Old Man Riva

If you’re going down that route, get on this...

Blimey! I’ve just finished listening to that for pretty much the same reason! (don’t think it was take 10, mind!. It always puts me in mind of this featuring Phil Chen on bass... Hope it does the job!

Will do. It’s booked in for next Tuesday!

The perfect adornment, practical too..!

Hi, thank you so much to everyone on this thread - what a marvellous bunch! The B-15 is booked in at Sickamps in Harlow (only 30mins away from me!) off the back of the recommendation above from jimmy23cricket, and after speaking with Chris there... Thanks again!

The amp was still on (powered up with the lights on) but with a growl and no sound (i.e. when I hit the strings nothing came through the speaker). I’ve had a look and there are four fuses...

You, sir, are a modern day saint! Thanks Paul, really helpful. I like the look of Leighton Jennings so may give him a call tomorrow. Hi Mike, it's the B-15N model. Looks great and sounds even better - to these ears, at least! Embarrassingly I've no idea whether a fuse blew or not - it was still on and making an odd growling noise after the 'pop', if that helps?!

I’ve an Ampeg B-15 Heritage which tonight went ‘pop’ and then ended up emitting an angry humming sound?! What I know of tubes, valves, repairs and such can be written on the back of a (very tiny) postage stamp so I’ve been scouring the internet for repairers in the Loughton/Essex area. I found a company called Essex Amp Repairs that look promising so wondered if anyone has used them at all? Thanks in advance, fellow BC-ers!

I think he’s a really good player. Back when Duran came out, the type of (unashamedly pop) band they were, his/their looks were referred to more than their music. It was lazily assumed that they weren’t particularly good players, which, IMHO, is neither right nor fair. The Taylors could all play well (John and Roger in particular), whilst Nick Rhodes would be the first to admit that he wasn’t really aspiring to be a great keyboard player, but then he didn’t really need to be, given what his/the keys role in the band was. I also think that Martin Kemp and Mikey Craig were viewed in a similar way, and were/are also both really good players...

He probably feels he’s got a big enough profile to do it. After all, some churls are bigger than others...

I quite like Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter. Re. Paprika Plains, the final three-odd minutes are great - Wayne Shorter plays beautifully over that rolling groove. I also really like the (non) bass line Jaco does on the title track - great feel, even when he’s not really playing anything! For me, it fits the track perfectly and not really something that many other bassists would come up with, whether he couldn’t think of anything else or not!!

From 2:26, and features a really tasty descending bass line...

Great shout! Ry Cooder aided by a (late, great) Harry Dean Stanton smile brightens up the drabbest of days...

It’s funny how tastes change over the years. I was introduced to Joni Mitchell’s music in the mid 70s when I was in my teens. An uncle (who was a big influence on introducing me to different music at the time - some Jazz, Steely Dan, Weather Report, to name but a few) said that if I was interested in bass to check this guy (Jaco) out, and recorded Hejira for me. I only had a mono cassette player at the time so much of the music was lost but you could still really hear the Jaco parts and even then I appreciated how different it was to any bass I’d heard before. For years I tended to focus on the bass on the Jaco tracks, and as such didn’t really pay much attention to the wonderful bass played by Max Bennett on, say, Song for Sharon off Hejira. As I got older and I found my own style I became way more drawn to Max Bennett and Wilton Felder’s playing, and the way they approached Joni’s songs, rather than the Jaco tracks. These days Max Bennett and Wilton Felder are definitely more my thing but Jaco’s playing on some of Joni’s songs take them to a different level and offer something unique to the songs due to him and his playing. I suppose it’s a long-winded way of saying I like them all!!

Mrs Riva was thankful, but nonchalantly informed me, “oh yeah, I’ve heard that”. Apparently Lauren Laverne plays it on her 6Music show. I noted that it sounded like a Derek Forbes bass line, to which she responded, “well I wouldn’t know about that”, and then we then carried on with our respective days...

Not heard the demo before. I really like that, thanks for posting! I think some of the vocal ideas (call and response, layered harmonies and counter melodies) she did in this period are really out there. Song for Sharon is a great example... ... and then, of course, there are those amazing guitar tunings that she used!

The contributions of both Jaco and Max Bennett rightly mentioned with regards to Joni bass duties, but let’s also not forget the contribution of Wilton Felder. The bass on Don’t Interrupt the Sorrow is sublime, IMHO. Well worth a listen and play along!

They’re my favourite three, with Hejira at the top.

Pete Way responding to Geddy Lee who asked him about the sound of Gibson Thunderbirds... ”Well Glee, it’s three-quarters good, and one-quarter not very nice!”

Glad you like it! I really dig it. It feels really uplifting... I tend to get dragged back to all the stuff I’ve been listening to for years (which is not a problem at all!) so I love it when I get turned onto something new.

She’s been playing this album today - singing along to this track in particular... “read all the pamphlets and watch the tapes”. It makes quite a nice backdrop to home working!

Mrs Riva turned me on to this... so much about it I love!

Paul Buchanan of The Blue Nile is one of my favourite singers (and lyricists). I don’t think he’d appear on many singer ‘best of...’ lists, but I love his voice. The Blue Nile’s first album, A Walk Across the Rooftops is, to this day, one of my favourite ever albums. It’s one of the few albums I can listen to all the way through with no interruptions then put it on again straight away (maybe helps that it just under 40mins long?!). If you’ve not heard it/them; definitely worth checking out. It doesn’t do the album justice (in my opinion) to offer just one track as it really is a ‘whole’ album, but this is a track called Stay...