super al

I think I'm like one of those restaurants you see on Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares. I look pretty good until you delve deeper, then you discover the freezer is full of shop bought, the fridge has mould growing everywhere and the chef is some dysfunctional idiot who taught himself to cook! I do a pretty good 'Tears of a Clown' though 😁

Great album...the audience singing along always makes me smile, Weeks bass playing is spot on too.

The 'Vulf' in the top left corner gives it away, didn't the guitarist from Vulfpeck post this? He's a pretty decent bassist apparently.

I'll have to listen to that tune with my bass ears, I've never really taken much notice of the bass playing in the Tull (light blue touch paper, stands back waiting for fireworks of abuse! 😁). The last 5 years I've been playing Stevie Wonder tunes more and more. I love playing and listening to the bass parts in I Wish and Superstition. Very challenging too when you change drummers and they have a different way of playing their part. All the Stevie tunes we play are interesting, difficult and fun, as I'm not James Jamerson I've had to adapt (simplify) For Once In My Life, it would probably take me about 6 months to learn it properly...oh, hang on, I've probably got about 6 months of free time 😆😷

I want you back by the Jackson 5 has that bridge and I'm suffering to get that at the right tempo. I've played it slowly for a while then speed it up but it's a real sausage to get it right! Great tune to learn otherwise 👍, I'll get it eventually.

Higher and Higher was a challenge for me too! At first if my mind wandered I lost it, eventually I found that focussing on smiling (or clenching my teeth 😁) got me through it. Playing it live, everyone gets up to dance to it... this somehow made it easier if a crowd were up enjoying themselves.

After years of playing in bands without a keys player I've now played with 3 very, very good ones in the last 4 years! The soul band I currently play with have 2 of the 3 and those guys play the piano parts, string parts, organ parts and the horn section parts too! (We do have a horn section but money and space dictate how often they play!). I think we've been blessed but the set we play attracts the right kind of guys anyway, what self respecting keyboard player wouldn't want to play Stevie Wonder, Otis Redding, James Brown, Lionel Rich Tea, etc. If you have a set of songs where they can show off, the good ones will come knocking 😊

I played a jazz bass from 2003 until I bought a 5 string ibanez in January 2018! It's a sunburst MIM and it's had a couple of modifications, I kind of stuck with it through loyalty and I like the look of jazzes but as soon as I played the Ibbie 5 string...BOOM! It was like I ditched the Mrs and ran off with Scarlett Johansson 😊

You have a guy who plays just the harmonica? Does he do anything else? Shaker, make tea, drive the singer to gigs?

I bought the V amp after reading about it in bass guitar magazine! Used it mainly for home practice and then at rehearsal when we had silent rehearsals at the drummer's house. We all plugged in to his PC and then used headphones to hear the mix! Happy memories, I just use a TC electronic bh250 for practice and rehearsal now.

I'm a bit like @stewblack I don't suffer the nerves like I used too but having said that it's nice to know that the set opens with Sweet Soul Music and once I play G to C at the precise moment in the intro I'm in the zone!

Just played a gig that was a late booking, someone recommended us from another band. It's a boozer that I've played a few times before and used to frequent as a customer too! Set up was strange, people eating (they do very good food apparently) and we couldn't set up properly until this couple finished their meal. Once they left we set up and soundchecked with 5mins until showtime! We play soul music from the 60s, 70s and the wonderful 80s and I think we hit the spot. Good size crowd and people getting into it. At half time people were asking for our phone number and the landlord moved some tables to create a dancefloor area. 2nd half always starts with My Girl but punters were up dancing and continued to until the end. Thought we'd finished the gig but got offered £100 for another half hour by a punter and so we carried on, in fact we played another 45 mins so gave value for money 😊. Played tunes that we haven't played in soooo long. Landlord reckoned we were the best band by far that they had play there (praise indeed, they've had some good bands up there), he wants us for New Year's Eve party! Plenty of gig offers from punters there so all in all a nice little earner with potential gig interest thrown in Slight cramp in my fretting hand near the end but really enjoyable gig, the locals still like to party it seems!

Aw... I like the sound of that, a funky medley. Never played Superstition until 2015 I reckon, now played it for 3 bands (all in E). Hey @stewblack your almost ready to dep for me now! You'll have to learn Betcha By Golly Wow though 😎

Ha! Thought this thread was about the Rolling Stones album... No tats here, my body is a temple and you shouldn't graffiti a place of worship 😆. Although not a fan of ink, my nephew's best mate is a work of art from head to toe. Hardly any room left for more...but he doesn't play bass and I doubt if any tats are bass related. Sorry. As you were.

Never mind playing gigs, GAS needs feeding 🤤

Hi Blue Do the band have a dep or 2 just in case you can't make a gig? In my 30 or so years of playing only the last 3 or 4 years have I been in bands that went down the dep route. Before that if someone couldn't make the gig we didn't play the gig.

It's happened 3 times so it's rare, it's a bit like Monty python's Spanish inquisition - his 2 main weapons are fear, the element of surprise and... My last 6 years playing bass have been all about making improvements and moving up the bass playing ladder so I try to take positives when something bad happens. When I depped I skim learnt some of the songs just to get through a gig with 30 or so tunes. Now I'm in the band I'm learning the new songs plus going over the old ones and picking out where I can improve them. Having the occasional kick up the derrière is a pain but I get a few pointers nonetheless 😃

I'm in a strange situation where the band I depped for last year asked me to join full time. The original bassist got shifted sideways (or demoted!) to guitar where he's much better than the old guitarist. I've asked for help with basslines a couple of times as he is a good all round musician (plays drums too) but every now and then he'll stop a song halfway through and do this kind of angry way of telling me where I'm going wrong. I kind of get the feeling he hasn't quite left the bass behind and he thinks I'm a bit crap on the more complex numbers (we do a lot of Motown, soul and funk). I have a young family so time learning, practicing and rehearsing numbers is limited. Keeps me on my toes I suppose and I've spoken to the BL about why he picked me to replace him so I'm happy for now 😬 but feels like a ticking time bomb!

I've just looked at the line up and I've heard of just 10 of the bands/artists and the Foo Fighters are the only ones I can claim are in my music collection...😯 ... but I reckon my dad wouldn't have known any of the line up from my 1st Reading in 1990! I'm not a big Foos fan, the early stuff is good, but I quite enjoyed their set (ok,ok Rick Astley was a bit cringey!).

More from the Durrington gig (above) as of previous vids. We've recently done a showreel of 5 of the songs from that gig so the accompanying 'live' video is of us miming to Stevie's 'Uptight'. Some overdubs on this but the rhythm section is from the night of the gig.

YouCut_20190808_224424216.mp4

Does anybody do anything different with it or just play it like Mark Ronson and Amy's version? We've jammed it in rehearsal a couple of times at a slower, funkier tempo. Sounded quite good but we haven't taken it to the stage yet.

We do 7 of these in our soul band's set. I love playing Higher & Higher, definitely a great set opener that gets people up on the dancefloor.

I managed to avoid Superstition (in E) all my bass playing life until 2015... now played it in the last 3 bands! Love it though, you can't beat a bit of Stevie Wonder.

Not just me but the whole band! Only the 3rd time we've all been together in the same room since the brass and drummer joined!!! Check out my new (2nd hand) PPI bass, the Lakland, thanks to the wife for that.