TrevorR

Orion - cover by Rodrigo y Gabriela! Just stunning!

Cissy Strut - The Meters Colibri - Incognito (presuming that scatting doesn't count as words) YYZ - Rush La Villa Strangiato - Rush Rhayader - Camel (or in fact, the entire Snow Goose album) Telstar - The Tornados Oxygene and Magnetic Fields - Jean-Michel Jarre

Easy choice for me... my 1985 Mk 1 Wal Custom Bass... been my go to bass since 1992 when I bought it... Though, to be honest I love all my basses...

So this morning's Lockdown video was my bouzouki debut. King Of My Heart has a nice Celtic sort of vice to the melody and so the jangly sound worked well .Also a good excuse to drag out the acoustic bass - a Faith Neptune Titan which comes over really nicely in the track. Plus as an extra treat (because it was Fathers' Day) our worship leader and her dad - our senior pastor - did a nice version of the Blind Boys of Alabama's version of Amazing Grace. You might just recognise the tune!!! Back in the 70s he used to do a lot of work with Cat Stevens, Mike D'Abo and John Kongos - and allegedly gave Mo Foster his first professional gig as a session guy!

@silverfoxnik owned the Wal Pro IIE that Nick Beggs used to record Too Shy for a while...

Absolutely! Been practicing the bouzouki part for a few weeks and consistently since Monday when the worship leader confirmed it was this week’s tune. Bass line is just roots and a few connecting runs so did one run through and one take. Phew. Quite a few aborted runs on the bouzouki to get a couple I was happy with. Our worship lead we wants us to smile at the camera a lot... which is the very thing that throws me. Now just wondering how it’ll come out when compiled?

Me, this evening... recording my PARTS for this week’s lockdown worship song video. That look you can see on my face is a mixture of terror and relief... I’m no professional bouzouki player! 😱

Actually, it's quite the opposite. The song was first written and recorded in 1978 by an American singer. The following year Village People released the original version of Go West. The song came to prominence when a popular Christian singer called Don Moen recorded it for one of his albums in the mid 80s. The Pet Shop Boys had their huge hit with Go West in the early 1990s. I've always just put it down to coincidence rather than any deliberate copying, though. And the melody sounds a lot like the old Soviet Union national anthem anyway...

There's a popular worship song we do (did?) called "Do It Again" (no relation) but in rehearsals me and the guitar player can never resist throwing in "So get back, Jack, do it again. Wheels turning round and round..." as a backing vocal. It's also easy throw some Doobies feel into some of the more up tempo tunes without ripping off a particular bass line. We did a "Blues Night" once where all the songs in the service were done in a variety of blues and gospel-blues styles. We did a cracking version of Amazing Grace to the tune of "House of the Rising Sun" based on a Blind Boys of Alabama recording.

Oooooh, how could I forget this fabulous cover by Incognito to an equally fabulous song by Stevie Wonder... Randy Hope Taylor on bass.Andy Gangadeen on drums. So good!

Absolutely not better than the original but I do love this version of Daytripper by Whitesnake - made much funkier than it deserves to be by Neil Murray’s bass...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-52911102

On the look, yeah absolutely. Funny thing though, the guy miming in the vid isn’t actually the singer on the track. That voice is coming out of this Winchester Born folkie! He was a regular at a singer songwriter club I used to frequent up in Shepherds Bush. Fabulous singer.

My “better than the original are... This version of Duffy’s Mercy as if it was recorded by a kicking soul band in 1970! Rosalie - Thin Lizzy’s cover is so much better than Bob Seger’s original... And speaking of Lizzy, Sade’s version of this isn’t “better” but it’s still great... Always had a soft spot for this cover of a Falco tune...

I’ll take the Blind Boys from Alabama version any day

Does this count?

Of course my very first thought when I saw this thread was... the mighty Adam of the Ants... Full disclosure: No it wasn't... it really, really wasn't! 🤣

Never played a Sandberg that I didn't really, really like... not played yours (of course) but I doubt it would be the exception to that rule. Lovely looking bass - love that idea of the JMM format - I can only imagine how lovely it sounds and feels. I quite fancy the idea of a PMM format. I know that if I was buying another bass tomorrow 99.5% sure it would be a Sandberg, Enjoy!

Or in fact... II > III III > IV IV > Houses of the Holy Presence > In Through The Out Door

ELO did it on a couple of successive albums. A New World Record and then Out of the Blue were very successful and epitomise the violins and cello orchestral pop ELO sound everyone thinks about when you think ELO... ...then they released "Discovery" - or "Disco-Very", their first No 1 album which had a very different sound but was also very successful with many hit singles. AND THEN they released their last big hit album "Time", also a No 1 album, which largely ditched the strings-based/disco-tinged sound for a much more synth/electro tinged flavour.

Funny, I've also been a huge Rush fan since about 81 and I absolutely get why CoS was so poorly received. I'm not sure it made 2112 "possible" but it certainly made it "necessary"! Really like both FBN and 2112 but the only songs I actually like on CoS are Bastille Day and Lakeside Park (one of my all time faves). In fact it's probably my least liked studio album after Vapor Trains (for the over-compression rather than the songs themselves). For me both The Fountain of Lambeth (sic) and Necrodude have always hinted at their their abilities but felt like they were put together in a pretty shoddy way with a lot of filler in-between the few and far between inspired bits. Comparing with with other bands' multi-section, long form pieces which were being produced around the same time or earlier (Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Echoes, Supper's Ready, Close To the Edge, And You and I, The Snow Goose, Starship Trooper, Tarkus etc etc) neither The Necro nor Lamneth cohere and hang together the way they do. And then there's "Didacts And Narpets" which is awful musically, poor in its delivery of an otherwise interesting concept and owner of a horribly smug lower-sixth humour anagramatised title. If I didn't know better and you told me that CoS was their second album and they improved with FBN I'd find that completely plausible. Huge disappointment for me. And don't get me started on the sub-Tolkein Hobbit-bothering nonsense... and I LIKE Hobbit-bothering nonsense!

The red Pro II? Photos never do it justice... it’s a deep transparent raspberry red. Lovely. And the red Aria’s cool too (my very first bass back in 1982).

That’s by far the most common way of doing active basses... PICKUPS which are active themselves are actually pretty unusual. Lots of decent quality passive pickups out there at different price points. Active circuits to check out include John East, Aguilar, Audere (my personal fave), Darkglass, Seymour Duncan... and many others.

Just realised I never posted yo this weeks song... this one took me a load of takes before I got one without a major fluff... came out OK but the bass is a bit low in the mix (I would say that!).