T-Bay

Saw the Hives (again) last night and they were superb as always. Boy do they know how to work a crowd, proper show. The new album is the best in ages and great to see them headlining again. They were supported by Bad Nerves, a punk band from Essex according to their blurb. Proper high energy band and I will be checking out their stuff later today as sounded good last night.

Gormless Ezra and shotgun, Mustang Sally. The world would be better place without them.

I had a four string for a while and it was great, could not fault it. Only sold it as had far too many other basses and it didn’t do anything unique for me. Would not hesitate to get another if I needed a cheap, reliable, well made bass.

I have a Sire Larry Carlton LP type 6 string. The quality is superb for the money and it plays very nicely indeed.

Most of the gigs I go to aren’t sold out by any stretch, a couple were cancelled last year due to poor sales which is tragic. No one I know is saying it’s the only factor but only someone detached from reality could assume cost of tickets doesn’t affect the ticket sales.

Nor me before the last 18 months, but its becoming the norm very rapidly for Birmingham and Nottingham to find most well known bands knocking on for that. I have tickets for Filter, Hives, Idles this year, none I would consider big bands but all around the £40 mark. Paid over £40 for SLF at the Academy last year compared to twenty something a couple of years ago. Even some tribute bands want £15+ around here. There are still plenty of free ‘covers band’ gigs which is great.

I think the increasing ticket prices are as much to blame. Four gigs booked for the first quarter of this year at a total cost of well over £200, only one is what I what I would call a big band (Smashing Pumpkins), not many gigs below £30 now. I would happily go every week at £15-20 but when it’s £50+ you have to decide if it’s a band you really want to see.

Backup stays in the bag, I used to have it in a different tuning for a few songs we did but swapping is a pain so now just retune quickly while out singer introduces the song.

Ah, my mistake, I thought the Digbeth stuff was HS2 as well. The tramway work is crazy, they have closed loads of roads and coned off huge areas but work on a 50m stretch at a time. I know a couple of businesses in the old custard factory that area struggling because of it.

Isn’t that area part of the HS2 nonsense? Loads of work going on around there. The academy has survived so far at least……

Weirdly I find it’s often just a different bass line writer (if that’s the correct term). I can happily play complex stuff from one band but struggle with seemingly simpler stuff from another. Some bass lines/ sequences just seem to fit my way of playing better than others.

An absolute Bell end that I had the misfortune to work for was in a band called the Grateful Dads (I am sure there are more than one band who have come up with that ‘witty’ name). The only thing I was grateful for was that I only suffered listening to them once. That was once too many.

He is having a laugh, £75 sounds very reasonable as long as it covers what you need it to. The bass I picked up was a lot more expensive but I couldn’t get a quote even close to £100, from memory I think about £130 was the cheapest.

Just make 100% sure that any insurance does actually cover the value of the bass. Many exclude instruments or have low limits but will still allow you to buy the insurance. The only time I bought a bass from Northern Ireland it worked out cheaper to get an easyjet flight over and collect it. I think I paid less than £50 and the seller met me at the airport. Cheapest quote I had was well over £100. It won’t work for everyone but I am ‘lucky’ enough to live 15 minutes from an airport.

Took a while but haven’t bought anything new in well over a year and even that was replacement when my practice amp died.

Saw Bad Manners earlier this year. Buster Bloodvessel has lost a lot of his energy and his voice isn’t as powerful but they still put on a hell of a show and had everyone bouncing around despite the average age of punters being 50-70.

Do you feel it (physically not emotionally) as much as hear it? That’s dark. Bright is the opposite….. At least that’s what it means to me.

If multiple people do it you have a chance, they seem a bit useless overall though sadly.

I have a behringer and we did loads of back to back tests against an SM58 when I first got it, no one could pic any difference between the two. We took it to our local nerd at the recording studio and he claimed the behringer was slightly more ‘warm’ but I’m not convinced. I didn’t see much point in forking out more for something used for very occasional backing vocals. Perhaps your mate has a dodgy one but I was amazed by how good this one is for less than £20 with a hard case. Not suggesting this in your case, but there is so much snobbery against cheaper kit where in reality the differences can be much smaller than most would care to admit.

I think it depends on expectations. I never expected to be. Professional or make living out of it. I just wanted to be able to play in a band, so I guess I ‘made it’ at our first gig. As of last year my present bands’ lead guitarist has now gone pro and the band is somewhat in stagnation I guess I have now ‘unmade it’.

Played one in a shop once, took about a nanosecond to realise it was bloody awful.

If you look at a lot of the longest lived bands there is often one genius and a few easy going people who realise they are on to a good thing. Most of those bands where you get multiple talents seem to self destruct sooner or later.

COVID did me a massive favour with a band I was in, three of us mates and a mate of a mate. Well the mate of a mate turned out to be a complete control freak and a bloody nightmare. My two other mates are so easy going they didn’t want to be the ones to say anything so it was down to me. Then COVID happened and we accidentally forgot to mention the band to her after and she never got back in touch so result!

I have one gathering dust (not that model but similar) that I would happily trade for beer and a bottle of something nice. I used it loads at first but it’s lived in a bag under the bed for the last couple of years. I just noodle on my Jazz now.