Rush's Different Stages set (Feb '78), Blackfoot's Highway Song Live and Whitesnake's Live At Hammersmith. As my brother dropped out of the Rush gig at the last minutes, I went with the 'hardened gig-goer' who was my brother's girlfriend's brother. I remember the opening riff to Bastille Day and everyone standing up. He remained seated, shouting to me, 'Everyone will sit down in a minute.'

My best mate is on Human Punk by The Ruts. You can clearly hear it's him shouting along and he's the one who goes, 'Aaaaaaw, Hooman punk' on the fade out.

Back on OP, a couple of Fender Jazzes.

On the OP, my thing was Thunderbirds. Nobody (at that time) was particularly interested in them, so you could pick them up for £750-£800. So I did. Lots of them. When time came to start moving them on, more of a demand, so it was easily possible to turn a profit. Playing the long game. Do your diligence. There's several resources out there (Reverb/Talkbass/eBay/here) where you should be able to ascertain the current market price even if the instrument is a short run model. Thing is, the market shifts. Look at what you can pick up a used Warwick for nowadays. Bonkers. There's too many basses/guitars being made and my gut feeling is that less and less musicians (those darn kids) are particularly interested in the nuances in more expensive/special edition kit. A Jazz Bass is a Jazz Bass, irrespective of how much Fender try and sex them up.

Rehearsed this afternoon with Eddie Roxy & The Adjacent Kings. We're going to get another one in next Friday (13th), then we're at The Night Owl, Finsbury that night (https://www.fatsoma.com/e/v35rh1z0/lost-kitten-presents-desperate-fun-eddie-roxy-and-the-adjacent-kings-high-functioning) and doing a punk lunch upstairs at The Prince Alfred, Brighton from 2.15pm Sunday afternoon (15th).

Today I'm working and listening to Frankie Goes To Hollywood. A while back, I bought the deluxe editions of both albums and painstakingly removed all the chuff they put inbetween the songs. It flows excellently without these distractions.

I haven't read this stuff in a long time. Enjoying this. It's a little trip down memory lane during an otherwise terrible afternoon.

When I set up the first Nancy Johnson site (2006), it was more a treatment to test rudimentary .html, css, embedding Flash content, graphics and creative writing. It was very basic stuff but reading it now makes me smile. There's pages and pages of ridiculously stupid overblown content. Of course it's all fluff. We played with a band from Basingstoke one time and their manager had clearly read the site and actually asked how our dates went in Uzbekistan. I've never been further east than Cyprus. +

I saw her at Wembley Arena around this time. It wasn't a particularly enthralling gig; it was very low on content and high on padding out. Every song ending was about five minutes long, with her just going, 'Oooooooohwahwahwahwaaaaaaaaah,' and she bought her mum out for another five minutes of the same. That said, her voice was incredible. What a waste. Just say no, kids.

The Surround Series edition of XTC's 'The Big Express' arrived yesterday. Been so busy building a wall and doing family shizz, just sitting down for a listen. I don't have an ATMOS system, so just good old Dobly 5.1. Really very good. The more Steven Wilson does of these, the better they get. (The Tears For Fears stuff is sublime.) I know there's been issues locating the masters for the rest of their back catalogue, I'm really hoping this won't be the last one. This one was a very pleasant surprise when it was announced.

Size aside, the tech behind the visuals has been in place for quite a while. In simplistic terms, capture is done digitally or on a large format wet film (ie IMAX) using a single or multiple fish-eye lens(es). The image, when displayed on a spherical canvas plays back without any wide-angle aberration. Simple, but very clever. Pity it's U2.