TrevorR

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!).

As would it be useful to have " Brought a spare and used both because I could" - which is really my answer. That said never had either of the two fail at a gig... When I was playing in a function/wedding band this was my standard setup... We'd to three 45 min sets and I'd either do alternate sets or maybe do one (or two at most) change in course of a set (which took less than 5 seconds because of the Lehle switcher pedal) depending on the songs in the set. Could play the whole set with either bass fine, of course, but hey! Like they say, you never buy an insurance policy hoping that you'll use it but, if you ever DO have to use it you'll be glad you had it...

Presume everyone knows that Aimee Mann is pretty tasty on the bass as well as being a top singer and guitar player. When we saw her live she and the "other bass player" in the band swapped between bass and guitar all evening. No one's mentioned Canoe Reeves but I guess that's well known. Less well known is maybe Ryan Gosling... Geeky actor Michael Cera... And didn't film critic Mark Kermode play bass for Danny Baker's short lived late night chat show?

Nah, Yacht Rock is GREAT! Long live Yacht Rock! Did you see the BBC4 documentary that Katie Puckrick did on it? Well worth a listen- though ironically it barely gives a mention to the fabulous YouTube comedy skits that cemented the term itself.

I also write the following blog... http://walbasshistory.blogspot.com

Yes, I’ve got a Mk 1 Custom and an older Pro Series Bass.

Actually, the knobs are hand turned solid aluminium, hand stamped with the numerals and then sent for powder coating... but why let facts get in the way of a bit of facetiousness... 😉👍